Mining calculators with pools

minerstat
minerstat
Published in
6 min readMar 25, 2021

With our mining calculator popularity growing we are always looking for new ways to add more relevant data that could be useful to our customers and visitors of the website. One of the biggest changes we made recently is adding pools’ estimated rewards alongside coins’ estimated rewards. We did have some pools available before, such as Zergpool, zpool, Prohashing, and Mining Pool Hub, but they are reporting their estimated rewards in one unified currency (BTC) and rewards are provided for algorithms. This update introduced PPS and PPLNS pools for different coins as well.

The changes were on different parts of the website and dashboard.

💻 Filters in mining calculators pages

The mining calculator, hardware profiles, and algorithms’ profiles all got new filters.

You can now filter between:

  • With alerts: These are options that have different alert tags, for example, low volume or unrealistic.
  • Coins: These are the options that were available before as well. Under coins, different PoW coins are shown, such as ETH, ETC, RVN, BTC, ZEC, etc. The reward is calculated based on the current network hashrate, difficulty, block reward, block time, and price.
  • Multi-algo pools: These are the options that were available before. Under multi-algo pools, there are different services that allow switching within one algorithm and pay in one currency, such as Zergpool, zpool, Mining Pool Hub, etc. The reward is calculated based on data provided by the pools.
  • Marketplaces: These options were previously listed under multi-algo pools and are now in a separate category. These services are categorized by algorithms. The reward is calculated based on data provided by the pools.
  • PPS pools: These options include different PPS pools, such as HiveOn, Ezil, Binance, etc. On pools, you are mining specific coins, such as ETH, ETC, RVN, BTC, etc. The reward is calculated based on data provided by the pools. What is the PPS reward scheme?
  • PPLNS pools: These options include different PPLNS pools, such as Poolin. On pools, you are mining specific coins, such as ETH, ETC, RVN, BTC, etc. The reward is calculated based on data provided by the pools. What is the PPLNS reward scheme?

Under the option name, there will be also a small tag denoting if this is a marketplace, multi-algo pool, PPS pool, or PPLNS pool.

📑 Estimated rewards reporting on the dashboard

Because of this new extended dataset, the estimated rewards on the dashboard are now closer to real values than before.

Before all ETH pools used the same estimations - those based on block reward, network difficulty, network hashrate, and coin price. Now, if you are mining on any of the pools for which we are collecting the data, you will see estimations based on the pool’s data and not theoretical data. There still be a difference, because no one can exactly predict what reward will be in the future, but the difference should be smaller than using theoretical rewards - especially if your hashrate is lower.

You will also quickly see from the icon on which pool you are mining as rewards won’t be reported as ETH coin, but will include both pool’s and coin’s names.

📊 Rewards calculations

Like already mentioned, the estimated rewards for coins depend on the network data: network hashrate, network difficulty, block time, block reward, and the current price on the market. These variables are changing all the time and get updated every few minutes on our websites. The estimated rewards from pools are different as we aren’t actually doing any calculations, we are just reading the data the pools provide to us via API.

We check the pools’ APIs every few minutes and save the data point to our database.

It is important to note that pools don’t have a unified way of reporting data - for example, they don’t report the average data in the last 10 minutes. Each of them has its own time span they use, and you can learn about this time span by observing and comparing their charts. If you see that one pool is reporting the data with a few hours or one day delay - keep this in mind when deciding on your mining tactics.

Once again, it is important to note that all this data is showing historical results and are not future predictions. Data is changing with every moment and while pools’ rewards are closer to real ones than theoretical rewards, they are still estimations. The actual rewards will be visible only after pools find their blocks and recalculate your contributed shares.

🔀 Profit switch

Over the years there were many requests that miners would like to switch between pools and not only between coins. This is now possible.

When you are preparing a profit switch just don’t forget to select a proper option in the first column - one of the most common mistakes is selecting ETH for all options than waiting for the system to compare ETH vs ETH vs ETH. If you want to compare rewards from pools, you need to select a proper pool for comparison. Here is a detailed guide on how to profit switch between PPS pools. But generally, if you would want to switch between ETH, Binance ETH, and HiveOn ETH, your profit switch table would look like this:

All other rules of setting up a profit switch are still applicable - now even more than before - so don’t forget to read 5 things to consider when setting up a profit switch.

💡 Why did we add this data?

There were several reasons why we wanted to include this data in our platform and calculators.

  • Better estimated rewards: While the theoretically estimated rewards are pretty close to the real ones for those that have medium or large farms, they are often off for small miners.
  • Better profit switch: You can now make an even more customized profit switch than before.
  • More data = more choices: In theory, on average most of the pools perform similarly in terms of profitability. What mostly affects someone’s profitability is hashrate, pools’ rewards methods, fees, and payout schedules. However, having more options to select from and to analyze is always better in our books.

🚀 Which pools are currently contributing the data?

Most of the pools we contacted responded right away and were keen on cooperating and show the data to miners. Currently, these pools are providing the data:

  • Binance: PPS pool for ETH, BTC, BSV, and BCH mining.
  • Ezil: PPS pool for dual mining of ETH & ZIL and ETC & ZIL.
  • F2Pool: PPS pool for mining of different coins.
  • HiveOn: PPS pool for mining ETH and ETC.
  • Poolin: PPS/PPLNS pool for mining of different coins.
  • Sparkpool: PPS pool for mining of different coins.
  • ViaBTC: PPS pool for mining of different coins.
  • Flexpool: PPLNS pool for mining ETH.

We are planning to add more pools to our network, but there are some minimum requirements the pools must meet (connected to the network hashrate they have on the market).

All listed pools are listed for free and in an equal manner; so there are no special sponsorships or prioritization. We are glad for their transparency as only with their cooperation it is possible to provide better insights for everyone - from miners to researchers.

🎁 Extra: You may also want to read our ultimate guide to pools.

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