Glossary

Mining Pool

16/04/2026

A mining pool is a cooperative arrangement where multiple miners combine their hashrate to increase the frequency of finding blocks. When the pool finds a block, the reward is distributed among participants proportional to their contributed work.

Why pools exist

Finding a block alone (solo mining) is like winning a lottery. A miner with 0.01% of the network hashrate would find a block on average once every 10,000 blocks — roughly once every 70 days for Bitcoin. Most miners would earn nothing for long stretches.

Pools smooth out this variance: instead of rare large payouts, miners receive small, regular payments that accurately reflect their hashrate contribution.

How payouts work

Miners submit shares — partial solutions that prove they are working — to the pool. The pool tracks shares and distributes rewards accordingly. Common payout schemes:

  • PPS (Pay Per Share) — fixed payment per share regardless of whether the pool found a block; miner bears no variance risk
  • PPS+ — PPS plus a share of transaction fees
  • PPLNS (Pay Per Last N Shares) — rewards based on recent shares; slightly more variance but often higher long-term yield

Kryptex Pool uses PPS+.

Pool fees

Pools charge a fee (typically 1–3%) deducted from payouts to cover operational costs.

See also