Study of the technical and social characteristics of mining pools



The DTI team analyzed the most popular mining pools. The results obtained are framed in the table .

Initially, the study was conducted for internal use, but in the process the team encountered a lack of information:

  • descriptions of mining pools from the top 10 consist of 2-3 sentences,
  • it’s not known how effective the payment scheme proposed by the pool is,
  • there is no list of power pools for some cryptocurrencies.

To help miners, we decided to develop a methodology for selecting and comparing pools , collecting all the necessary information in one place. It is divided into sheets of the table.

"General information . " We chose the cryptocurrencies available for mining from the top 8 in terms of capitalization. For each of them, they compiled a list of the largest pools in terms of production - 9 for bitcoin and 3 for other currencies.

“Technical specifications of Bitcoin pools” and “Technical specifications of the remaining pools . We determined a list of criteria important for miners - the hash rate, distribution and value of commissions, understandability and stability of the service, and others. Collected this information for the selected pools.

Community. We found information about the social component of the pools - who most often visits their sites, from which users of the countries, how often they share information about the pool, and so on.

For a detailed study of mining pools, it is worth examining the table . To understand the process of their selection, it is better to read the text below.

Step-by-step explanation of the work done



Step 1. We chose the top 8 cryptocurrencies by capitalization with Coinmarketcap . As of the writing date of this article (11/17/2017), Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Dash, Monero, Ripple, IOTA were on this list. Of these, only the first six are mined, as they support the Proof-of-Work algorithm. Read more about it in an article on Habrahabr .

Step 2. We compiled a general list of mining pools for these currencies and sorted it in descending order of production. For bitcoin, we chose top 9 for analysis - the pool at 10th place is constantly changing. Top-4 pools were considered for Bitcoin Cash, and top-3 for other currencies. Sources of information:

Bitcoin: https://btc.com

Ethereum: https://www.etherchain.org/statistics/miners

Bitcoin Cash:https://cash.coin.dance/blocks/thisweek

Liteсoin: https://www.litecoinpool.org/pools

Dash: https://chainz.cryptoid.info/dash/#!extraction

Monero : https: // moneropools .com

Step 3. General information was collected for each pool. This is the name, site, rating link, list of supported cryptocurrencies, year of foundation (the start of the site), the owner of the pool. The results on the "General Information" sheet in the table.

Step 4. We analyzed what the miners pay attention to when choosing. Six options were chosen:

Supported currencies. The pool must mine the selected cryptocurrency.

Type of pool.Some pools mine one cryptocurrency, others - several. If these currencies use similar Proof-of-Work algorithms, then the pool can switch power to mining the most profitable at the moment.

Withholding Commission. The lower the better.

Convenience of control over farms. The ability to track the effectiveness of each individual miner, API access, the presence of the correct interface translation.

Payouts. Frequency, the ability to manually configure, the presence of automatic conversion.

Reputation. Stability of payments and stability of the pool. For example, the pool to which ping is less stable works more stable .

Step 5We found out that commissions in mining pools consist of: commissions for the found block and other additional fees - for example, for transferring payments to the client’s wallet.

At the same time, there are 7 types of profit accrual (rewards) in mining pools. You can read about each in the cryptocurrency encyclopedia . The most used types:

Proportional. After a pool finds a block, the reward is divided in proportion to the contribution of each participant.

PPS Each sent found number is rewarded. Estimated as the current block reward divided by the current difficulty.

Score. The estimated reward system of the found number, the algorithm is determined by the pool organizer.

PPLNS.Similar to Proportional, but the division of the award is carried out proportionally to the contribution to the complexity of the last found numbers, multiplied by N, where N is usually 2.

# interesting The unspoken rule of miners is the choice of not too large pools due to the risk of “51% attack” - capture of more than 50% of blocks cryptocurrencies with one mining pool. In this situation, the dominant player gets the opportunity to selectively not skip certain transactions, so confidence in the currency falls. As a result, it depreciates. You can read more about this on BitcoinWiki and in the article on Habrahabr .

Step 6. Based on 4 and 5 stepshighlighted important technical parameters: the frequency of payments, the method of distributing the rewards for mining, transaction fees, additional fees, auto withdrawal, reviews about working with the pool, the comprehensibility of the site and the convenience of working with it.

For mining pools, Bitcoin additionally analyzed the stability of the work, the share of unread blocks, the number of errors in calculating the reward and withdrawing the commission. The results on the sheets “Technical characteristics of Bitcoin pools” and “Technical characteristics of the remaining pools” in the table.

Step 7. Evaluated the marketing component. We chose eight parameters:

Sociology. The number of visitors to the site over the past month, the country from which they come, and their interests.

Transitions. Sources of transitions, traffic from social networks.

Mentions. The total number of referral links to the pool, the number of requests in search services for which the site is in first place, as well as reviews.

Information was taken from the official sites of mining pools, from the bitcointalk.org forums and also using the services similarweb.com , spywords.ru , buzzsumo.com , semrush.com . Results on the Community sheet in the table.

Step 8 . We analyzed and identified the main patterns of the considered pools. The results are described in the conclusions of this article.

Brief description of selected mining pools


Pools that mine BTC (Bitcoin)



AntPool
Chinese mining pool. It uses different payment systems, it is possible to withdraw earnings without commission. Withdrawal settings are not adjustable. The popularity of the pool is proved by the number of visitors in November - 2.4 million people for the whole month, the target audience of the pool is people with an interest in engineering, who can configure the equipment and have great power. Founded in 2013, owner Roger Ver.

BTC.com
Another Chinese mining pool. It is a site with useful statistics on Bitcoin mining (the number of blocks found, the time spent by the block, the effectiveness of mining pools, etc.). A large number of visitors to the main site (2.7 million people) is due to useful statistics for miners, 434 thousand people visit the pool page. Founded in 2015, owner Roger Ver.

ViaBTC
A cloud computing company in China. The pool occupies a leading position in the mining of Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dash. It provides professional and stable mining services with very low commissions. User-friendly interface with a high level of security, stability and transparency. ViaBTC CEO is a former developer of Tencent Weibo (Chinese Twitter), followed by FUTU, which received investment in the Hong Kong Tencent Stock Exchange. In November, 847 thousand people visited the pool. Founded in 2016, owner Roger Ver.

BTC.TOP
Private Chinese pool that cannot be joined. The laconic website is entirely in Chinese, the number of visitors in October is 1.5 million, in August it was 355 thousand. It was founded in 2016 by Jiang Zhuoer, launched in 2017 by

Slushpool
The world's first Bitcoin mining pool, which has been operating since December 2010, is based in the Czech Republic. The only one has the Score reward system - according to reviews by miners, one of the most profitable. The pool has been steadily holding the forefront for several years, the number of visitors has consistently been more than 2.1 million people, and is popular in the USA. Founder - Marek Palatinus, co-founder of SatoshiLabs .

F2Pool
Chinese service, operating since 2013. The service recommends immediately withdrawing money from accounts, since everything that remains there after 90 days is spent on developing the pool. The number of visitors is 2 million people, with 50% from China. Pay extra to miners in excess of a 3% reward for mining Bitcoins for marketing purposes.

Bitfury
Closed diversified blockchain company, the largest industrial miner outside China, a developer of software and hardware for working with Bitcoin. The company has offices in San Francisco, Washington, DC, Hong Kong, London and Amsterdam, data centers in the Georgian cities of Gori and Tbilisi. The number of visitors is 105 thousand people, links to the pool more than 17 thousand.

Bitclub
The closed British network was founded in 2014. During this time, they created a global community that helps educate, provide services and ultimately profit from Bitcoin, ClubCoin, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, DASH, Monero, Zcash and other cryptocurrencies. The network has the largest number of referral links - more than 18,000, the number of visitors to the main site bitclub.com 4.5 million people, and the subdomain bitclubpool.com 140 thousand people.

BTC China
This Chinese service does not have a Russian interface, the ability to use the English language is limited, therefore it is not very popular in Russia, despite a 10-12% hash rate (which is one of the highest rates on the market). However, the network has more than 50 thousand referral links in the pool. The number of visitors to the site of the main site is 4.5 million, and the subdomain of pool.btcchina.com is 290 thousand. Owned by Bobby Lee, the pool was founded in 2014 on the basis of one of the largest Chinese exchanges.

Pools that mine ETH (Ethereum)



Ethermine.org
The most convenient mining pool among the mining companies . It has adjustable auto-output settings, ETH, ETC, ZEC miners, is designed for large miners (minimum auto-output from 0.05). The number of visitors is more than 10 million people, the most active users are Russians. Founded in the USA in 2016.

F2Pool
Description in the list of pools for bitcoin.

Nanopool
American service, created in 2015. Auto withdraw several times a day, supports currencies ETH, ETC, SC, ZEC, XMR, PASC. The total commission for all processes is 1%, however, according to rumors, the value is very underestimated. The number of visitors is 10.7 million people, it is popular in the USA and Russia. Founder Alexander Barkovsky, who is CTO and founder of Finom .

Pools that mine BCH (Bitcoin Cash)


Bitcoin.com
Chinese mining pool of Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. Is the leader in terms of mining Bitcoin Cash. The reward system is PPS or PPLNS, the remaining commissions are 0. The Bitcoin.com website is visited by more than 15.3 million people, the pool.bitcoin.com pool page is 1 million people. Founded by Roger Ver in 2016.

BTC.TOP
Description in the list of pools for bitcoin.

ViaBTC
Description in the list of pools for bitcoin.

AntPool
Description in the list of pools for bitcoin.

Pools that mine LTC (Litecoin)


LitecoinPool.org
Pool founded in 2011, only LTC mined, PPS reward system, two-factor authorization, customizable auto-withdrawal system. There are more than 950 thousand visitors to the site; active users are Americans and Russians.

Antpool
Description in the list of pools for bitcoin.

F2Pool
Description in the list of pools for bitcoin.

Pools that mine DASH


AntPool
Description in the list of pools for bitcoin.

ViaBTC
Description in the list of pools for bitcoin.

Coinotron
Payments every 2 hours, customizable auto withdraw, reward system PPLNS 1.5%, RBPPS 2.5%, PPS 3.5% - all other commissions are missing. The currencies that are mined in the pool are ETH, ETC, ZEC, BTG, PASC, LTC, DASH, FTC, VTC, PPC. Visitors about 459 thousand people over the past month, with 29% from Russia. It was founded in 2011.

Help Third place in the list of mining pools is often replaced. We considered this pool as the third place that occupied the longest time.

Pools that mine XMR (Monero)


Minexmr
Mine only XMR, reward system only PPLNS, the total commission of the pool is 1%. Auto withdrawal is possible on any wallet. Designed for large miners (minimum withdrawal is 5 XMR), the number of visitors to the pool is 824 thousand in November, and is popular in Russia. It was founded in 2013.

Minergate
Mine ZEC, ETH, BTC, LTC, BCN, XMR, BTG, XDN, QCN, FCN, MCN, AEON, DSH, INF8. Daily payments, reward system PPS and PPLNS, transaction fee 1%. A clear site, detailed instructions are written, founded in 2012. For 1 month, the site is visited by more than 10 million people, with 20% from Russia.

Supportxmr
The new pool, founded in 2016, only XMR mined, the reward system only PPLNS, commission from the transaction pool 0.6%, payments every 2 hours. Designed for small miners (maximum payout is 5 XMR), the number of visitors in November is 746 thousand people, it is popular in the USA.

Conclusions: common features of the considered mining pools



  1. The most popular rewards are PPLNS (69%) and PPS (56%).
  2. The transaction fee for the fork pools of bitcoin a is usually 0% (for two-thirds of mining pools).
  3. The transaction fee for the remaining pools is usually ~ 1%.
  4. All mining pools have a limit on the minimum withdrawal amount , in case of transfers by amounts less than specified in the conditions, a commission is necessarily charged.
  5. All pools make payments to miners every day, every fourth allows you to pay more often.
  6. Two-thirds of mining pools mine more than one cryptocurrency , more than half - 3 or more.
  7. More than a third of the considered mining pools were founded in 2016-2017, all the rest from the list - until 2016.
  8. More than 35% of the pools are created in China , of the top 10 mining bitcoins - 60% are from China.
  9. All pools have a simple and intuitive interface , 15 out of 16 have English versions.
  10. The most popular mining pools are characterized by the number of visitors over 400 thousand for 1 month.
  11. The top 3 countries whose citizens visit the sites of mining pools are China (visited 44% of the reviewed pools), the USA (78%) and Russia (100%).
  12. All mining pools are in the top of SERPs in search engines Yandex and Google for at least 5 queries. For 78%, the number of requests in the top more than 10, more than 55% have the number of requests in the top more than 30.
  13. More than 61% of pools have more than 1200 referral links , 39% have more than 4000 links.

Bonus: interesting facts


In the process of preparation, we met interesting information that did not fit into the main table.

  • F2Pool considers as a donation to the pool all funds left in the miner's account for a period of more than 90 days. This is done in order to motivate to take funds.
  • AntPool and BTC.com are founded by the same company - Bitmaintech - which is famous for often suing smaller mining startups and companies , for example F2Pool. The pool owner is Roger Ver, who also owns the ViaBTC pool. In total, these three pools reach about 49% of the volume of all Bitcoin mining pools, which causes a “51% attack” threat .
  • Slushpool is the oldest mining pool located in the Czech Republic. Started with a hosting center for $ 45. The founder also owns SatoshiLabs .
  • ViaBTC and BTCC had exchange platforms , but one by one they announced their closure in September 2017.
  • 4 mining platforms have a platform for communication or useful information (content with btc.com statistics, for example) for miners.
  • We noticed that if the number of links to the pool is more than 1600, then the main source of referrals to the pool site are referral links . In other cases, direct transitions.

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