GHash.IO
GHash.IO
GHash.IO is one of the largest Bitcoin mining pools, which entered the mining market in July 2013 and contributes to over 30% of the overall hashing power making it the #1 pool in the Bitcoin network. GHash.IO charges 0% pool fee and provides 24/7 technical support for its users.
| Type | Mining Pool |
| Founded | July 1, 2013 |
| Headquarters | Netherlands |
| Rewards | Pay Per Last N Shares (PPLNS) |
| Website | ghash.io |
Connection with CEX.IO
GHash.IO and CEX.IO have the same account credentials, and therefore the pool is considered to be the mining side of CEX.IO. The connection between these two platforms allows users to benefit from simultaneous trading and mining. Mining power (GHS) purchased at CEX.IO mine new Bitcoins at GHash.IO until GHS are sold by the owner.
Hashrate
Although the hash rate of GHash.IO differs, on average the company has about 7 PH/s of power.
PPLNS
GHash.IO uses PPLNS (“Pay per last N shares”), a reward scheme, according to which payment is given to shares in a window, starting with the last share submitted and going backwards up to some number N of shares. Shares older than the window are not paid. Shares are hashes, smaller than the target for difficulty of 1 (Usually, pools use such difficulty as the target for share, but technically, any difficulty could be used). Every hash created has a 1 in 232 possibility of being a valid share. In order to get Bitcoins in a more distributed and predictable way, miners use pools. If this is the case, miners are awarded Bitcoins, according to their shares.
Compensated Downtime
The pool’s policy provides compensation for CEX.IO mining hardware. Individual miners are not compensated.
Merged Mining
GHash.IO embodies merged mining of such alternative cryptocurrencies, as NMC (Namecoin), IXC (IXCoin) and DVC (DevCoin). At the moment, users can exchange mined NMC for Bitcoins, Litecoins or reinvest them in more GHS. IXC and DVC stand only for withdrawal to other exchanges or respective wallets.
In the beginning of January 2014 GHash.IO was very close to reaching 51% of all hashing power creating a serious threat to the Bitcoin network. However, all necessary precautions have been taken to change the course of events in order to maintain stability of the Bitcoin community. In order to eliminate the threat GHash.IO temporarily stopped accepting new independent mining facilities to the Ghash.IO pool.