As some pools go through low periods, loyal supporters attribute it to 'bad luck' and encourage miners who are getting cold feet to hang in there and wait it out.
Some frustrated people, however, are quick to point fingers and blame the operator to the pool in question for being dishonest and literally label the pool as a scam.
What I am trying to understand, however, in what way could there be a scam? i.e. how could an operator profit from a non-performing pool, especially as it is impossible to hide results, as every single block mined on the blockchain can be easily verified?
Could it technically be possible to 'hijack' the hash power into a different pool and rake in the benefits in secret? I am not suggesting this may be the case, just wondering if it were possible, if there were malicious intent?
No skimming by a pool operator other then a service such as nicehash is not easy to do,
but other pools and or miners can attack pools in many ways. Also a fair playing field is supposed and all pools should do just under 100% luck lifetime, but if a pool like antpool which is known to be able to do asic boost has other boosting abilities then
asic boost they can do 105 or 110 or 115 percent luck. So their good luck will lower the luck of an honest pool operator.
Sending dead hash to a pool has been done more then one time. So the pool preforms poorly. This was done to BTC Guild.
They did 80% luck for quite a while.