How to track the cash flows of my mining pool income and which service is the best for me? Mining pools in comparison.
This article compares mining pools designed for private persons and explains how income streams may be easily tracked using the BlockKeeper app. First, the basics on Bitcoin mining are explained followed by an in-depth discussion of different mining pools.
Bitcoin’s proof of work consensus mechanism in a nutshell
The Bitcoin consensus mechanism is based on proof of work. This means that miners solve computational problems to generate new blocks and keep the blockchain running. In return miners receive rewards in Bitcoin. This process is called “mining”.
How to mine Bitcoin?
For mining Bitcoin a specialized and expensive hardware called ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) is necessary. This hardware is specifically designed to process the Bitcoin SHA-256 hashing problems. ASICs are very efficient and in use by all mayor mining pools. In addition to buying this rare and expensive hardware, power supply must be cheap to ensure competitiveness.
What is a mining pool?
A mining pool is a conglomerate of actors that collectively contribute in block generation using their own hardware. Resources of miners are pooled to share their processing power over a network and then split the rewards based on the amount of work contributed to solving a block. Compared to single Bitcoin mining, the concept of mining pools distributes income more regularly over time.
A mining pool is very different to cloud mining. In cloud mining, computational power for mining Bitcoins is lended from a remote data center. A cloud mining company sells the package of computational power used for mining to the end user. More precisely, hashing power denominated in Gigahash/seconds (GH/s) is sold to the customers. The advantage of cloud mining is that the user does not have to manage their own hardware. The specifics of coud miners and a comparison of competitors are explained in this article: https://medium.com/p/e64c91aad84b/edit
How does the process of connecting to a mining pool look like?
The details in connecting to a mining pool is of course different from provider to provider. In general, first an account must be setup. Then, software must be downloaded. During the configuration process of the device, the address of the respective pool must be inserted. Then you need to link all revenues to your wallet for which you have to look up your wallet address.
Comparing mining pools
In the following, three mining pools with good reviews online are presented.
The mining pool operated by Slushpool has mined more than 1,000,000 BTC since December 2010. Slushpool entails a unique voting system that allows every single miner to show his voice through direct their hash rate towards their favorite protocol proposal. The reward is calculated as follows:
- Pool fee: 2%
- Further costs: if payout set below 0.01 BTC, then there is a withdrawal fee of 0.0001 BTC
- Specials: voting system
- Uptime: 99.9%
- Average timespan for mining Bitcoins: expected to find blocks on average every 2 hours
- Minimum withdrawal amount: 0.0001 BTC with fees, above 0.01 BTC no fees
- Securitization: two-factor-authentication (2FA)
- Founding year: 2010
- Location of pool servers: USA, Canada, Europe, Singapore, Japan, China
- Hardware required: SHA-256 ASIC miner
Minergate has more than 3.6 million users worldwide. Minergate allows to link cloud mining services by Nicehash to their mining pool. In 2017, USD 20 millions in form of cryptocurrencies were paid to miners of the Minergate mining pool.
- Pool fee: 1%
- Further costs: no additional fees are applied for withdrawals
- Specials: smart mining that automatically mines coins with the highest exchange rate
- Uptime: 24/7 availability and 99.97% working uptime
- Average timespan for mining Bitcoins: the entire pool is able to find blocks weekly or even daily
- Minimum withdrawal amount: 0.01 BTC
- Securitization: e-mail confirmation and two-factor authorization
- Founding year: 2014
- Location of pool servers: Europe, China and US
- Hardware required: SHA-256 ASIC miner
Antpool is the second largest mining pool in the world and operated by BitMain.
- Pool fee: depends on the contract as can be viewed here
- Further costs: no fees indicated
- Specials: support of payment method of PPLNS, PPS, SOLO (explanation on the abbreviations can be found here)
- Uptime: no details about uptime but 24/7 service
- Average timespan for mining Bitcoins: not available but second largest mining pool
- Minimum withdrawal amount: 0.001 BTC
- Securitization: not available
- Founding year: 2013 (of Bitmain who owns Antpool)
- Headquarter: Beijing, China
An overview on mining pools can be found here. We cannot guarantee completeness and correctness of information. We recommend every user to to make thorough investigations on their cloud mining package before buying one.
BlockKeeper provides perfect tracking of mining pool income
For tracking cloud mining income, the user merely needs to insert the wallet address in the BlockKeeper app. Then, all earnings are shown in real-time. This is totally independent of the service provider and the device used. It also works for cold storage since the information are retrieved directly from the blockchain.
BlockKeeper shows all transactions of the connected wallet address(es). Information on all the transactions of the inserted wallets is available via a progressive web app which can be deployed on any device (laptop and smartphone). So all your transactions are available on the go. In addition, a portfolio overview shows quickly the percentage-wise distribution of each coin including the current value. For more information, check out the BlockKeeper website: https://blockkeeper.io
. . .
Website
Twitter
Telegram
Reddit
Github
BlockKeeper provides a user-friendly open source interface which simplifies crypto asset management and off-chain context documentation. The app ensures highest privacy standards through a zero knowledge architecture combined with a great user experience.
