Mining pools in Idena

Idena implements mining pool functionality to enable the users to delegate their mining rights.

Mining pool mechanics is a long-anticipated upgrade we have to do to avoid the concentration of voting power in the network. The node upgrade was released as a part of the hard fork done in March. The desktop app got the upgrade from version 0.22.2. Now we added the list of active pools at the Pools tab in the Idena Blockchain Explorer.

Pools statistics

On April 13, the pool stats are as follows:

• 170 pools;
• 598 identities, or 8.84% of the network, delegated their mining right to pools;
• The largest pool size is 100 nodes.

Mining delegation

• Any validated identity can delegate mining to another address, which in this case will act as a pool.
• Pool rewards for block mining will be equal to those of a single identity. However, a pool can be selected as a block proposer or a committee member to validate a block more often than a regular identity in proportion to its size.
• Identities included in a pool cannot mine coins by themselves. Mining income is automatically credited to the pool address, excluding the stake. The stake is credited to each address included in the pool.
• All identities in the pool have to take part in the validation ceremony to keep their status. All validation rewards are credited to the pool address.
• The fact of the delegation is stored only on the blockchain. No keys are transferred from the delegating node to the pool.
• The pool can terminate any participant node and take that node’s stake. This is done to prevent random delegation and motivate the nodes to delegate their mining rights only to trusted pools.
• Leaving the pool is allowed no more than once per epoch. It is not allowed to leave the pool during the same epoch when mining was delegated.

Oracle voting and delegation

• Pool members can participate in Oracle voting as independent identities. Their vote will be taken into account in rewards distribution. Only the participants who voted in the majority will receive rewards.
• The votes of all the participants in the pool will be counted as one. The last vote sent from any address included in the pool is accepted as the pool vote.

How to join a pool

1. On the My Idena tab in the Idena app, turn the Mining Status on;
2. Select Delegation mining type;
3. Enter the Delegation Adress of the mining pool you want to join;
4. Send the changes to the blockchain by clicking Submit.