Topic: Confused about which mining pool to join and stick with. (Read 2683 times)

I have the same question and after suggesrions I've read here I made my choice. I wish I made it right! Good luck to you to decide and luckily join the most appropiate pool for you.

Thanks for the detailed response. Makes sense to me now.

PPLNS has a charge-up/wind-down period, the length of which varies by pool.  Since the last 10 shifts (on Guild and BitMinter) get paid when blocks are solved, your reward starts small (since you only have shares in one shift).  Once you have shares in all shifts you'll see the average block reward similar to a non PPLNS pool.

This is NOT a penalty, and does NOT mean you are making less if you mine infrequently or change pools frequently.  This is because on PPLNS your shares continue getting paid even if you stop mining, until they leave the active shifts.  So when you turn off, you'll be receiving payments, which will gradually decline exactly the way the gradually increased at first.

As such, looking at your pool reported 24-hour rewards on a PPLNS pool is not worth doing until *more* than 24 hours has passed (~30 hours in the case of BTC Guild and ~34 in the case of BitMinter).  I'd say you could do trial runs on pools for short periods then wait for the PPLNS system to wind down, but comparing rewards in a short period of time is pointless since luck will have more influence on rewards than anything unless you're comparing large (2 week+) time frames on the largest pools, and multi-month time frames in the case of small pools.

P2pool is the way to go over time.  dplusf is right.

If you choose Pay per N last shares then you benefit if you stay in the same pool!

Try https://mining.bitcoin.cz/ aka Slush's pool

That's where I started then moved toeligius then to BTC guild then to cex.io&ghash.io then stopped as my pc is not making money mining!

I've got a question about switching back and forth between pools.  It seems the longer you mine with one pool the better the payout is.  The other night I decided to mine with BTC Guild for the night as Bitminter was on a real long block.  My expected per block went way down and it's taken me a couple days to get back to where I was. It's actually a bit higher today.

So in the long run, is it really worth while switching back and forth?  Seems to be better off just sticking to 1 pool or am I missing something?

Personally, I use Slush and BTCguild.

Only use Slush if you are not going to try and second guess the pool. Have faith that it is working correctly and that the computer is smarter than you. If you are going to sit and watch it mine(kind of like watching snail races), it will drive you nuts because it is small and suffers from variance. If you are going to double check the calculations, this will make you crazy.

BTCguild is a good, reliable pool with great customer support. I put a miner there that was having difficulties with Slush and now that miner is almost 4 times larger than what i have at slush.

Both are good pools but cater to different personality types.

Just my two Satoshi.

As you can see your opinion is not much different of mine.
Average payouts in longer terms are really much better than in centralized pools ant not only because of high fees of centralized pools. there are many other reasons..
most of 0% fee nodes have their merged coins clients in background running and try to cover costs with merged mining. its only my opinion, but i experienced that merged mining clients make the node less effective (even when stats are showing that everything is ok) and payouts are little lower (my testing experience 2-3%) than without merged mining. specially IOC and IXC make big efficiency difference.
so finally i decided to set to my a fee of 1% and that should cover most cost. even with this fee, my miner have higher payouts than without fees in some other nodes (i made several parallel tests), i think its because of only BTC-mining.
in reality costs for keeping up good node are not really 1% if mining power is high enough thats why i decided to support p2pool development and will donate half of income to devs of p2pool. i hope that some other public-node-owner will do it same way soon so we will have better p2pool and will have more miners here.


 Right, but sad as it is most miner did not get it yet.


there are many nodes to use. if anybody has interest then here are some lists of public nodes: p2pool-nodes.info or p2pools.org. not all of them have high efficiency so make sure you will use always the same username (your btw-address) when you are testing them. only so you can be sure that you don't loose your made shares.


i don't see this as big disadvantage. it makes miners maybe nervous sometimes, but it is the same like falling rates in exchanges: many people are selling when rates are falling and lose their money. those who are keeping do not lose anything.


first 3 days there are really lower payouts, but usually most of miner make already in first week already same amount of BTC as others in centralized pools.

lots of opinions.
here s mine.

go with p2pool.
you ll help the network because of decentralisation. you get freshly minted coins with no history. virgin coins.
your payouts should be better than with any other pool. thats because simply mosts of the public nodes you can connect your miner to, have no fees.

0% fee goes only with a great heart or with mergemining. a node with mergemining will at best only cover the costs for hosting. so their is no profit at all for the node operator in contrary to big, centralised pools who do take up to 3% fee's.

a big pool who offers you mergemining, but takes 1-3 % fees of your income is a deception for the miner.

if you dont know how to setup a node use a public one. look at my signature.

one disadvantage of p2pool is the big variance in payouts because p2pool is small. payouts are done immediately after a block is found, but blocks are not found on hourly basis, instead a new block is found by p2pool every 21 hours or so. but one day p2pool will not find anything, the other day it will find two blocks.
payout system on p2pool is PPLNS wich is good against poolhopping. but because it need up to three days for ramping out your payments it may look at the first two days that you are making less.
as an unexperienced miner this will doubt you, but give it a try.

I think I have a good set up now. I now have one single pointed at BTC Guild and the other at Eligius.

Slush is still a great pool if it's on a lucky streak but with Slush's hashing power it just seems like it's not keeping up with the other pool sizes and it will just keep falling behind. I remember back in June it use to find 20 blocks on average and on a good day it would find 30+ blocks. Now a good day is 10 or 11 and it seems a average day is 4 or 5 blocks?

I agree with you except the port number in your signature

not really...

Just join p2pool.
Its time to decentralize mining again.
0% or very low fees and best payouts.
no chance for anybody to steal your mined coins.
No DDoS Attacks.
Absolute secure.
You will support Bitconcommunity/-network so as it should be.

Believe me: p2pool ist the best!

Nodes you can find here: p2pool-nodes.info or just join my node (full optimized; see my signature).

go with btcguild..

BTCguild, best pool ever..

I will throw my 2 cents in on this. I have mined on Slush since June 2013 on and off. I have jumped to other pools since trying them out but have always ended back up at Slush until the last month. Here is what I think about the pools I tried:

I did  not do good on Eclipse after a week compared to my average payouts on Slush

I mined on Bitminter which I liked their easy setup but did better on Slush

 I mined on Eligius and once again I did not make as much after a few weeks as I had off Slush and also found the payout to be confusing. Only got a payout of 90+% which was no where close to my average payouts on Slush. Since then I have received a couple of small payouts even tho I have not mined on it in sometime that has now brought my payout to 98% of my earned amount. I have not been back but have thought of trying again as with the higher hash rate things might be better?

Now I have 2 BFL singles and am running one on Slush and one on BTC Guild so as to compare both pools. Some days BTC has beaten Slush and somedays Slush beats BTC Guild. Overall in the last 2 weeks Slush is ahead but by a small amount. Both pools have had their share of bad luck and good. What I like about Slush is it's a very simple to understand as long as you keep mining thru the whole block. BTC Guild has the advantage being bigger and a somewhat more stabilized payout. But I would say these are my 2 favorite pools.

Also I want to give credit to Eleuthria as who I think is the best pool operator. Always around to answer questions even on other pools

Go with smaller nodes if you're patient. Go with big ones if you need to see coins trickling in daily.

Smaller ones keep the blockchain honest, but it is much more random how much you will earn on a given day. Ideally everyone should spread the love to protect the blockchain, but it's natural for a lot of people to just go with the big pools.

If you want to give a p2pool node a try, you'll end up supporting the blockchain better but also get reduced variance from the p2pool node system. Remember with PPLNS it takes a day to get up to full speed, so I'd do it for at least a week or two to get a feel for it. You can check out http://p2pool.in for the base one (to set up your own node), or I have a node which pays out devcoin bonuses here: http://blisterpool.com, plus there's a ton of other nodes out there. Happy mining!

BTC Guild's 3% is identical to BitMinter's if you want the same features (paid orphans, idle alerts).  Paid orphans are a roughly 1% earnings increase (higher actually since I recall BitMinter and Eligius both averaging more than a 1% orphan rate).

wow just wow!

and now my opinion as not a pool owner.

1. eligius as it has 0% fees and and very nice payout system!
2. bitminter as fallback - only 1% fee

to btcguild -> it has a nice interface and you can find many informations. BUT 3% fees! (7% for PPS)

i really suggest you to start with eligius. its so easy to join the pool that you cant to anything wrong!

You mean the java miner? It should work through cgminer or bfgminer.

I also recommend BitMinter. Been a sound pool for years and you can get payouts whenever you want, per day in my case.

For the sake of network integrity always avoid the biggest pools.

I like bit inter, but it does not work with the antminer

Try Bitminter. The only pool recommended by gummibears.

Look at p2pool.  The fees are usually 1-6% lower than the other pools, so you make more. Likewise there is no account setup and earnings are paid instantly so you don't have to worry about a pool being hacked. The variance is higher, but over time you are better off.

Thanks everyone. I am doing it as a hobby and know that I will not break the bank. I have tons of questions and am very curious.

The problem is that while I do not expect to make a million, it would be nice to make a few dollars.

I do not have much of a hash rate, but am more than happy to spread it around so that the economy continues to grow

As the owner of a new pool I tend to agree with the earlier post.
I hashed a few pools when I first started & found that each pool was lacking something that I wanted.
It seems like the bigger pools are hard to communicate with, while the smaller pools take longer to get a return on your effort.
Most of the pools lack either that "community" feeling or they are very bare bones and kind of leave you on your own to figure things out.   In the end I just ended up creating my own pool.

Best of luck to you in your search.

Statistically, it doesn't matter what pool you join, in the long run, you will make the same regardless of what pool you join.  The only thing that can impact that is the pool's fee structure.

Big pools give you smaller but more frequent payouts, and this plays to a lot of miners' psyche.
Small pools will give you larger but less frequent payouts. (this is called variance).

So as far as how to pick a pool, looking at it from a profitability's perspective, look at their fee structure.  Otherwise, pick one with a good community (or not).

Personally, I would go with the smaller/mid-sized pools, they have a better more homely community and it helps spread out the hash rate.

Its obvious that its better that people spread their hash over various pools, but its also obvious that people will gravitate to whatever will pay out best for them. .. 

look at my benchmark

I still recommend any p2pool.in node as of it decentralized nature. But yes you will have great variance.
In next benchmark round I will include reesult from Eligius.st

There will always be enough. Pools with bigger hashrate will give you less BTC per block, but will find blocks more often. So there really is not much of a difference.

Try to join a decently sized pool (so that it can hit blocks fairly consistently), but try not to get on the biggest player - it's better for the general economy if the hashrate is spread evenly between different pools (to minimize the risk of 51% attack).

I go between Eligius and BTC Guild.  My tertiary backup is Eclipse (it's a reliable PPS pool).

We need even bigger fonts!

Well if you're going to play that game:

BTC Guild for sure!

Eligius for sure.

I am having a blast mining and am on information overload.


The one thing that seems to be missing is how much people are currently making mining.

Since that does not appear to be a hot topic, my question is about selecting a mining pool.

Is there a way to figure out which pool is going to make you the most money?

I understand that are certain parameters that are out of your control, but in general which pool is the best to join?


Are you better off with a smaller pool or a bigger one? When does the economics make sense to change pools?

I am guessing that there has to be a break even point (not sure what it would be called with mining) where you get too many people in a pool because when the pool pays out there is not enough for everyone. In other words, if we have a certain hash rate with 50 people in the pool, it will be a better payout with 500 people in the pool with the same hash rate.

Has anyone ran the numbers or tried to calculate what the "perfect pool" is?

Just curious what everyone thinks about this.