Delay in Payment from Pools

[worldinacoin]

I tested out a few pools, some paid immediately while others seem to take a long time before the payment trickle in.  Any particular reason why the big differences in the timing of payment from one pool to another? 

[1715519236]

1715519236

[twmz]

When a miner (a solo miner or a pool) finds a block, they get 50 BTC, but according to the rules of the bitcoin protocol, that 50 BTC can't be spent until it has 100 confirmations.  The standard client imposes an additional 20 required confirmations for a total of 120 required confirmations to spend the money gained from finding a block.

These required waiting periods are designed to ensure that you don't spend BTC until everyone is sure that the block isn't going to end up orphaned/invalid.

Some pools, make you wait for those 120 confirmations before they will pay you your portion.  Other pools ("instant pay" pools) don't make you wait, but they are in essence paying you your portion out of their own pocket with the expectation that they will get reimbursed in 120 confirmations.  However since some blocks do end up orphaned/invalid, "instant pay" pools usually charge higher fees to cover the fact that sometimes they will pay you and end up not getting the BTC they were expecting.

Edit to add:  A third category of pool is pools like Eligius, BitPenny and I believe P2Pool.  These pools don't pay you out of their own wallets, they directly split up the new 50 BTC in the found blocks so that those coins end up in the wallets of the pool participants.  If you mine at one of these pools, you'll see "generated x.xxx" entries in your bitcoin client and you will have to wait 120 confirmations in order to spend those coins (and sometimes they will become orphaned).

[worldinacoin]

Thanks you cleared a question I am having for a long time.  So am I right to say that those pools that make you wait longer actually pays more in the end?

[twmz]

Thanks you cleared a question I am having for a long time.  So am I right to say that those pools that make you wait longer actually pays more in the end?

Well, 0% fee pools pay you more than "not 0%" fee pools.

Typically, pools that don't make you wait have fees or require donations in order to get "instant pay" benefits.  But it's not the fact that you have to wait or not wait that matters.  If the fact that you aren't paying a 3% fee (or whatever).  So you'll get to keep that 3% of your earnings in exchange for being patient.

[Graet]

as a help to miners http://ozco.in pays out after 100confirmatiions at 0%fee

[worldinacoin]

I am waiting for you to implement merged mining to switch over .  Best if you can merge ixcoin and everything too

as a help to miners http://ozco.in pays out after 100confirmatiions at 0%fee