Comparison of mining pools

Reward types & explanation:

• CPPSRB - Capped Pay Per Share with Recent Backpay. [1]
• 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. [2]
• ESMPPS - Equalized Shared Maximum Pay Per Share. Like SMPPS, but equalizes payments fairly among all those who are owed. [3]
• POT - Pay On Target. A high variance PPS variant that pays on the difficulty of work returned to pool rather than the difficulty of work served by pool [4]
• 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.
• PPLNSG - Pay Per Last N Groups (or shifts). Similar to PPLNS, but shares are grouped into "shifts" which are paid as a whole.
• PPS - Pay Per Share. Each submitted share is worth certain amoutripnt of BC. Since finding a block requires <current difficulty> shares on average, a PPS method with 0% fee would be 25 BTC divided by <current difficulty>. It is risky for pool operators, hence the fee is highest.
• Prop. - Proportional. When block is found, the reward is distributed among all workers proportionally to how much shares each of them has found.
• RSMPPS - Recent Shared Maximum Pay Per Share. Like SMPPS, but system aims to prioritize the most recent miners first. [5]
• 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)
• SMPPS - Shared Maximum Pay Per Share. Like Pay Per Share, but never pays more than the pool earns. [6]

Visual examples of the various payout methods

Name	Location	TH/s	Merged Mining	Reward Type	Transaction fees	PPS Fee	Other Fee			GBT	Launched	Variance	Forum	Website
BitcoinAffiliateNetwork		2000	NMC, DOGE	PPS	kept by pool	0%	0%	No	Yes		2014-07-15	User/Dynamic	link	link
Slush's pool (mining.bitcoin.cz)		677	No	Score	shared		2%		Yes		2010-11-27	User	link	link
BitMinter		2700	NMC	PPLNSG	shared		1%	Yes	Yes	Yes	2011-06-26	User/Dynamic	link	link
BTC Guild		10500	NMC	PPLNSG	shared		2%	Yes	Yes	No	2011-05-09	User/Dynamic	link	link
BTCMine		0.1	No	Score	kept by pool		0%	Yes			2011-03-11	Diff 1	link	link
BTCDig		7	No	DGM	kept by pool		0%		Yes		2013-07-04	User/Dynamic 20SPM	link	link
btcmp.com		1.4	No	PPS	kept by pool	4%		Yes			2011-06-28	Diff 1		link
CKPool		3500	No	PPLNS	shared		0.9%	No	Yes	No	2014-09-20	User/Dynamic 18SPM	link	link
Eclipse Mining Consortium	Global	246	No	DGM/PPS	kept by pool	5%	0%	Yes	Yes	Yes	2011-06-14	User/Dynamic	link	link
Eligius		4000	NMC 105% PPS	CPPSRB	shared	0%		Yes	Yes	Yes	2011-04-27	Dynamic: 32 shares/m	link	link
GHash.IO		60000	NMC, IXC, Devcoin	PPLNS	shared	0%	0%	No	Yes	No	2013-07-01	User	link	link
Give Me COINS		1000	NMC	PPLNS	shared		0%	No	Yes	Yes	2013-08-12	Dynamic	link	link
Merge Mining Pool		50	NMC, IXC, Devcoin	DGM	shared		1.5%	No	Yes	No	2012-01-08	User	link	link
MinerGate			Yes	PPS, PPLNS	kept by pool	2.5%	2%	Yes	Yes	No	2014-03-24	Dynamic	link	link
Multipool		400	NMC, IXC, Devcoin	Prop.	shared		0%	Yes	Yes	No	2012-03-15	User	link	link
Ozco.in		4	No	DGM	shared		1%	No	Yes	No	2011-06-07	User/Dynamic	link	link
P2Pool	Global (p2p)	800	Solo	PPLNS	shared		0%	No	Yes	No	2011-06-17	User	link
PolMine		700	NMC	SMPPS	shared	1%	0%	Yes	Yes	Yes	2011-06-13	Dynamic/User	link	link

See also

• Pooled mining
• Hashrate distribution pie chart
• Bitcoin Mining
• Video: What is Bitcoin Mining