Which is the best pool for mining? - A guide for choosing the right pool

[kislam]

This question gets asked by every miner at the beginning when they are testing the waters with bitcoin mining. A lot of great pools are out there and at the end of the day it boils down to your personal choice. There is really no single best pool, but there is most likely a pool that is right for you, based on _your_ requirements and preferences. This guide won’t tell you which pool is best, but it will help you choose one according to your own liking.

(This guide is more suitable for miners with a limited hashing power, those who are at the beginning stages of their bitcoin mining commitments or those who consider themselves to be casual miners. Hardcore miners, especially those with multi-GHash rigs already know all there is to know about different pools and have already figured out what works for them.)

Before I go into more detail, please note that there are at least two pretty comprehensive lists of pool features available to you (at least that I know of):

• The mining pools feature table (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=12920.0)
• Comparison of mining pools (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_mining_pools)

You should read up on the above information before you go through this guide. While these places are excellent sources of information, they can be a bit overwhelming for the beginner, hence my effort to ease things a bit by providing a subjective guide below.

I found that the following factors were most important for me in choosing the right pool:

• What is the reward method – Proportional/Pay Per Share/Score Based/PPLNS
• What fee they charge for mining and withdrawal of funds
• How frequently they find a block (means how frequently I get rewarded)
• How easy it is to withdraw funds
• What kind of stats they provide
• Do they offer BTC + NMC merged mining?
• How stable is the pool?

What you need to do is sort the above points according to importance as per your personal preference and then use them to prune out the pools that do not meet your required criteria. For example, my top requirement at the moment is merged mining, since it offers 10% to 13% more reward at the moment without any extra effort on my part. So pools that do not offer merged mining automatically get pushed to second tier in my list no matter how well they do in other areas.

Important: _Always_ set up one or more backup pools in your mining software (all major miners offer this option, please consult their respective threads for instructions if you need help). Even the most robustly setup pools can experience downtimes for various reasons, so your miner will be left without any work if something like that happens when you are AFK.

So here goes…

• Pool Reward Method: Different pools follow different reward methods (note: ‘reward’ is what you earn when you mine with a pool, as opposed to ‘payout’, which is the amount you withdraw from the pool after you have generated some reward). Different reward methods are discussed in the above link for ‘Comparison of mining pools’ link provided above, so go read up. The most common are :
      o   Proportionate – where you get paid an amount proportional to the number of shares you submitted compared to the total number of shares in that round,
      o   Pay-per-share – where you get paid a fixed amount per share you submit regardless of the length of the round,
      o   Score-based – where your rewards are calculated based on the score the pool assigns you, which quickly diminishes as soon as you stop mining,
      o   PPLNS – where only the last N shares are considered to calculate your reward
  
  There are other variants as well, notably the SMPPS method used by Eligius.  What you need to know in reality is how the above methods impact your rewards. If you are a casual miner who mines occasionally or if you run a rig that for some reason cannot maintain a stable connection with the pool (bad internet, hardware problems, miner freezing up, etc. etc.), then score-based and PPLNS pools require special consideration on your part. Score-based pools punish the miner who, for whatever reason, does not or cannot maintain a stable mining operation at the pool for the entire duration of the round. If mining with slush, for example, getting disconnected for just 5 minutes will reduce your score to virtually zero and if they find a block at that time, you get paid nothing, even though you mined with them for the last 4 hours. On the other hand, you get paid in full if you are lucky enough to join slush just 5 (or maybe 10? I somehow feel that it takes longer to build up score than to diminish it) minutes before they solve a block even if that round has been running for several hours. The average reward will even out over the long run, but that also means you will need to stick to that one pool over an extended period in order to reap the expected reward. A key requirement for intermittent miners is knowing how much reward they are getting for whatever length of time they do manage to mine, which score-based and PPLNS (and other fancy variants) do not allow. It is better, in my opinion, to stick to zero-fee PPS pools in this case since you get the expected reward whenever you mine.
  
  Pay-per-share and proportionate pools do not have the intermittent issue and you can mine with them on and off and get paid for whatever work you have done for them. Proportionate pools have higher variance than others, meaning that for short rounds you get paid a lot, but for long rounds you get paid much less. Since you get paid in proportion to the number of shares you submitted, if your hashing power is 1% of the pool, you get paid 50 cents for an hour-long round (less any pool fees). You also get that same 50 cents if the round lasts for 10 hours, so you get the picture. Proportionate pools are also a prime target for pool hoppers, which can reduce the actual reward you earn.
  
  
• Pool Fees: There are zero-fee pools and there are pools that charge a fee for mining with them. Pool fees are not necessarily a bad thing – it’s usually worth it to pay the fee in exchange of the benefits they offer. Deepbit charges 3% fee for proportionate mining, but they pay for invalid blocks. But if you are adamant not to pay any fee, you can still find pools that charge nothing or almost nothing to mine with them. Please note that not all pools clearly declare their fee structures, especially Pay-per-share pools that only declare how much they pay for each share, and you have to calculate the pool fee from that information (this is fairly simple, btw, you just find the current theoretical value per share by dividing 50 by the current difficulty, then subtract the pool’s declared pay-per-share value to find the pool’s fee). You can find summary of pool fees in the links provided above.
  
  
• Pool Speed: The more GHash the pool has, the faster they will find blocks. Deepbit, with their current speed of 3328 GHash/s, seems to find 2 blocks per hour in average. Smaller pools can take days or weeks to find a block. You will roughly get the same total reward over an extended period from faster and slower pools, but whether you will have the patience to wait for days for your reward (especially if you are a sub-GHash miner and your rewards are small), is completely up to you.
  
  
• Fund withdrawal/Payout: Do you want your rewards to be automatically sent to your wallet? Do you want an option to send out funds to your wallet as and when you feel necessary? Different pools have different payout policies that you may want to review from the ‘The mining pools feature table’ link provided above. Some pools, like slush, only give you the option for automatic payouts once the confirmed reward crosses the payout limit you have set. Eligius automatically sends your payout when your reward crosses approximately 0.67108864 BTC or after one week of inactivity. This may be a deal breaker for miners with small hash-power, as with a 300 MHash rig mining continuously you will have to wait 3 days before you get a payout. On top of that, once you do receive a payout from eligius, you have to wait for 120 confirmations (takes about 18 hours in my case) before your bitcoin client will let you spend it.
  Other pools let you withdraw funds whenever you feel like it once you have enough confirmed rewards in your account. They usually impose a minimum amount of reward, which is generally very low, like 0.01 BTC, but for NMCBit the minimum is 0.10 BTC. These limits are not usually declared and you find out only when you try to withdraw funds. Some pools let you withdraw the full amount in your account, but some, like Bitcoins.lc, only let you withdraw up to two decimal points.
  While some pools let you withdraw funds as soon as a block is solved, others make you wait for 100 or 120 confirmations of the block before you can withdraw those funds. More details about this can be found at the links provided above.
  
  
• Pool Stats: Some pools provide awesome graphs and statistics of your mining records with them. Others provide very few stats, the rest are in between. ARS offers fantastic stats, ABCPool offers great stats as well, but for a fee. Eligius is very frugal with stats. Slush and deepbit are somewhere in between, although slush offers performance graphs where deepbit doesn’t. How important detailed stats are depends completely upon your personal preference, so you need to shop around a bit in this regard.
  
  
• Merged Mining: At present this is quite a nice addition when a pool offers merged mining. What this basically means is that you continue mining like you always do, but the pool gives you extra Namecoins for the same amount of mining and you can at the moment exchange those namecoins at an exchange (the going rate at bitparking is ~0.0104 BTC per namecoin). Since current Namecoin difficulty is much lower than Bitcoin, you essentially earn about 10% extra with the same hashrate, which is a big plus. Some pools like NMCbit even offer the option to directly convert namecoins to bitcoins without having to go through an exchange, but they (seem to) charge a fee that is not clearly declared (i.e. they were offering 0.01 BTC per NMC when the going rate at bitparking was 0.011 BTC per NMC).
  
  
• Pool Stability: You (naturally) want to get the most out of your mining. Some pools offer better stability, less stales than others. This status keeps changing as pools keep improving themselves. On the other hand, great pools can temporarily become unattractive due to factors like DDoS attacks and server migrations. You need to find out more by reading up on the most recent posts in their own forums or in their respective threads in this forum.

At some point after you take mining seriously (or maybe just browsing the forum), you will come across the idea of pool hopping. It’s basically a technique used by some miners to reap extra rewards by exploiting ‘flaws’ in reward methods, especially the proportionate reward method (although other reward methods like score-based have been proven hoppable, proportionate is claimed to be the easiest to hop). The extra rewards they collect come from other miners that are not hopping. Whether this is ethical or not is beyond the scope of this discussion (you will find quite a few discussions regarding the ethics of pool hopping, feel free to make up your own mind about it). Many pools these days actively discourage, or even ban pool hoppers. Others implement hop-proof reward methods like PPLNS or Pay-per-share. I am not going to tell you whether you should or should not become a pool hopper, it is entirely up to you. But you should avoid proportionate pools that do not take adequate measures to deter pool hoppers, since it will reduce your rewards.

So, that’s some of the things you need to consider while choosing the right pool for you. As I have mentioned before, it all comes down to your own personal preferences. I have just tried to make it easier for you to make sense of all the info available about the pools in their websites as well as this forum. Good luck and happy mining.

Comments, suggestions, corrections are highly welcome.

[Edit]: I have modified the pool reward section.

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[eleuthria]

Nice guide, spotted one error though.  Deepbit does not pay for invalid shares, they pay for invalid blocks.

[slush]

Hm, I see "slush" 4x in the text, so I feel I should reply.

These pools punish the miner who, for whatever reason, does not or cannot maintain a stable mining operation at the pool for the entire duration of the round. If mining with slush, for example, getting disconnected for just 5 minutes will reduce your score to virtually zero and if they find a block at that time, you get paid nothing, even though you mined with them for the last 4 hours.

*headdesk* *headdesk* Why you don't write that I *benefit* those who connect before round finish? That you can earn much more just for few seconds of mining? Texts such this are one-sided and I really don't understand why all those people are so much concerned about this point. This "feature" of score based systems is not here for punish anybody for unstable connection or whatever. No matter when you disconnect and connect to the pool, your average payout will be the same. It's fact and a lot of text has been written about it, not just by me.

Some pools, like slush, only give you the option for automatic payouts

Only? So typical case - "setup wallet, threshold and forget" is worse than need to clicking every few days to manual payout? Pool allow you to withdraw even 0.01 from your account, to 8 decimal places. Payouts are done every 15 minutes, if you are really hurry, just setup threshold 0.01 and wait few minutes.

[kislam]

Edited to reflect corrections/comments from Eleuthria and Slush.

@slush, I simply love your pool, man. You're among my top three, especially since your heroic efforts during the DDoS and server migration problems  

I mention 'only' for the payout method because i would like to have both options 

[slush]

Well, that part about rewards in score system still isn't perfect, but better than original version, thanks .

[btc_artist]

Good info kislam, thanks!

[Brian DeLoach]

Nothing about security? I think that should be a high priority for everybody.

[Kapa]

Nice guide, thanks!

One thing I'd like to add on the backup pool section is that when choosing 1st backup pool it's worth considering one of the PPS pools out there. At least for me when I'm mining on a stable pool for a day I still get up to 40 or so shares submitted to my 1st backup pool, for some reason or another. And if that pool was score based or proportional, I'd get diddly squat for my shares, but on PPS pool I'm getting at least something. And given time it all adds up. =)

[bitlane]

Before considering a payment method, one should find a pool that they can actually connect to, work with well....with a high submitted share rate, as well as low stales.

A pool can pay out 2x as much as another, but if you can only submit 70% total shares to that pool vs another...and your stale rate is double digits, then you are not doing yourself any favors.

Why I use the pool that I use: (all points SPECIFIC TO ME, YMMV)
- highest hourly submitted share rate (for my setup anyways, total shares submitted. YMMV).
- lowest stale share rate.
- incredible uptime.
- history (been around a while).
- charges a fee (yes, I am a FAN OF PAYING A FEE as I know the pool will be taken care of and will be around in a month).
- transparency (lot of data, past, present).
- stable performance.

I have tried so-called FREE/NO FEE Pools and made LESS...FAR LESS than I do at the Fee-Based PPS Pool that I currently use.

In short:

Take care of your own stats (and know them) before you go shopping for the 'best mining pool rate'.

[btc_artist]

Why I use the pool that I use: (all points SPECIFIC TO ME, YMMV)

Out of curiosity, what pool do you use?

[kislam]

Nothing about security? I think that should be a high priority for everybody.

How do you verify that a pool has good security? And by security, do you mean whether your money is safe with them? Pooled mining largely depends on the trust people put in pool operators. You should, no doubt, only mine at pools that are well-reputed. It's fairly easy to read up on the comments about a certain pool in this forum to get a feel for that pool's integrity.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

What you need to know in reality is how the above methods impact your rewards. If you are a casual miner who mines occasionally or if you run a rig that for some reason cannot maintain a stable connection with the pool (bad internet, hardware problems, miner freezing up, etc. etc.), then score-based and PPLNS pools are not for you. These pools punish the miner who, for whatever reason, does not or cannot maintain a stable mining operation at the pool for the entire duration of the round.

That's a myth. PPLNS and score-based are perfectly fine for intermittent miners, their average reward will not be affected.

Proportionate pools are also a prime target for pool hoppers, which can reduce the actual reward you earn, if the pool operator hasn’t taken measures to guard the pool against hoppers.

The only countermeasure is using a hopping-proof method like PPLNS, geometric and double geometric. Other proposed "countermeasures" generally hurt honest miners more than they do hoppers.

For correct information about reward systems, please see Summary of mining pool reward systems and Analysis of Bitcoin pooled mining reward systems.

[finway]

eligius.st

[DrHaribo]

What you need to know in reality is how the above methods impact your rewards. If you are a casual miner who mines occasionally or if you run a rig that for some reason cannot maintain a stable connection with the pool (bad internet, hardware problems, miner freezing up, etc. etc.), then score-based and PPLNS pools are not for you. These pools punish the miner who, for whatever reason, does not or cannot maintain a stable mining operation at the pool for the entire duration of the round.

That's a myth. PPLNS and score-based are perfectly fine for intermittent miners, their average reward will not be affected.

Yes, can this part of the text please be revised?

I use PPLNS in my pool and it's pretty common for people to think that if they mine intermittently they will get paid less than expected average pay. If you write that in a guide it will be even more difficult to explain to newbies how it actually works. It's true some shares are not paid, but sometimes shares are paid 3x over. The variance there evens out over time, and variance does not mean less total rewards.

I think this comes from an unconscious focus on the negative. If there is a chance to sometimes earn more than expected and sometimes less, people only see the risk of sometimes earning less.

PPLNS has higher variance than PPS, not lower rewards. Same thing with score-based methods.

[kislam]

OK, clarifications are in order. Both Rosenfeld and DrHaribo are correct. It was too hasty of me to outright declare that score-based and PPLNS pools are not suitable for intermittent miners. I request miners to read up on the links Rosenfeld has provided.

What I did mean, however, is that the high variance is potentially a deal breaker in these cases. Although the total reward over time averages out, for the intermittent miner, the uncertainty associated with high variance can be a real annoyance. If the intermittent nature is out of the miner's control, he/she is already frustrated with the unpredictable downtime, and the variance adds to the chagrin. If they are intermittent by choice, they would (i assume) look for some certainty for rewards when the do mine. That's why I think a reward system like PPS is more suitable (psychologically) for the intermittent miner where they know exactly how much they are getting paid for the x hours they mined today.

PS: Rosenfeld, both your links point to the same file, please correct that.
PPS: note for newbies (and some other users) -- please take a close look at the comments made by Rosenfeld, DrHaribo, Eleuthria and Slush and see how nice they were in making corrective remarks. They basically found faults with what I wrote and were so very civil about pointing them out. I keep seeing comments from some users in different parts of this forum that could really do with some maturity. Being nice doesn't hurt, you know.

[DeathAndTaxes]

So given you accept that average reward is the same then for the sake of bias free article why not modify you parapgrah about rewards.

On average the reward will be the same but your paragraph only talks about instances where reward will be lower there is an exactly equally chance the reward will be higher so it makes no sense to talk about a scenario (naming Slush pool specifically) where a miner might get a lower reward.  You could name both scenarios, and scenario of getting the average reward but why not get rid of all that.

I would recommend simply indicate that average reward for any fair pool is the same (unless the pool can be hopped).  I would even add a sentence where the belief that PPLNS or score based pools "punish" miners is an urban legend.  In long run each miner will receive the same value for their shares.

Then in a separate section talk about variance. Conflating the two and talking about only the downside scenario simply reinforces this mistaken belief about pool rewards.

[slush]

I think this comes from an unconscious focus on the negative. If there is a chance to sometimes earn more than expected and sometimes less, people only see the risk of sometimes earning less.

That's exactly what I see every day - majority of people have very strong aversion to any risk, that's the reason why majority of people are sticked on PPS pools, even when they're losing in long term because of higher fees. But they feel much more comfortable and safe, because they eliminated any possible risk.

[slush]

... and get lucky on Slush pool for example and submit a share right after normalization...

But renormalization is just some internal maintenance, it doesn't affect anything, even variance :-). I think that relation between score renormalization and reward is yet another myth :-).

I mean - absolute numbers in score are meaningless. Everything important is YOUR SCORE / POOL SCORE. And they're both renormalized in the same way. Pool renormalization is something similar like 50 / 100 == 5 / 10 => after renormalization, there are lower numbers, but nothing is affected.

[kislam]

So given you accept that average reward is the same then for the sake of bias free article why not modify you parapgrah about rewards.

On average the reward will be the same but your paragraph only talks about instances where reward will be lower there is an exactly equally chance the reward will be higher so it makes no sense to talk about a scenario (naming Slush pool specifically) where a miner might get a lower reward.  You could name both scenarios, and scenario of getting the average reward but why not get rid of all that.

I would recommend simply indicate that average reward for any fair pool is the same (unless the pool can be hopped).  I would even add a sentence where the belief that PPLNS or score based pools "punish" miners is an urban legend.  In long run each miner will receive the same value for their shares.

Then in a separate section talk about variance. Conflating the two and talking about only the downside scenario simply reinforces this mistaken belief about pool rewards.

I plan to, but unfortunately don't have the time right now to revise it in a way that will do it justice, so I have edited the OP to request the reader to also read post#15 for clarifications.

[paraipan]

So given you accept that average reward is the same then for the sake of bias free article why not modify you parapgrah about rewards.

On average the reward will be the same but your paragraph only talks about instances where reward will be lower there is an exactly equally chance the reward will be higher so it makes no sense to talk about a scenario (naming Slush pool specifically) where a miner might get a lower reward.  You could name both scenarios, and scenario of getting the average reward but why not get rid of all that.

I would recommend simply indicate that average reward for any fair pool is the same (unless the pool can be hopped).  I would even add a sentence where the belief that PPLNS or score based pools "punish" miners is an urban legend.  In long run each miner will receive the same value for their shares.

Then in a separate section talk about variance. Conflating the two and talking about only the downside scenario simply reinforces this mistaken belief about pool rewards.

I plan to, but unfortunately don't have the time right now to revise it in a way that will do it justice, so I have edited the OP to request the reader to also read post#15 for clarifications.

do what you please but you will ruin a nice guide in the process. Some people have personal agendas and you should take that into account when adopting their "corrections". Just my personal opinion.