The choice of mining pool?

A "mining pool" is a place where part of the computing power of digital currencies is combined and then shared by common mining.

Since the computing level of the entire Bitcoin network continues to rise exponentially, a single device or a small amount of computing power cannot obtain the block rewards provided by the Bitcoin network on the Bitcoin network. After the computing power of the entire network has increased to a certain level, the probability of obtaining rewards is too low, prompting some geeks on "bitcointalk" to develop a method that can combine a small amount of computing power for joint operation. Websites built using this method It is called "Mining Pool".

In this mechanism, regardless of the amount of computing power available to individual miners, as long as they participate in mining activities by joining the mining pool, regardless of whether they have successfully mined valid data blocks, they can obtain a small amount by contributing to the mining pool. Bitcoin rewards, that is, multi-person cooperative mining, and the Bitcoin rewards obtained are also shared by multiple people according to their contribution.

As of February 2020, the top five bitcoin mining pools with global computing power are:

 Poolin, Fish Pool, BTC.com, AntPool, VIABTC.

distribution mode

There are three main allocation methods of mining pools: "PPLNS, PPS, PROP".

PPLNS mode: (the purest team mining) the full name is Pay Per Last N Shares, which means "pay the income according to the past N shares", which means that once all miners find a block, everyone will The currency in the block is allocated according to the proportion of the number of shares contributed by each person. In the PPLNS mode, luck is very important. If the mining pool can find many blocks a day, then everyone's dividend time will be very fast. If the mining pool can't find a block in one day, then everyone will have no income that day. , the benefits will not be distributed until the blocks you participate in are fully mined. At the same time, due to the lag inertia of PPLNS, your mining income will be delayed to a certain extent. For example, if you join a new PPLNS mining pool, you will find that the income in the first few hours is relatively low. That's because others have already contributed a lot of shares in this mining pool. You are a newcomer and your contribution is very small, so your income is relatively low when you distribute dividends. As time goes on, what should be settled is settled, and when everyone starts a new round of calculations, you are back on the same level as everyone else. In the same way, if you leave the PPLNS mining pool and stop mining, the shares you contributed are still there, and you will still receive dividends for a period of time after that, until your shares are settled.

PPS mode: Pay-Per-Share method---this method is to pay for each share immediately. The payout comes from the pool's existing bitcoin funds, so it can be withdrawn immediately without waiting for blocks to be generated or confirmed. This prevents mining pool operators from manipulating behind the scenes. This approach reduces the risk to the miners but transfers the risk to the operators of the mining pools. Operators can charge fees to cover the losses that these risks may cause. In order to solve the situation of PPLNS that sometimes has high profits and sometimes no profits, PPS adopts a new algorithm. Based on the proportion of your computing power in the mining pool, PPS estimates the amount of minerals that the mining pool can obtain every day, giving you a basic fixed income every day.

PROP mode: The generation of Bitcoin blocks is: after the mining pool finds the block, it is broadcast to the whole network, and after 120 confirmations, the block will be generated. The PPS model is: every time a miner contributes a bit of speed, the mining pool will pay the miner the corresponding bitcoin, and the coins of the mining pool must come from the real block, but before the real block is generated, the mining pool will pay the miner in advance. miners. The PROP mode is: after the mining pool generates a real block after 120 confirmations, it will distribute the bitcoins to the miners according to the contribution of each miner. This mode is more in line with the generation of bitcoin blocks. In PROP mode, even if a real block is not generated temporarily, a real block will be generated in the future, and it will be distributed to each miner according to the contribution of mining this block. Miners mine at least for months, or even years, so in the long run, the number of coins mined in these two modes is the same.