🏊 Mining Pools: Joining Forces for Steady Rewards
Discover why solo mining is dead and pools dominate Bitcoin mining
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🤝 Mining Pools
Solo mining is a lottery with terrible odds. Mining pools solve this by combining hash power from thousands of miners and splitting rewards proportionally. Steady income beats rare jackpots.
🎰 The Solo Mining Problem
With 100 TH/s at 400 EH/s network hash rate, you have a 0.000025% chance per block. Expected time to find a block: 1,600 days (4+ years). Can you wait that long?
😰
High Variance
Might find block tomorrow (jackpot!) or never find one (total loss)
💸
Cash Flow Risk
Pay electricity daily, maybe get paid in years. Most can't afford this.
🎮 Interactive: Solo vs Pool Mining
Compare expected returns between solo and pool mining strategies
100
2%
🎰 Solo Mining
Chance per day
0.0036%
Expected days to block
27778
Block reward (if won)
$250,000
Daily expected value
$9.00
🤝 Pool Mining
RecommendedPool size
10,000 miners
Payment frequency
Daily
Daily revenue (after 2% fee)
$8.82
Monthly revenue
$264.60
💡
Why pools win: Same expected value, but paid daily instead of waiting 27778 days. Predictable cash flow = better business.
⚙️ How Mining Pools Work
1️⃣
Join Pool
Connect your mining hardware to pool's server. Configure worker name and wallet address.
2️⃣
Receive Work
Pool assigns you easier "shares" to solve (lower difficulty). This proves you're contributing hash power.
3️⃣
Submit Shares
Every time you find a valid share, submit it to pool. Pool tracks your contribution (shares per hour).
4️⃣
Pool Wins Block
When pool finds valid block, it gets 6.25 BTC reward. Pool operator broadcasts block to network.
5️⃣
Split Rewards
Pool distributes reward proportionally: (your shares / total shares) × block reward × (1 - pool fee).
🏆 Top Mining Pools (2024)
🥇
Foundry USA
1% fee, FPPS payout
30%
network share
🥈
AntPool
2.5% fee, PPS+ payout
16%
network share
🥉
F2Pool
2.5% fee, PPS payout
13%
network share
4️⃣
ViaBTC
2% fee, PPLNS payout
9%
network share
⚠️ Pool Centralization Risk
The top 4 pools control ~70% of Bitcoin's hash rate. If they collude, they could:
🚫 Censor Transactions
Refuse to include specific transactions in blocks
⏸️ 51% Attack
Reorganize recent blocks, double-spend coins
Mitigation: Pools are just coordinators. Individual miners can switch pools instantly if pool acts maliciously. No pool wants to kill the golden goose.