ETH Mining pool performance

[klintistwood]

Hello all,

I started mining in july this year and I have been playing with many different pools to see if there was any difference.

I mainly mined on the following mining pools with EU servers. They are all using 1% fee with different rewarding schemes.

Nanopool
+ I achieved one of the highest average hashrate with nanopool (up to 235Mh/s average per day)
+ nice interface with view on current and past performance
+ low threshold payout
- sometimes big discrepancies between miner and their dashboard

Dwarfpool
+ higher than average hashrate, better than Nanopools in the last couple of weeks
+ simple and straighforward
+ low threshold payout
- very basic dashboard, difficult to read graphs

Ethpool
+ predictable solo mining
+ nice and practical interface
- rewards are going to big mining farms
- need more time for payouts

NiceHash
+ Different concept, you sell your mining power instead of mining coins, you get rewards in BTC
+ Good overview on current and past performance
+ No need for a wallet in each currency
+ Manage to get decent money out of it (comparable or slightly higher than normal pools)
- fluctuating performance, hashrate sometimes go really down while I did not see this in my miner
- difficult to predict as it's not directly linked to the currency you are mining, someone needs to buy your miner power

Minergate
+ nice and easy interface
+ many currencies available
+ multicurrency client (Windows AND Linux)
+ no need for a wallet in each currency
- suggested currency to mine is not the most profitable one (I was always suggested to mine XMR)
- hashrate between miner and minergate dashboard never match and what they display on their site is always lower than what you see in your miner
- no view on past hours/days

Any other pool worth mentionning?

I now primarily use Nanopool and Dwarfpool but I have 2 questions:
- what would explain that my average hashrate on dwarfpool is higher?
- when I mine on Dwarfpool, my miner (genoil ethminer) crashes once a day (ends up in a CUDA error) while with exact same configuration I don't have that issue with Nanopools

Thanks!

[Miracle_Man]

Probably not an exact but interesting enough review. I have not seen yet the same review. I myself use a nanopool.

[klintistwood]

Thanks. Why wouldn't it be exact? I simply described what I experienced.

[makomako]

well when comparing pool, one should add the difficulty and net hash of the coin which is impossible to have the exact value as before/yesterday. so when im doing comparison of pool what i would do is run 2 identical rig on different pool in that way same difficulty and net hash.

[klintistwood]

makomako: you've got a point. I did the testing at max 1 day of interval (sometimes within the same day) so difficulty was most likely different but probably not so much. I should perhaps try a 50/50 approach to rule any external factors.

[Bitfort]

Nice overview you made here. Great is that all info is based on your own experience.
Good job.

Can't answer your questions but maybe you could add also:
- how much fee each pool takes (it's quite important factor for many miners).
- where are their servers located (EU, ASIA, US ...)

[klintistwood]

bitfort: you're right, I have added it to the original thread, thanks for pointing out!

[coinfoundry]

Support the smaller pools, people! Dezentralization is important!

https://poolmining.org/pool/eth

[klintistwood]

Coinfoundry: the problem with mining is that it's time driven as profitability it bound to decrease so people what to get money as fast as possible. With smaller pool you don't get paid as often as with bigger pools. I suppose some psychological factors are playing their part too.

How long does it take to find a block on your pool? Outside the fact that you're not taking the usual 1% fee, is there anything else that makes a miner earn more?

[patofet]

What is the best pool for you?

[klintistwood]

In the ones I tried, Nanopool is the one I kept using. I had good performances with Dwarfpool as well but for some reason, my rig crashes once a day when I use dwarfpool while I don't have that problem with nanopool. I'm sure there are other reliable pool, I would suggest to add them here if you have any interesting experience to share.