Bitcoin miners are crucial to Bitcoin and its security. Without miners,
Bitcoin would be vulnerable and easy to attack. Most Bitcoin users don’t
mine. However, miners are responsible for the creation of all new
bitcoins and a fascinating part of the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Mining pools are groups of cooperating miners who agree to share block rewards in proportion to their contributed mining hashing power. While mining pools are desirable to the average miner as they smooth out rewards and make them more predictable, they unfortunately concentrate power to the mining pool’s owner. Miners can, however, choose to redirect their hashing power to a different mining pool at anytime.
While we can see which mining pools are the largest, it’s important to understand that the hash power pointed towards a mining pool isn’t necessarily owned by the mining pool itself. There are a few cases, like with BitFury and KnCMiner, where the company itself runs the mining operation but doesn’t run a mining pool.
Bitcoin miners can switch mining pools easily by routing their hash power to a different pool. 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. The size of mining pools is constantly changing. We will do our best to keep this posted up-to-date. Note that if you cloud mine then you don’t need to select a pool; the cloud mining company does this
What is a Mining Pool?
Mining, once done on the average home computer, is now mostly done in large, specialized warehouses. These warehouses usually direct their hashing power towards mining pools. What is a mining pool? Here’s the definition from Buy Bitcoin Worldwide:Mining pools are groups of cooperating miners who agree to share block rewards in proportion to their contributed mining hashing power. While mining pools are desirable to the average miner as they smooth out rewards and make them more predictable, they unfortunately concentrate power to the mining pool’s owner. Miners can, however, choose to redirect their hashing power to a different mining pool at anytime.
While we can see which mining pools are the largest, it’s important to understand that the hash power pointed towards a mining pool isn’t necessarily owned by the mining pool itself. There are a few cases, like with BitFury and KnCMiner, where the company itself runs the mining operation but doesn’t run a mining pool.
Bitcoin miners can switch mining pools easily by routing their hash power to a different pool. 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. The size of mining pools is constantly changing. We will do our best to keep this posted up-to-date. Note that if you cloud mine then you don’t need to select a pool; the cloud mining company does this
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