Comparison of mining pools

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Reward types & explanation:

  • PPS - Pay Per Share. Each submitted share is worth certain amount of BTC. 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. [1]
  • ESMPPS - Equalized Shared Maximum Pay Per Share. Like SMPPS, but equalizes payments fairly among all those who are owed. [2]
  • 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.
  • 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 Hashrate (GHash/sec)[1][2] Reward Type Transaction fees Fee PPS Fee Prop / Score Audits[3] Protocol Launched Forum Thread Homepage
21bitcoin CN, HK 2 Prop. kept by pool 0%  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-06-20 [3] Link
ArsBitcoin USA 330 SMPPS kept by pool 0%[4]  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-06-15 Link Link
bestbitcoinminingpool Australia 3 Prop. kept by pool 0%  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-07-01 [4] Link
Betcoin.co Pool USA 10 PPLNS kept by pool 0%  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-07-07 Link Link
BitClockers USA, EU 80 Prop. kept by pool 2%  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-05-27 Link Link
Bitcoin Mining Pool USA 272 Prop. kept by pool 0%[4]  ? RPC (+LP) Unknown Link Link
Bitcoin Pooled Mining (Slush) London 1491 Score kept by pool 2%  ? RPC 2010-11-27 Link Link
Bitcoinitalia Italy 4.5 Prop. kept by pool 0%  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-07-12 Link Link
Bitcoins.lc EU 624 Prop. kept by pool 0%  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-05-27 Link Link
BitLotto Pool Los Angeles 1 Prop kept by pool  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-06-08 Link Link
BitMinter USA 10 Prop kept by pool 0% Yes[5] RPC (+LP) 2011-06-18 Link Link
Bitp.it USA 100 ESMPPS kept by pool 0%  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-06-08 Link Link
BTC Guild USA, EU 2800 Prop. kept by pool 0%[6]  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-05-09 Link Link
BTCMine UK 480 Score kept by pool 2%  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-03-11 Link Link
btcmp.com Germany 27 Prop kept by pool 0%  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-06-28 Link
BTCSERV.net Germany 3 Prop kept by pool 0%  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-07-09 Link Link
Btcworld.de Germany 28 Prop kept by pool  ?  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-06-18 Link
CHWpool Chile 10 Prop kept by pool 1%  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-06-30 Link
Coinotron Poland 2 Score kept by pool 0%  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-07-06 Link Link
Continuum Canada 16 Score kept by pool 0%  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-05-17 Link Link
DeepBit Germany 4180 PPS / Prop. kept by pool 10% 3%  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-02-26 Link Link
Eclipse Mining Consortium USA / Europe / AU / Asia 50 Prop / Score kept by pool 0%  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-06-14 Link Link
Eligius Germany 510 SMPPS kept by pool 0.000001%[4] Yes[7] RPC (+LP) 2011-04-27 Link Link
Mineco.in UK 170 PPLNS Shared 0%  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-06-15 Link Link
Mining Team Reddit (MtRed) USA, EU 212 Prop kept by pool 0%[4]  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-05-25 1 2 Link
NoFeeMining USA 48 Prop Shared 0%  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-06-17 Link Link
Ozco.in AUS 85 Prop kept by pool 0%  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-06-08 Link Link
P2Pool n/a (P2P) 2 Prop  ? 0.5%  ? RPC (+LP)[8] 2011-06-17 Link Link
PolMine Poland 150 Prop. kept by pool 0%  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-06-13 Link Link
PoolMunity France 45 Score kept by pool 1.5%  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-07-24 Link Link
rfcpool UK 29 Prop & PPS kept by pool 7% 0%  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-07-05 Link Link
Simplecoin Unknown 1.4 Prop kept by pool 0%[9]  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-06-02 Link Link
Swepool Sweden 13 Prop kept by pool 0%  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-05-14 Link Link
Triplemining Europe 45 Prop kept by pool 1% Yes[5] RPC (+LP) 2011-06-28 Link Link
UnitedMiners US 30 PPLNS kept by pool 0%  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-06-28 Link Link
x8s Germany 95 Prop kept by pool 1%  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-06-08 Link Link
ZA Bitcoin South Africa 0.4 Score kept by pool 0%  ? RPC (+LP) 2011-06-14 Link Link
  1. Hashrate is given in gigahash/second.
  2. 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.
  3. Auditing can be accomplished by third-parties if the pool publishes proofs-of-work for every share.
  4. 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Donations are possible
  5. 5.0 5.1 Access to proofs-of-work is available on request.
  6. Donations are possible to unlock features
  7. Access to Eligius proofs-of-work is available on request.
  8. Against a local p2pool node
  9. While in testing.

See also