Comparison of mining pools

From Bitcoin Wiki
Revision as of 02:45, 6 September 2012 by Tittiez (talk | contribs)
Jump to: navigation, search

Reward types & explanation:

  • 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

Name Location GH/s[1] Merged Mining[2] Reward Type Transaction fees PPS Fee Reward Fee Protocol Launched Difficulty[3] Forum Website
50BTC Germany 3000  ? PPS[4] kept by pool 3% getwork 2011-11-11 1 1 Link
Bitcash.cz Czech Republic 6  ? Prop. kept by pool 0% getwork 2011-07-21 1 1

Link

BitClockers USA, EU 235 NMC PPS kept by pool 8% getwork 2011-05-27 1 1 Link
Bitcoin Mining Pool USA 58  ? Prop. kept by pool 0%[5] getwork Unknown 1 1 Link
Bitcoin Pooled Mining (Slush) EU/London 1430 NMC Score kept by pool 2% getwork 2010-11-27 1 1 Link
Bitcoins.lc EU 70  ? Prop. kept by pool 0% getwork 2011-05-27 1 1 Link
Bitparking San Diego 170 NMC, I0C, IXC, Devcoin PPS kept by pool 2.5% getwork 2012-01-08 1 1 Link
BitMinter Germany 1100 NMC PPLNS shared 0% getwork 2011-06-26 1 1 Link
BitPenny USA 3 No CPPSRB 97% shared 3% BlkPrep[6] 2011-02-08 8 1 Link
BTC Canada Canada 110  ? PPLNS kept by pool 1.5% getwork 2012-08-08 1 1 Link
BTC Guild USA, EU 2000 NMC PPS kept by pool 5% getwork 2011-05-09 1 1 Link
BTCMine UK 50  ? Score kept by pool 2% getwork 2011-03-11 1 1 Link
btcmp.com Germany 160  ? PPS kept by pool 4% 0% getwork 2011-06-28 1 Link
Coinotron Poland 7  ? DGM kept by pool 0% getwork 2011-07-06 1 1 Link
DeepBit Germany 3350 No PPS / Prop. kept by pool 10% 3% getwork 2011-02-26 1 1 Link
Eclipse Mining Consortium USA/EU/AU/Asia 1400 NMC DGM / PPS kept by pool 5% 0% getwork 2011-06-14 1/10/Dynamic 1 Link
Eligius Germany 400 NMC SMPPS kept by pool 0%[5] getwork, getmemorypool[6] 2011-04-27 1 1 Link
Horrible Horrendous TT USA 10 No PPS kept by pool 2% getwork 2012-08-29 Changeable 1 Link
Mining Team Reddit (MtRed) USA, EU 629 NMC PPS shared 0% getwork 2011-05-25 1 1 2 Link
[[NMCBit] USA NMC PPS / Prop. kept by pool 3% 3% getwork 2011-08-1 1 1 Link
Ozco.in USA/EU/AUS 800 NMC on DGM DGM / PPS shared on DGM 5% 3% getwork 2011-06-07 1 1 Link
P2Pool Earth (P2P) 500 Yes/Solo[7] PPLNS shared 0%[8] Proprietary[6] 2011-06-17 Changeable 1 Link
pool.itzod.ru Russia 250 Converted to BC RSMPPS shared 0% getwork 2011-08-01 1 1 2 Link
PolMine Poland 110 No SMPPS shared 1% getwork 2011-06-13 1 1 Link
Triplemining Europe 90 On hold PPLNS kept by pool 0% [9] getwork, getmemorypool[6] 2011-06-28 1 1 Link
pool.mkalinin.ru Russia 40 No PPLNS kept by pool 0% getwork 2011-07-20 1 1 Link
alvarez.sfek.kz Kazakhstan 3 No PPLNS kept by pool 0% getwork 2012-04-19 1 1 Link
  1. 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.
  2. Merged mining allows miners to mine on multiple block chains at the same time with the same hashing.
  3. The share difficulty the pool uses
  4. Pool also rewards stale shares
  5. 5.0 5.1 Donations are possible
  6. 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Miner-local getwork proxy available.
  7. P2Pool supports merged mining but payouts in the merged chain are not pooled.
  8. People are donating to P2Pool miners to encourage people to use it. The P2Pool author also accepts optional donations.
  9. Triplemining keeps 1% to redistribute using a weekly jackpot and affiliations

See also