Comparison of mining pools

Reward Types

• DGM - Double Geometric Method. A hybrid between PPLNS and Geometric reward types that enables to operator to absorb some of the variance risk. Operator receives portion of payout on short rounds and returns it on longer rounds to normalize payments. [1]
• Prop. - Proportional. When block is found, the reward is distributed among all workers proportionally to how much shares each of them has found.
• PPLNS - Pay Per Last N Shares. Similar to proportional, but instead of looking at the number of shares in the round, instead looks at the last N shares, regardless of round boundaries.
• PPS - Pay Per Share. Each submitted share is worth certain amount of BC. Since finding a block requires <current difficulty> shares on average, a PPS method with 0% fee would be 50 BTC divided by <current difficulty>. It is risky for pool operators, hence the fee is highest.
• SMPPS - Shared Maximum Pay Per Share. Like Pay Per Share, but never pays more than the pool earns. [2]
• ESMPPS - Equalized Shared Maximum Pay Per Share. Like SMPPS, but equalizes payments fairly among all those who are owed. [3]
• RSMPPS - Recent Shared Maximum Pay Per Share. Like SMPPS, but system aims to prioritize the most recent miners first. [4]
• CPPSRB - Capped Pay Per Share with Recent Backpay.
• Score - Score based system: a proportional reward, but weighed by time submitted. Each submitted share is worth more in the function of time t since start of current round. For each share score is updated by: score += exp(t/C). This makes later shares worth much more than earlier shares, thus the miner's score quickly diminishes when they stop mining on the pool. Rewards are calculated proportionally to scores (and not to shares). (at slush's pool C=300 seconds, and every hour scores are normalized)

Visual examples of the various payout methods

Table Explanations

• GH/s - Conjoined hashrate of everyone mining at the pool. Note that pool hashrate is largely irrelevant but can be seen as a popularity measurement. Note however that it is a theoretical security issue if one pool gains above 50% of the total computational power of the network, thus consider joining a pool based on other metrics.
• Merged Mining - Merged mining allows miners to mine on multiple block chains at the same time with the same hashing, at no cost to the miner.
• Transaction fees - What happens to the transaction fees. Transaction fees are a voluntary fee which can be added to a transaction which is used as an incentive to add the bitcoin transaction to a block. The fee determines the likelihood and of inclusion in any given block. Some pools keep them, some distribute them among miners, some may do other things with them.
• Reward Fee - The percent of your reward the pool keeps for itself, usually to help pay server costs and to reward the pool maintainer(s).
• Difficulty - The share difficulty the pool uses. Most pools use a default difficulty of 1. Some pools allow you to select your own difficulty, useful for larger miners. Some pools use a dynamic difficulty that changes to be perfect for your own hashrate.
• Pays Orphans - An orphan block is a block that is not in the currently-longest block chain. The pool receives nothing from a orphan, but some pools pay you out of their pocket when an orphan block is mined.
• Pays Stales (PPS) - Some pools pay stale shares, some don't. A stale is no longer valid because there is a new block on the network. High stales are the fault of the pool usually, so some pools pay for them too.

DGM Pools

Name	Location	GH/s	Merged Mining	Transaction fees	Reward Fee	Protocol	Launched	Difficulty	Pays Orphans	Forum	Website
Coinotron	Poland	70	No	kept by pool	0%	getwork	2011-07-06	1	No	1	Link
Eclipse Mining Consortium	USA/EU/AU/Asia	2000	NMC	kept by pool	0%	getwork, getblocktemplate	2011-06-14	Choosable/Dynamic	No	1	Link
MaxBTC	USA	220	NMC	kept by pool	0%	getwork	2012-03-15	1	w/ 3.5% Donation	1	Link
Ozco.in	USA/EU/AUS	750	NMC	shared	2%	getwork	2011-06-07	1	w/ 2% Donation	1	Link

*MPPS Pools

Name	Location	GH/s	Merged Mining	Transaction fees	Reward Fee	Protocol	Launched	Difficulty	Pays Orphans	Forum	Website
Eligius	Germany	300	NMC	kept by pool	0%	getwork, getblocktemplate	2011-04-27	1	Yes	1	Link
pool.itzod.ru	Russia	360	Converted to BTC	shared	0%	getwork	2011-08-01	1	Yes	1 2	Link
PolMine	Poland	160	No	shared	1%	getwork	2011-06-13	1	Yes	1	Link

PPLNS

Name	Location	GH/s	Merged Mining	Transaction fees	Reward Fee	Protocol	Launched	Difficulty	Pays Orphans	Forum	Website
BitMinter	Germany	1100	NMC	shared	0%	getwork	2011-06-26	1	/w 1% Donation	1	Link
BTC Canada	Canada	2	No	kept by pool	1.5%	getwork	2012-08-08	1	No	1	Link
P2Pool	Earth (P2P)	300	Solo Mining	shared	0%	Proprietary	2011-06-17	Choosable	No	1	Link
Triplemining	EU	90	No	kept by pool	0%	getwork, getmemorypool	2011-06-28	1	No	1	Link
pool.mkalinin.ru	Russia	70	No	kept by pool	0%	getwork	2011-07-20	1	No	1	Link
alvarez.sfek.kz	Kazakhstan	4	No	kept by pool	0%	getwork	2012-04-19	1	No	1	Link

PPS Pools

Name	Location	GH/s	Merged Mining	Transaction fees	Reward Fee	Protocol	Launched	Difficulty	Pays Orphans	Pays Stales	Forum	Website
50BTC	Germany	3200	No	kept by pool	3%	getwork	2011-11-11	1	Yes	Yes	1	Link
BitClockers	USA/EU	250	NMC	kept by pool	8%	getwork	2011-05-27	1	Yes	No	1	Link
Bitparking	USA	130	NMC, I0C, IXC, Devcoin	kept by pool	2.5%	getwork	2012-01-08	Choosable	Yes	No	1	Link
btcmp.com	Germany	60	No	kept by pool	4%	getwork	2011-06-28	1	Yes	No		Link
CoinLab Protected Pool	USA	?	No	kept by pool	2-5%	getwork	2012-08-09	1	Yes	Yes	1	Link
DeepBitPPS	Germany	4200	No	kept by pool	10%	getwork	2011-02-26	1	Yes	No	1	Link
Eclipse Mining Consortium PPS	USA/EU/AU/Asia	1900	NMC	kept by pool	5%	getwork, getblocktemplate	2011-06-14	Choosable/Dynamic	Yes	No	1	Link
Horrible Horrendous TT	USA	15	No	kept by pool	1%	getwork	2012-08-29	Choosable	Yes	Yes	1	Link
Mining Team Reddit (MtRed)	USA/EU	650	NMC	shared	0%	getwork	2011-05-25	1	Yes	Yes	1 2	Link
NMCBitPPS	USA	20	NMC	kept by pool	6.6%	getwork	2011-08-01	1	Yes	No	1 2	Link
Ozco.in PPS	USA/EU/AUS	750	NMC	shared	4%	getwork	2011-06-07	1	Yes	No	1	Link

Proportional Pools

Name	Location	GH/s	Merged Mining	Transaction fees	Reward Fee	Protocol	Launched	Difficulty	Pays Orphans	Forum	Website
BitArena	EU	1	No	kept by pool	0%	getblocktemplate	?	1	No	1	Link
Bitcash.cz	Czech Republic	5	No	kept by pool	0%	getwork	2012-09-14	1	No	1	Link
Bitcoin Mining Pool	USA	70	No	kept by pool	0%	getwork	Unknown	1	No	1	Link
Bitcoins.lc	EU	60	No	kept by pool	0%	getwork	2011-05-27	1	Yes	1	Link
DeepBit	Germany	4200	No	kept by pool	3%	getwork	2011-02-26	1	Yes	1	Link
NMCBit	USA	20	NMC	kept by pool	3%	getwork	2011-08-01	1	No	1 2	Link

Score Based Pools

Name	Location	GH/s	Merged Mining	Transaction fees	Reward Fee	Protocol	Launched	Difficulty	Forum	Website
Slush's pool (mining.bitcoin.cz)	EU/France	1600	NMC	kept by pool	2%	getwork, stratum	2010-11-27	Dynamic	No	1	Link
BTCMine	UK	65	No	kept by pool	0%	getwork	2011-03-11	1	No	1	Link
BTCWarp	USA	50	No	kept by pool	0%	getwork	?	1	No	1	Link

See also

• Pooled mining
• Bitcoin Mining Pool Tracker
• Hashrate distribution pie chart