Mining pool
Also · Pool
A mining pool combines the hashrate of many miners and shares block rewards in proportion to their work, trading a rare jackpot for steady income.
A small miner on its own could wait years for a block. A pool solves this by pooling many miners’ hashrate and paying each one a share of the rewards in proportion to the work it proves, through partial solutions called shares. Income becomes predictable. The pool operator builds the block templates and usually takes a fee.
The convenience has a cost in centralisation. A handful of pools build most blocks, which gives their operators influence over which transactions get included and over signalling for upgrades. Miners can switch pools in minutes, which limits that power without removing it. Protocols such as Stratum V2 aim to let individual miners choose their own transactions.
In French · Pool de minage