Mining Pool
mining · infrastructure
A service that coordinates proof-of-work from many hashers and distributes rewards under a payout scheme.
A mining pool divides candidate work among participants and estimates each participant's contribution through lower-difficulty shares. When the pool finds an accepted block, it pays miners according to its payout rules.
In a conventional pool, the operator chooses the block template and transaction policy while individual miners supply hash power. Stratum variants and solo or decentralized pool designs can distribute those responsibilities differently.
Pool concentration can increase censorship, reorganization, and coordination risk even when the underlying hardware belongs to many operators. Miners also face counterparty, payout, fee, downtime, and share-withholding risk.
Related terms
Mining
→Proof-of-work block production in which miners build candidate blocks and search for a header hash below the network target.
mining · proof-of-work
Miner
→A proof-of-work participant that builds or searches candidate blocks and earns revenue when an accepted block is found.
role · mining
Hash rate
→The number of proof-of-work hash attempts performed per second by mining hardware or an entire network.
mining · security
Proof of Work (PoW)
→A consensus mechanism that makes block production require verifiable computational work.
mining · blockchain · consensus
Majority Attack
→A proof-of-work attack in which coordinated hash power can outpace the honest chain and reorganize recent valid history.
security · consensus