How Crypto Mining Pools Distribute Rewards: Methods
Pay Per Share: Each member in the pool contributes their hash rate as shares per each round and an accepted share is instantly paid an equivalent fraction of the total earned rewards from the mining round. Pool members get paid each a share of the mining reward. It is best for those who mine on and off for dropping connectivity or power.
Score: The scoring hash rate method is independent of mining rounds. The reward relies on the moving average calculation of the actual hash rate with a ramp-up or down period when the user stops mining.
Full Pay Per Share or Pay Per Share+: Same as Pay Per Share except that members of the pool get paid the mined rewards plus the included transaction fees of the mined block.
Pay Per Last N Shares: Members are paid only when a pool is found, but they also paid all your shares in previous blocks where a block was not found by the pool after the next block is found. Best for those who mine 24/7 without connections dropping regularly.
Other variants put more weight on recent hash rate shares (Recent Shared Maximum Pay-Per-Share (RSMPPS)).
Frequently Asked Questions
Q #1) How often do mining pools pay out?
Answer: The best Bitcoin mining pools payout daily, with some paying daily regardless of the amount earned and others pegging the daily payout to a certain threshold. For the latter types, if the reaches a set amount, it is paid.
Q #2) How do you pick a mining pool?
Answer: Follow these steps:
- Research on different types of pools, payment or reward distribution methods, fees, payment thresholds, and their hash rates.
- Decide on the crypto you want to mine. Also, research on profitability.
- Buy mining machine per the crypto desired to mine. Check profitability as per crypto desired to mine.
- Sign up with the desired pool or cloud mining site to buy the hash rate for the latter.
- Connect mining machines to the pool as per directions offered on the website.
- You can also research on VPS, hosted ASICs, and GPUs, then connect to your desired pool.
Q #3) What is the advantage of a mining pool?
Answer: The main advantage is that you combine hash rates with other people to make up a bigger total that is more likely to win a block and thus more rewards when mining together than in solo mode. You do not also need to invest in an execrably huge hash rate when mining on a pool to win a block like it would need you to invest in when mining in solo mode.
Q #4) Is joining a mining pool worth it?
Answer: Certainly yes. If it allows you to use your available equipment to mine profitably the crypto you want to mine, then it is. It should also be genuine, especially for cloud mining pools.
Q #5) Is a higher hash rate pool better?
Answer: Yes, it is better. However, some higher hash rates or biggest Bitcoin mining pools favor those with a higher hash rate because the distribution of mining tasks through algorithms favors that. Most have a fair task distribution that will allow those with low hash rates to mine profitably. Always check the task distribution method when deciding on a crypto mining pool.
Q #6) Which mining pool is the best to join?
Answer: A variable difficulty algorithm allows for a balanced flow of hash data to the pool server. All miners hence get a fair chance of winning rewards regardless of the hash rate. It will increase the difficulty for a miner’s work when the frequency of sending resulting data back to the pool is beyond the set time (the idea is 16 to 20 times per minute).
Most Bitcoin mining pools use variable difficulty algorithms, so setting a difficulty on miners doesn’t matter.
Joining a Bitcoin mining pool with a high hash rate when it favors miners with the highest hash rate is best when you have top-notch and latest mining hardware for that algorithm and crypto, otherwise, with an obsolete and low hash rate device, that means less fair chances of winning rewards or having your hash rate accepted.
List Of The Best Bitcoin Mining Pools
Here is a list of the best bitcoin mining pools available in the market:
- Minedollars
- Slush Pool
- F2Pool
- AntPool
- ViaBTC
- BTC.com
- Poolin
- Genesis Mining
- Bitfury
- Binance Pool
- KanoPool
Comparison of Top Cryptocurrency Mining Pools
| Mining pool | Fees | Reward distribution method | Hash rate | Our rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minedollars | Withdrawal fees 0.0004 BTC, minimum BTC contract worth is $3000. | N/A | N/A | 5/5 |
| Slush pool | 0-2.5% | Score | 9.54 EH/s | 5/5 |
| F2pool | 2.5% | PPS+ | 30.60 EH/s | 5/5 |
| Antpool | 0% on PPLNS, 4% on PPS+, | PPS+, PPLNS | 24.04 EH/s | 4.7/5 |
| ViaBTC | 2% on PPLNS, 4% on PPS | PPS and PPLNS | 20.37 EH/s | 4.6/5 |
| BTC.com | 0.015 | Advanced FPPS | 161.44 EH/s | 4.5/5 |
Recommended Crypto Exchanges
Pionex
Pionex – All of the above-listed mining pools let you set up a wallet to which the mined crypto can be sent. If you want to trade it with automated bots, consider the Pionex trading bot. The exchange hosts 12 bots that you can leverage to ease your trading exercise while earning trading profit from high-frequency trading.
Pionex has been in operation for more than three years now. It lets you buy digital assets with a credit card regardless of the country of location. It has hosted wallets that you will not control private keys for but is secure.
Features:
- Choose to trade either manually or with a bot.
- Deep liquidity book integrated with Huobi and Binance.
- Trade automatically with up to 16 bots.
- Hold crypto in stable coins to deal with bad volatility.
CoinSmart
CoinSmart is a trading platform that does not support mining or mining pools. It only lets you trade more than a dozen cryptos against each other on a spot exchange.
You can buy Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies using a credit card, Interac E-Transfer, bank account, and other methods. It lets you sell Bitcoin for fiat through the bank, with same-day delivery. You can convert other cryptos to Bitcoin on the exchange and then sell BTC for fiat.
Features:
- $100 minimum funding minimum and $5,000 maximum buying BTC with credit or debit card. $500-$5000 with bank draft, $10,000-$5,000,000 with bank wire, $100 to $3,000 with Interac e-Transfer.
- Fee is 0.20% for a single trade and 0.30% for double trade.
Crypto.com
Crypto.com does not offer a mining pool for any cryptocurrencies. The closest you can get is to stake cryptos and earn rewards of up to 14.5% depending on the crypto you stake.
Crypto.com also lets you instantly convert any crypto (over 250 of them) to fiat on ATMs and spend them at merchant stores globally. For instance, you can spend crypto to buy goods and services or as a merchant, receive payments for goods and services in crypto.
Features:
- Buy crypto with fiat through credit and debit cards, as well as a bank account.
- 0.04% to 0.4% maker fees, 0.1% to 0.4% taker fees, plus 2.99% for credit card purchases.
GET USD $10 SIGN UP BONUS ON CRYPTO.COM >>
Detailed review:
#1) Minedollars
Minedollars – Best for solo mining on mobile phones.
Minedollars is a crypto mining platform that does not require users to buy a crypto mining hardware. It does not essentially work as a mining pool to which you can connect your mining hardware, but users buy mining contracts and their mining investments are pooled together by the company.
The company invests in GPUs and ASICs accessible on the cloud via its software. Thus a user who buys a contract can monitor their earnings using the website or mobile app. These GPUs and ASICs are located in Myanmar and Kazakhstan. The company claims to have over 320,000 users and has carried out over 1 million transactions since its inception.
How to mine Bitcoins on Minedollars
- Sign up for an account by filling out and submitting a registration form.
- Check out crypto mining packages sold. Browse through and select packages based on crypto to mine, duration of the contract, profitability, investment amount, or other factors.
- Pay for the contracts and start mining. You can buy multiple contracts.
- Withdraw earnings – starting at $100.
Features:
- Good for beginners and advanced crypto miners alike. Invest in daily contracts starting at $10 and up to $20,000 in mining contracts. BTC contract price is $3000 for 30 days of mining. The profit rate is $1,980 at a daily rate of 2.2%.
- Up to 10 cryptos for mining, deposit, and withdraw including BTC, BCH, LTC, ETH, XRP, USDT, USDC, and DASH.
- Payout processed within an hour.
Bitcoin hash rate: N/A
Payment threshold: Once it reaches at least $100
Payment modes: Solo
Fees: Zero deposit, withdrawal fees 0.0004 BTC, minimum BTC contract worth is $3000.
#2) Slush Pool
Best for ASIC miners with high hash rates, zero cost mining with Braiins OS+.
Slush Pool is one of the oldest Zcash and biggest Bitcoin mining pools, with over 15,000 people mining Bitcoin and 760 mining Zcash on it.
The company runs Bitcoin and Zcash mining pool servers located in Europe, the USA, Canada, Singapore, Japan, and Russia. They have a proprietary software known as Braiins OS+ for auto-tuning to maximize mining hash rates and lower power consumption on different miner equipment.
How to mine on Slush Pool:
- Choose the cryptocurrency you want to mine, either Bitcoin or ZCash.
- Buy relevant mining hardware or rent hash rates as per crypto required to mine. Install relevant mining software for the bought device.
- Head over to the Slush Pool website. Sign up, confirm email, and log in. Click on Bitcoin Mining set up or ZCash mining set up to learn how to configure your miners and equipment to this pool.
- From your web account, find information about the worker, username, password, and pool address.
- Start mining and monitoring.
Features:
- Advanced mining monitoring in real-time.
- iOS and Android mobile app to receive notifications about your miner activity.
- Daily news on crypto mining.
- Decide when to get paid.
BTC pool hash rate: 9.54 EH/s
Payout thresholds: 0.0001 BTC
Mode of payment: Score
Fee: 0% when using Braiins OS+; otherwise 2% – 2.5%.
Website: Slush Pool
#3) F2Pool
Best for merged mining 4 cryptos. ASIC miners with high hash rates; earning of free coins while mining BTC.
F2Pool was founded in 2013 and hence one of the earliest pools for mining Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The pool can be used for mining multiple cryptocurrencies on multiple blockchains, also known as merged mining. You can also receive free coins from mining Bitcoin with the pool.
It is currently the biggest Bitcoin mining pool with an 18.26% share of the total Bitcoin mining hash rate.
Features:
- Hosts mining for users through over 1,000,000 mining machines from across the globe.
- Multiple other pools for other cryptos than Bitcoins like Eth, Litecoin, BCH, Ravencoin, Ravencoin Classic, 40 proof-of-work cryptocurrencies, etc.
- Mobile apps for iOS and Android are available to monitor mining activity.
- Customized payouts.
How to mine Bitcoins on F2Pool:
- Create an account on the website and log in. Create an account_name required to configure your miners to the pool.
- Create a wallet address with your favorite Bitcoin wallet software.
- Set payment wallet address and payout thresholds.
- Buy your mining equipment and connect to power. Label mining devices with a worker’s name although and input the mining f2pool URL as provided on their website.
- Save settings and start mining.
BTC pool hash rate: 30.60 EH/s
Payout thresholds: 0.005 BTC minimum to receive daily payouts
Mode of payment: PPS+ (Pay Per Share+)
Fees: 2.5% from your rewards as commission
Website: F2Pool
#4) Antpool
Best for remote management of mining activity and customized low threshold payouts.
Antpool is the second-largest Bitcoin mining pool with a 14.3% share of the Bitcoin mining hash rate. Apart from Bitcoin, you can use it to mine BCH, LTC, ETH, ETC, ZEC, DASH, and many other crypto and tokens.
The daily revenue from Bitcoin mining is $0.3405 per Terra hash, with the default minimum payment being anything above 0.001 BTC. It is a multi-crypto mining pool.
Features:
- Pay Per Last N Share, Full-Pay-Per-Share (FPPS), Pay Per Share and Pay Per Share +.
- Efficient miners management and monitoring tools for most OS platforms.
- Merged mining.
How to mine BTC on Antpool:
- Buy mining rig or hash rate.
- Create an account on the Antpool website. Create a wallet address with your favorite software for payout.
- From the web page and when logged in to your account, select BTC and input the mining wallet address. Select the mode of payment and minimum to be paid.
- Connect and configure your mining equipment as per instructions on the website.
BTC pool hash rate: 24.04 EH/s
Payout thresholds: 0.001 BTC
Modes of payment: PPS+, PPLNS
Fees: 4% on PPS+, and 0% on PPLNS payment modes.
Website: Antpool
#5) ViaBTC
Best for hash rate trading, loans, and trading crypto.
ViaBTC is top 5 largest mining pools in the world at 11.44% of the total BTC mining hash rate with 16,400 active workers in it. It also allows people to mine Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash and over 10 other cryptos. Its mining farms cost differently depending on weather, although there also are constant yearly price options.
You can mine with ASICs, CPU, and GPUs or using cloud hash rates. It is the fourth largest mining pool, with a hash rate of 20422.07 PH/s.
How to mine Bitcoin on ViaBTC:
- Create an account over the website and log in. Research mining hardware, profitability, payment modes, etc.
- Purchase miners as per crypto desired to mine and install the software.
- Back to the website, choose the crypto to mine. From the dashboard, choose payment mode for each coin to mine.
- Set up your worker and lookup configuration settings from the website and configure workers and mining pool addresses on the mining machines as directed on the website.
Features:
- Multicurrency wallet.
- Multicurrency pool.
- Multicurrency crypto exchange.
- Decentralized exchange and CoinEx Smart Chain.
- Crypto loans and hedging services.
- Trading of mining and cloud hash rates.
- Daily Bitcoin mining profit – $0.319 per terra hash.
- Bitcoin mining hash rate: 161.40 EH/s.
Bitcoin pool hash rate: 20.37 EH/s
Payout thresholds: 0.0001 BTC
Modes of payment: PPS payment system and PPLNS
Fees: 4% fee for the PPS payment system and a 2% fee for the PPLNS.
Website: ViaBTC
#6) BTC.com
Best for Bitcoin and Bitcoin cash mining.
The mining pool is run by Bitmain, the company behind Antminer ASICS. It provides transparent ranking stats on which the user is mining which tokens, their power consumption, hash rates, electricity price, fee ratio, daily profit, and 24-hour returns.
How to mine Bitcoin on BTC.com:
- Get a wallet address. This can be done at https://wallet.btc.com/ or from any crypto exchange or platform.
- Sign up, confirm your email or mobile number, and log in at https://pool.btc.com/, set up a sub-account name, choose the currency to mine, then choose the closest region to you.
- Buy miner as crypto needed to mine, plug to power, network, and card as per user manual. Connect the miner to the same network as the computer, download IP reporter software, and set up as per the guide on the website. Start mining.
Features:
- Android and iOS app, in addition to the web app, for monitoring mining activity and stats.
- Multi-currency mining support.
- Bitcoin daily earnings $0.32 per Terra Hash.
- Bitcoin mining hash rate: 13.630 EH/s.
- Distribute profits to multiple addresses based on the earning proportion you have set.
Bitcoin hash rate: 161.44 EH/s
Payment threshold: 0.005
Payment mode: Advanced FPPS
Fees: 1.5% fee
Website: BTC.com
#7) Poolin
Best for diversified payment modes.
The mining pool has a total of 2,358,175 workers currently doing BTC mining but allows users to mine 10 other cryptocurrencies. It also provides a transparent miner profitability rank for each miner, its price, hash rate, power consumption, 24-hr revenue, and other details.
How to mine Bitcoin on Poolin:
- Sign up for an account at www.poolin.com using email and phone and log in. Create a wallet address for Bitcoin.
- Create a sub-account at the website account, and fill in payment information like address, etc.
- Configure miner as per instructions on the website and connect to pool. Connect the miner to the Internet, use IP Scanner to find its IP, login to miner using a PC browser, and adjust miner configurations like worker name, mining address, and password.
- Save and start mining.
Features:
- iOS, Android, and web platforms for monitoring mining stats and other details.
- Mining guides and tutorials.
- Daily-earnings — $0.32 per Terra hash. The daily earning profits vary from one mining machine to another and up to $ $42.32 for Antminer S19 XP.
- Pool hash rate: 21.01 EH/s
Bitcoin hash rate: 161.44 EH/s
Payment threshold: 0.005
Payment modes: Solo, PPS, PPLNS, PPS+, and FPPS
Fees: BTC: 2.5% FPPS. BCH: 4% PPS. BSV: 3% PPS.
Website: Poolin
#8) Genesis Mining
Best for beginners who need not own mining hardware.
Genesis Mining is a cloud mining company that also allows you to mine altcoins in addition to BTC. It has its mining machines hosted on the cloud and therefore sells mining packages at a defined price for each supported crypto.
You just visit the website, sign up, choose and pay for the package, and mining starts. Benefits include having not to deal with loud noises, excessive machine heating, complicated setups and machine, and software maintenance, 100% uptime guarantee, and best electricity rates to increase profitability.
How to mine Bitcoins at Genesis Mining:
- Sign up and log in to your account at the website.
- Select mining package. Pay for the package.
- Start mining. Withdraw earnings.
Features:
- Daily mining outputs to your account.
- Support for 6 mining algorithms spanning over 10 cryptocurrencies to mine.
- Allocate hash rate to any crypto of your choice as desired.
- Crypto mining data and charts from the account dashboard.
- Tutorials and guides on mining.
BTC hash rate: Not available
Payment threshold: 0.005 BTC
Payment mode: Not applicable
Fees/Pricing: Starter Gold package from $196 to buy 15 TH/s and mine BTC or any supported SHA-256 crypto for 6 months. Fees are not applicable.
Website: Genesis-mining
#9) Bitfury
Best for owned and hosted data center mining.
Bitfury also runs crypto mining data centers that are cooled through immersion cooling. The Bitfury Tardis Server is targeted at small, medium, and large-scale enterprises that want to mine Bitcoin efficiently. Once ordered, they can be connected to the Internet and power, then set up to the mining pool accomplished, and people receive BTC mined.
The other mining device they sell is BlockBox AC, a full-size portable Bitcoin mining data center, which also comes with remote monitoring via browser or mobile apps.
How to mine Bitcoins at Bitfury:
- Direct investment in institutional investor programs through investing in data centers. There also are investments opportunities through funds, private equity, and other instruments.
- Buy mining devices, connect to power and Internet and start mining if self-hosted or let the company host for you as you monitor them remotely.
Features:
- Instant support for those buying the servers.
- The minimum order is 350 units.
- Consultations to discuss your custom mining setup.
BTC hash rate: Not available
Payment threshold: 0.0005 BTC
Payment mode: Not available
Fees: Variant
Website: Bitfury
#10) Binance Pool
Best for pool savers who need to reinvest their mining incomes.
Binance Pool uses an auto-switching algorithm that allows switching between different mining algorithms to mine different cryptocurrencies like BTC, BCH, and BSV. You can also mine Ethereum, Cardano, Binance USD, Solana, Polkadot, Ripple, Filecoin, and Binance Coin, etc. With auto-switching, you end up generating more profits than would be possible without.
Users can also sell their hash rates. With pool savings, users can increase their earnings by depositing the pool’s income to earn interest of between 4% – 30% per annum.
How to mine Bitcoin on Binance Chain:
- Create a mining account. Configure the URL and worker ID on the configuration page of the mining machine. The URL is available from the Binance website.
- Choose the payment mode. Save and start mining. Monitor earnings and withdraw crypto.
Features:
- Daily payouts.
- One-click switch mining instead of keeping changing worker IDs, URLs, and other configurations on machines.
- VIP trading benefits on its exchange.
- Mining tutorials.
- Bonuses from time to time.
BTC pool hash rate: 14.54 EH/s
Payment threshold: Not applicable
Mode of payment: FPPS, PPS+, and PPS
Fees: 2.5%
Website: Binance Pool
#11) Kano Pool
Best for low-cost mining.
This pool supports mining without registration unless if you want to follow in-depth stats about your mining practice.
How to mine Bitcoin on Kano Pool:
- Register with a username.
- Buy and connect miners.
- Configure miners as directed on the website using pool URL, your username, and password as X.
Features:
- Customer support through Discord.
- Immediate payouts when a block is found.
BTC pool hash rate: Not available
Payment threshold: Not available
Modes of payment: PPLNS, Solo
Fees: 0.9%
Website: Kano
Conclusion
The best Bitcoin mining pools are those with auto-switching algorithms if they support multiple crypto mining. You also need to investigate the payment modes, and most pools in this list allow you to configure a choice from multiple methods.
Another important thing to consider is fees, which should be the lowest. You certainly need to consider Slush Pool, which has the potential for zero-fee mining with its in-house Braiins OS software.
While most in the list allow you to connect CPU, GPU, ASICs, or rented hash rates, none in the list supports smartphone-based mining of Bitcoin.
If you are using a CPU or GPU, do not join mining pools like Kano Pools that prioritize ASICs because then it is harder to win shares. Other crypto pools have variable difficulty algorithms for assigning difficult tasks to stronger individual miners and less difficult ones to weaker miners. This provides a fair chance of getting rewarded in the mining pool