What is a mining pool?

A mining pool is a joint group of cryptocurrency miners who combine their computational resources over a network to strengthen the probability of finding a block or otherwise successfully mining for cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency mining pools are groups of miners who share their computational resources.

What happens when a miner joins a pool?

When a miner joins a pool, he has to connect his rig and software to the pool’s servers. To sum it up, a share is a hash used to keep a track on miners’ work. The mining pool accepts the connection and starts transmitting key information such as mining difficulty that the miner will be facing when mining.

How do bitcoin miners switch mining pools?

Bitcoin miners can switch mining pools easily by routing their hash power to a different pool, so the market share of pools is constantly changing. To make the list of top 10 miners, we looked at blocks found over the past 6 months using data from BlockTrail.com. The size of mining pools is constantly changing.

What do I need to join a bitcoin mining pool?

Before you join a mining pool you will also need Bitcoin mining software and a Bitcoin wallet. You will also very likely need an ASIC miner, since GPU mining will likely never be profitable again going forward. Many people read about mining pools and think it is just a group that pays out free bitcoins.