When you group miners in a pool, do they actually collaborate or are they just working solo to solve the block? If it’s teamwork, then why is it that only one miner gets credited as the solver of a block?
Is this why some folks prefer to have, say, 60TH all at once instead of splitting it up into 10TH, 20TH, 10TH, and 30TH? It’s a bit frustrating that I still don’t quite get how all this works, even though I mine cryptocurrencies.
I can set everything up, link them to pools and get them mining to a wallet address, but the math behind the process is where I often start to feel confused.
They work together. One of the miners will mine a block, they will all share the reward according to the individual mining hash rates.
But there are solo mining pool that miners works individually, but in a way they can easily set up their miners to join the pool, unlike going for solo mining. In this case, miners that mine the reward will take the mined coins and coins paid as transactions in the mined block. But the miner will pay small amount of coins to to the solo mining pool it joined.
There are many mining profitablity calculators online. Each mining pools have their own mining profitablity calculator also.
Miners join together in a pool to find the correct hash more efficiently. The pool tasks each miner with searching only within their assigned range. This ensures that miners never perform the same calculations and waste electricity re-checking the same numbers. Only one miner finds the solution. If it's a solo pool, that miner receives the entire reward, but in some pools, the miner receives 50%, with the rest divided among all participants, or other options.
In regular pools, the reward is divided among all participants according to the payout structure: PPS, FPPS, PPLNS, PPS+.
They all combine their hash rates to solve it together. Consider the hash rates more like computational and calculation power so the more you have the faster you can solve. Solving the block is basically finding a specific hash that will fit in that particular block header which carries data like nonce and previous hash.
What they individual nodes do is handle different solves just trying to get that hash so you basically have more working hands trying to solve the same block instead of each of them trying to solve different blocks.
Miners in a pool work separately, but they are highly coordinated. Think of the pool operator as a manager distributing sections of a massive puzzle. Your 10TH rig gets assigned section A, and your 30TH rig gets section B. They are working on the same block, but they never guess the exact same numbers. Only one single hash from one specific machine will eventually hit the network's required target which is why only one rig is identified as the solver. But the pool uses Shares (easier mini-puzzles) to prove every rig was doing its fair share of the labor, dividing the payout proportionally.
70TH spread across four machines will statistically earn more than a single 60TH machine because your aggregate power is higher.
Wow thank you, your reply is satisfying because I am able to understand it better, you understand what I was getting at too and your answer clears the doubts I have in mind.
So other miners still help that one miner that solved the block? The praise isn't for the one that solve the block only but the whole farm, now I get it.
Thank you once again, I've been trying to understand this area of confusion, I learnt something new today.
Cheers 🥂
I'll add a bit: the pool doesn't take into account the work, but the number of shares found. It's important to note that shares are calculated according to a specific algorithm for each payout mode.
It's not just the hashrate that matters, but also the time that hashrate has been mining on the pool. The longer it's mining, the higher the reward.
But this isn't relevant for solo pools.
If a mining pool is set up on a home server, as miners used to do, it's better for the pool to have fewer high-hashrate devices than more low-hashrate devices.
For modern pools, this doesn't matter unless a minimum hashrate is specified. Miners should generally choose equipment based on cost and electricity prices.