BTC Mining Pools List

[organofcorti]

This post is designed as a handy short cut to help you find your favourite pool's forum thread, or shop for a new pool. The hashrate is an average based on a pool's published statistics for the week, unless that pool does not publish round history on API or html, in which case it's the hashrate when the list was updated. I'll endeavour to add more pools as I can.

Mining luck FAQ: http://organofcorti.blogspot.com/2015/07/faq-bitcoin-mining-and-luck-statistic.html

If you are interested in alt-coins, try the Alt-coins Mining Pools List: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=374454.0



If any miners need more information than appears in the list, post here. If there are any mistakes, pool ops please reply in the thread.

NOTE FOR BITCOIN POOL OPERATORS: If your pool doesn't appear here please post the pool's statistics in the following format:

Pool:                      <Pool name>
Website:                 <Pool URL>
Proxy:                    Are you a proxy pool? Options: Yes / No
Generation address:  If you are not a proxy pool, what is the address to which block rewards are paid?
Coinbase signature: If you sign the coinbase, what string do you use to identify your blocks?
Payout method:        eg DGM, PPLNS, PPS
Fee:                        Percentage of reward taken as fee
Pay Tx Reward:        Do you pay the tx fees to the miners?
Vardiff:                   options: "User defined" or if automatic quote the shares per minute you're aiming at, eg "20 SPM"
Local Work:             options: stratum / gbt / p2pool
Pay Orphans:           Do you reward miners even if a block is orphaned? Options: Yes / no.
Min Withdrawal:       What is the minimum amount a miner can withdraw?
Merge Mining:          Options: Yes / No

Thank you to Meni Rosenfeld, whose Pool summary appears in the post below the current pools list.

Please refer to https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_mining_pools for pool features not listed here.

REDUCING REWARD VARIANCE You do not have to mine at only one pool. In order to reduce your income variance, you should mine at multiple pool. As well as reducing variance, this will also help decentralise the network. Details in this post:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=78031.0

If you are interested in p2pool specifically there maybe useful information here:
     http://poolnode.info/
     http://nodes.p2pool.co/
     http://minefast.coincadence.com/


Recent pool support of Core, Unlimited and other (thanks to coin.dance)








P2Pool proxy mining pools

		Pay Tx			Pay
Pool	Fee	reward?	Variable difficulty?	Local work?	orphans?	Min withdrawal	Merged mining?
Mergemining.com	1%	Yes	p2pool	p2pool	No	NA, hourly payout	Yes (see post in this thread)
Multipool.us	1.5%	No	User defined	Stratum	No	Unknown	No
pool.cryptopros.com	1.5%	Yes	Unknown	Stratum	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown

DGM mining pools               
   

		Pay Tx			Pay
Pool	Fee	reward?	Variable difficulty?	Local work?	orphans?	Min withdrawal	Merged mining?
BTC Dig.com	0%	No	20SPM / User defined	Stratum	No	0.001	No
mmpool.org	1.5%	Yes	12 SPM	Stratum	No	0.005	Yes

                              
         
               
PPLNS mining pools

		Pay Tx			Pay
Pool	Fee	reward?	Variable difficulty?	Local work?	orphans?	Min withdrawal	Merged mining?
BCMonster.com	0.5%	Yes	12 SPM	Stratum	No	0.0001	No
BitClubPool	0%	No	18 SPM	Stratum	No	0.002	No
Bitminter	1%	Yes	20 SPM / user defined	Stratum	No	0.0001	Yes
GBMiners	0.9%	Yes	18 SPM	Stratum	No	0.01	No
GIVE-ME-COINS.com	0%	Yes	16 SPM / user defined	Stratum	No	0.01	Currently disabled
Jonny Bravo's Mining Emporium	0.5%	Yes	12 SPM	Stratum	No	0.001	No
Kano	0.9%	Yes	18 SPM	Stratum	No	paid out each block	No
p2Pool	0%	Yes	p2Pool	p2Pool	No	Unknown	No
RigPool.com	0.5%	Yes	4 SPM	Stratum	No	0.001	No

         
PPLNS variant mining pools

Pool	Fee	Pay Tx	Variable	Local	Pay	Min	Merged	Variant
		Reward?	difficulty?	work?	orphans?	withdrawal	mining?	explanation
ckpool.org	0%	Yes	18 SPM	Stratum	No	0.0000546	No	[Link]

            
            
PPS mining pools

WARNING
Be careful of low fee PPS-only pools that do not explain how they will afford to pay miners when the pool has a downturn in luck.

		Pay Tx			Pay
Pool	Fee	reward?	Variable difficulty?	Local work?	orphans?	Min withdrawal	Merged mining?
BTC.com	4%	Yes	User defined	Stratum	Yes	0.00005	Yes
Discus Fish	4%	No	Dynamic	Stratum	Yes	0.0005	Yes

PPS variant mining pools               
      

		Pay Tx			Pay
Pool	Fee	reward?	Variable difficulty?	Local work?	orphans?	Min withdrawal	Merged mining?
Eligius	0%	Yes	32 SPM	GBT & Stratum	Yes	Unknown	Yes

      




Proportional mining pools

		Pay Tx			Pay
Pool	Fee	reward?	Variable difficulty?	Local work?	orphans?	Min withdrawal	Merged mining?
Tricky's Bitcoin Pool	0%	Yes	Variable	Stratum / gbt	No	0.001	No

Slush exponentially scored mining pools

		Pay Tx			Pay
Pool	Fee	reward?	Variable difficulty?	Local work?	orphans?	Min withdrawal	Merged mining?
Slush	2%	Yes	20 SPM	Stratum	No	0.01	No

                  

Solo-mining pools

		Pay Tx			Pay
Pool	Fee	reward?	Variable difficulty?	Local work?	orphans?	Min withdrawal	Merged mining?
Crypto-Miners Club	0.5%	Yes	12 SPM / user defined	Stratum	No	0.01	No
NiceHash Solo	0.5%	Yes	18 SPM	Stratum	No	1 block reward	No
Solo.ckpool	0.5%	Yes	18 SPM	Stratum	No	1 block reward	No

Proxy mining pools

The pools do not solve blocks themselves, but send your work to other pools. You should make sure you are satisfied that they will not send your work to a pool you do not wish to support.

		Pay Tx			Pay
Pool	Fee	reward?	Variable difficulty?	Local work?	orphans?	Min withdrawal	Merged mining?
Cloudminer.com	3%	Yes	18 SPM	Stratum	Yes	0.0005	No
NiceHash	2%	No	User defined	Stratum	Yes	0.0001	No

      

[organofcorti]

Summary of mining pool reward systems
Reproduced here with permission from Meni Rosenfeld

	PPS	Geometric	PPLNS	Double geometric	Proportional	Slush's	SMPPS	ESMPPS
Hoppability	None	None	Low/None	None	High	Medium	Low	Low
Share-variance	Very low	Adjustable	Adjustable	Adjustable	Medium	High	Low	Low
Pool-variance	None	Adjustable	High	Adjustable	High	High	Low	Low
Maturity time	None	Low	Adjustable	Adjustable	Medium	Low	Very high	Very high
Operator risk	High	Adjustable	None	Adjustable	None	None	None	None
Variance+risk	High	High	Medium	Adjustable	Medium	High	Low	Low
Variance+risk+maturity	Medium	Medium	Medium	Medium	Low	Medium	Medium	Medium
Complexity	Low	Medium	Medium	High	Low	Medium	Medium	Medium
Instability	Medium	Low	Low	Low	Low	Low	High	High
Author's rating	4/5	4	4	4	1	3	2	2

                        



Attribute description

• Hoppability: In hoppable pools, the attractiveness of submitting shares (in terms of expected return, variance and maturity time) varies based on the pool’s current state. Hoppers will take advantage of times of high attractiveness, leaving steady miners to suffer from more than the fair share of unattractive times. In hopping-proof pools, the expectation, variance and maturity time of the reward per share is always the same.
• Share-variance: This is the variance (statistical deviation between the expected re- ward for a share and the actual reward) caused by the miner being too small or inter- mittent. Using a method with high share-variance does no harm to continuous large miners.
• Pool-variance: This is the variance caused by the pool being too small. Using a method with high pool-variance does no harm to large pools.
• Maturity time: This is the average time it takes to receive the due reward. High maturity time causes loss of the time value of money, and risk of the pool being discontinued before the rewards are received.
• Operator risk: This is the risk the operator is taking in absorbing some of the pool’s variance. Operators of risky methods will require a relatively high fee as compensation, decreasing the expected earnings of participants.
• Variance+risk: Mostly relevant for pools which can adjust variance and operator risk, this is their invariant total.
• Variance+risk+maturity: Mostly relevant for pools which can adjust variance, risk and maturity time, this is their invariant total.
• Complexity: The level of complexity in describing the method, implementing it and modeling its dynamics.
• Instability: This is the probability of the pool’s collapse, and the severity of the event.
• Author’s rating: The author’s opinion of the quality of the method, all things considered. 5 are the best methods, 1 is the worst.

Method description

• Proportional: The block reward is distributed among miners in proportion to the number of shares they submitted in a round. The expected reward per share depends on the number of shares already submitted in the round, so hoppers will receive much more than their fair share and steady miners will earn much less. This is the worst reward system and must not be used.
• PPS: Each share receives a fixed reward known in advance. This is the ultimate low- variance, low-maturity simple method, but has the highest risk for the operator, and hence lower expected returns than other methods and risk of collapse if not managed properly. It is currently only moderately attractive, but is the way of the future - it will be the most widely used method when the infrastructure to offer it with low fees is established.
• slush’s method ([5]): Each share is rewarded with a score depending on when it was submitted (an exponential function of time), and block rewards are distributed among miners in the round in proportion to their score. It is historically the first method developed specifically to combat pool-hopping, though it is incomplete and some hopping is still possible. Contrary to a popular myth, the method is perfectly usable by intermittent miners and their long-term average returns won’t be affected. The variance for intermittent miners will be especially high, though.
• Geometric method ([3]): This is a hopping-proof method based on a more accurate implementation of the principles set forth by slush’s method. Shares are rewarded with a score that decays exponentially as more shares are submitted. The operator takes a variable fee to maintain a steady-state history. The total variance in this method is high, though its distribution between the operator and miners is adjustable. PPS is a special case of this method where the operator takes all the variance.
• PPLNS ([1]): Block rewards are distributed among the last shares, disregarding round boundaries. In the accurate implementation, the number of shares is deter- mined so that their total will be a specified quantity of score (where the score of a share is the inverse of the difficulty). Most pools use a naive implementation based on a fixed number of shares or a fixed multiple of the difficulty. The share-variance can be reduced at the cost of increased maturity time, but there is no way to decrease the long-term pool-variance. All implementations cannot be hopped using traditional methods. However, only the accurate implementation is hopping-proof against diffi- culty adjustments.
• SMPPS: This method attempts to give shares the full PPS reward on a best-effort basis. However, when there is a backlog of due payments the maturity time is high. Hoppers can mine when the balance is positive and enjoy low-fee PPS, and leave when the balance is negative. The properties of stochastic processes guarantee that the negative balance will eventually become arbitrarily high, inevitably causing the collapse of the pool when it becomes unattractive to mine. This is exacerbated by the fact that any losses due to block withholding, invalid blocks and stale shares (if paid) cause the deficit to pile up.
• ESMPPS ([6]): A refinement of SMPPS, where the least paid shares are prioritized. The total reward for a share converges to a steady-state ratio of the maximum long- term payment possible per share after losses. If this steady-state is accepted as the due expected reward, this keeps maturity time in check and prevents debt, measured up to the steady-state level, from piling up. However, the debt will still go arbitrarily high due to variance. The pool may survive this if the participants are loyal.
• Double geometric method([2]): A hopping-proof hybrid between the geometric method and PPLNS, including the former and an exponential version of the latter as special cases. Shares decay exponentially with the number of future shares submitted and the number of blocks found. Round boundaries are crossed but not ignored. Maturity time, variance and operator risk are adjustable, with a low total invariant.

For a more comprehensive discussion of these methods, see [4].

References
[1] Pplns. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=39832.
[2] Meni Rosenfeld. Double geometric method: Hopping-proof, low-variance reward system. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=39497.
[3] Meni Rosenfeld. Geometric method: New cheat-proof mining pool scoring method. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4787.
[4] Meni Rosenfeld.   Analysis of bitcoin pooled mining reward systems, 2011. https://bitcoil.co.il/pool_analysis.pdf.
[5] slush. http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1976.msg50002#msg50002.
[6] TheSeven. http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=12181.msg378851#msg378851.

[Steamtyme]

Just wanted to bring this to the thread as there is a new consideration for pools.

Some new gear out there comes equipped with Overt Asic Boost and can only be used on pools that support it.

From what I've seen here are the pools currently supporting Asic Boost:

Kano Pool    
Ck Pool and Ck Solo
Bitminter
Slush Pool
f2pool
Dpool
Poolin Pool
Bitcoin India Pool

There may be others, I'm asking manufacturers of this gear if they have a list of all supported pools. I will update this post if I find other pools.

[kano]

Regarding two things listed in the above posts:

...
PPS mining pools

WARNING
Be careful of low fee PPS-only pools that do not explain how they will afford to pay miners when the pool has a downturn in luck.

...

and

...
[4] Meni Rosenfeld.   Analysis of bitcoin pooled mining reward systems, 2011. https://bitcoil.co.il/pool_analysis.pdf.
...

I'd like to quote some of Meni's statistical analysis and update with current Bitcoin information regarding PPS pools.

There are common misunderstandings regarding PPS pools and rewards.

This example below will help all those mathematically challenged PPS pool operators to use the information provided by Meni to attempt to work out if they can afford to run a PPS pool

Firstly, a 100% reward PPS pool means that the pool is keeping transaction fees.
Transactions fees vary quite a lot over time, for example they are currently a little below 2% but at the beginning of 2018 were around 30%
The PPS pools don't state their fees in terms of what they actually earn, they usually state it related to 100% PPS.

But secondly, of most importance, is that a PPS pool is required to charge quite high fees in order to not go broke, and also hold a large sum of BTC in the pool's wallet to ensure they don't go broke.
Meni's report points out two equations related to this on page 38:

where
δ = the chance of going bankrupt
R = the amount of BTC a PPS pool must keep in reserve in it's pool wallet
B = the block BTC reward (currently 12.5 BTC)
f = the pool fee

So for a current bitcoin PPS pool with a (high) 5% fee, the amount R they must keep in the pool wallet (with a 0.1% chance of going bankrupt)
R = B x (ln (1/δ)) / (2 x f) = 12.5 x 6.9078 / (2 x 0.05) = 863.5 BTC
and using a US$ conversion rate (today) of 1BTC = $4,000 that's about $3.5 million

If instead they say charge a 2% fee, then this becomes:
12.5 x 6.9078 / (2 x 0.02) = 2158.7 BTC
and using a US$ conversion rate (today) of 1BTC = $4,000 that's about $8.6 million

If they reduce the fee or the R amount they must keep in the wallet then the chance of going bankrupt increases.
So e.g. a 2% PPS fee pool with only 250 BTC (about $1 million)
has a exp((-2 x f x R) / B) = exp(-2 x 0.02 x 250 / 12.5) = 0.449 i.e. about 45% chance of going broke

Edit: and phil, please go argue this with Meni, since it is your claim Meni is wrong