Comparison of mining pools

Reward types & explanation:
* CPPSRB - Capped Pay Per Share with Recent Backpay. 
* DGM - Double Geometric Method. A hybrid between PPLNS and Geometric reward types that enables to operator to absorb some of the variance risk. Operator receives portion of payout on short rounds and returns it on longer rounds to normalize payments. 
* ESMPPS - Equalized Shared Maximum Pay Per Share. Like SMPPS, but equalizes payments fairly among all those who are owed. 
* POT - Pay On Target. A high variance PPS variant that pays on the difficulty of work returned to pool rather than the difficulty of work served by pool 
* 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.
* PPLNSG - Pay Per Last N Groups (or shifts). Similar to PPLNS, but shares are grouped into "shifts" which are paid as a whole.
* 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 6.25 BTC divided by <current difficulty>. It is risky for pool operators, hence the fee is highest.
* Prop. - Proportional. When block is found, the reward is distributed among all workers proportionally to how much shares each of them has found.
* RSMPPS - Recent Shared Maximum Pay Per Share. Like SMPPS, but system aims to prioritize the most recent miners first. 
* 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)
* SMPPS - Shared Maximum Pay Per Share. Like Pay Per Share, but never pays more than the pool earns. 
* FPPS - Full Pay Per Share. Similar to PPS，but not only divide regular block reward (6.25 BTC for now) but also some of the transaction fees. Calculate a standard transaction fee within a certain period and distribute it to miners according to their hash power contributions in the pool. It will increase the miners' earnings by sharing some of the transaction fees.
* TIDES - Transparent Index of Distinct Extended Shares. As blocks are being mined, they generate the reward by a weighted percentage of effort to the most recently found proofs. The proof period funds are distributed across has been chosen such that each proof should be paid on average 8 times. Instead of a set amount of bitcoins per proof, the block reward is divided by percent, so transaction fees are included.
A statistically valid analysis of some pools and their payout methods: Bitcoin network and pool analysis
== Operational Pools ==
The following mining pools are still running and paying out their users:
Name 	Location 	Size 	Merged Mining 	Reward Type	Transaction fees	PPS Fee	Other Fee		GBT	Launched 	Variance 	Forum	Website
AntPool 	China 	Large 	No 	PPLNS & PPS	 	2.5% 	0% 		 	? 	? 	link 	link
BTC.com 	 	Medium	NMC 	FPPS 	 	0% 	4% 		 	2016-09-13	User 	link 	link
DEMAND 	Global 	Small 	No 	SOLO 	 	 	0% 		 	2023-11-27	 	link 	link
F2Pool 	 	Large 	NMC, SYS, EMC 	PPS+ 	 	2.5% 	0% 		 	2013-05-05	Dynamic 	link 	link
Golden Nonce Pool	 	Small 	No 	DGM 	 	 	0% 		 	2018-03-27	Dynamic 	link 	link
KanoPool 	 	Medium	No 	PPLNSG 	 	 	0.9% 		 	2014-09-20	User/Dynamic 18SPM	link 	link
P2Pool 	Global (p2p)	Small 	Merged mining can be done on a "solo mining" basis	PPLNS 	 	 	0% 		 	2011-06-17	User 	link 	
Poolin 	Global 	Medium	NMC VCASH 	FPPS 	 	2.5% 	0% 		 	2017-10-01	Dynamic 	link 	link
SBICrypto Pool 	Global 	Medium	No 	FPPS 	 	0% 	0% 		 	2020-11-03	User/Dynamic 	 	link
Slush Pool 	Global 	Medium	NMC 	Score 	 	 	2% 		 	2010-11-27	User 	link 	link
Luxor 	 	Medium	No 	FPPS & PPS 	 	2% 	0% 		 	2018-01-01	VarDiff 	 	link
OCEAN 	 	Small 	No 	TIDES 	 	 	0% 		 	2011-04-27	Dynamic 	 	link
== Defunct Pools ==
The following pools were once operational but have since shut down. They are listed for historical purposes only.
Name 	Location 	Size 	Merged Mining 	Reward Type	Transaction fees	PPS Fee	Other Fee		GBT	Launched 	Variance 	Forum	Website
BCMonster.com 	 	Small 	No 	PPLNS 	 	 	0.5% 		 	2016-01-13	Dynamic 	link 	link
BitcoinAffiliateNetwork 	 	? 	NMC 	? 	 	? 	? 		 	2014-07-15	User/Dynamic 	link 	link
BitMinter 	 	Small 	NMC 	PPLNSG 	 	 	1% 		 	2011-06-26	User/Dynamic 	link 	link
BTCDig 	 	Small 	No 	DGM 	 	 	0% 		 	2013-07-04	User/Dynamic 20SPM 	link 	link
btcmp.com 	 	Small 	No 	PPS 	 	4% 	 		 	2011-06-28	Diff 1 	 	link
BTCC Pool 	China, Japan 	Large 	NMC 	PPS 	 	2.0% 	0% 		 	2014-10-21	Dynamic 	? 	link
btcZPool.com 	 	Large 	BitCoinZ 	PPLNS 	 	1% 	0% 		 	2017-06-25	VarDiff 	 	link
BW Mining 	China 	Medium	? 	PPLNS & PPS	? 	? 	? 		 	? 	? 	? 	link
Eligius 	 	Small 	NMC 	CPPSRB 	 	 	0% 		 	2011-04-27	Dynamic: 32 shares/m	link 	link
EMCD Pool 	CIS, EU, KZ, IR, China	Medium	- 	FPPS+ 	 	1% 	0% 		 	2018-01-26	Dynamic 	 	link
GHash.IO 	 	Small 	NMC, IXC, Devcoin 	PPLNS 	 	 	0% 		 	2013-07-01	User 	link 	link
Give Me COINS 	 	Small 	NMC 	PPLNS 	 	 	0% 		 	2013-08-12	Dynamic 	link 	link
Jonny Bravo's Mining Emporium	 	Small 	No 	PPLNS 	 	 	0.5% 		 	2015-11-19	Dynamic 	link 	link
kmdPool.org 	 	Large 	Komodo 	PPLNS 	 	1% 	0% 		 	2017-11-25	VarDiff 	 	link
MergeMining 	Global 	Small 	CRW, DVC, HUC, I0C, IXC, XMY/MYR, NMC, SYS, UNO, TRC, ARG, EMC	PPLNS 	 	 	1% 		 	2016-12-01	User 	 	link
Multipool 	 	Small 	NMC 	Score 	 	 	1.5% 		 	2012-03-15	User 	link 	link
ZenPool.org 	 	Large 	ZenCash 	PPLNS 	 	1% 	0% 		 	2017-10-25	VarDiff 	 	link
== SPV Mining / Old Bitcoin Core ==
The following pools are known or strongly suspected to be mining on top of blocks before fully validating them with Bitcoin Core 0.9.5 or later. Miners doing this have already lost over $50,000 USD during the 4 July 2015 fork and have created a situation where small numbers of confirmations are much less useful than they normally are.
* BTC Nuggets
* F2PoolIntention to continue SPV mining, Wang Chun, 4 July 2015
* AntPool
The following pools are believed to be currently fully validating blocks with Bitcoin Core 0.9.5 or later (0.10.2 or later recommended due to DoS vulnerabilities):
* BitMinter
* BTC China (described as SPV mining, but they're performing effective valiation)
* BTC Public Mining Pool
* CKPool
* Eligius
* Golden Nonce Pool
* P2Pool
* Slush Pool
* BCMonster.com
* Jonny Bravo's Mining Emporium
== References ==
Note that pool hashrate is largely irrelevant but can be seen as a popularity measurement. 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. The pool's total hash rate is very dynamic on most pools. Over time, as the network grows, so does most pool's hash rates. The displayed values are the pool's relative sizes based on the network: Small: less than 2%, Medium: 2%-10% Large: greater than 10% of the network.
Merged mining allows miners to mine on multiple block chains at the same time with the same hashing.
The difficulty of the shares can be changed by the user.
Merged mining can be done on a "solo mining" basis (payouts in the merged chain are not pooled).
== See also ==
* Pooled mining
* Pool Distribution Summary
* Bitcoin Mining
* Video: What is Bitcoin Mining
* Bitcoin Mining Pools
* Bitcoin Mining Pools Comparison
Category:Mining