Mining pools: Stratum V2 and payout schemes

When the pool finds a block, the reward is split by each miner's shares in that round (since the previous block).

+ Simple, the pool never pays more than it earns.

− Broken by pool hopping: hop in at the start of a round, leave as it gets long. Abandoned.

Like proportional, but each share is weighted by time (score += exp(t/C)), so recent shares count far more; hopping stops paying.

+ Hop-proof, transparent.

− Income still depends on pool luck; leaving a pool forfeits recent score.

Every valid share is paid a fixed amount = block subsidy × share difficulty ÷ network difficulty, whether or not the pool finds blocks. Transaction fees are not paid.

+ Zero variance for the miner, instant predictable income.

− Highest fee; fees from blocks go to the pool; pool can go bankrupt in a bad-luck streak.

Shared Maximum PPS: like PPS, but the pool never pays out more than it has earned; unpaid credit waits for future blocks (E- and R- variants change who is repaid first).

+ Pool cannot go insolvent.

− Backlog can grow without bound during a long bad-luck streak.

Capped PPS with Recent Backpay: shares get PPS value up to what blocks actually pay; shortfall is back-paid to the most recent shares first.

+ No insolvency, no unlimited old debt.

− Complex; not used by large pools.

Pay Per Last N Shares: when a block is found, its full reward (subsidy + fees) is split over the last N shares, regardless of round boundaries.

+ Low fee (0–2%), full fees passed through, hop-resistant, pool needs no reserves.

− Income swings with pool luck; small pools pay lumpy.

Subsidy paid like PPS; transaction fees paid PPLNS-style from the blocks the pool actually finds.

+ Stable base income plus real fee spikes.

− Fee part still has luck variance; custodial.

Like PPS, but the pool also pays an average of network-wide transaction fees per share. Braiins documents it as reward = (subsidy + trimmed average fee) × shares ÷ difficulty, computed daily over all network blocks.

+ Near-zero variance, daily payouts; the dominant scheme for big miners and hosted fleets.

− Pool must hold large reserves, so only big pools can offer it → centralization pressure; payouts custodial; block contents set by the pool.

Your miner works alone through a pool server; if it finds a block, almost all of it is yours, paid straight from the coinbase.

+ Non-custodial, no account, perfect for Bitaxe-class hobby miners.

− Expected wait for a small miner is measured in thousands of years.

Decentralized pool: miners run nodes that build a share chain (a low-difficulty side blockchain); every block pays all recent share holders via the coinbase (PPLNS).

+ No operator, no custody, miners build templates.

− Orphaned shares grew with scale, small miners saw misleading stats, coinbase size limited payouts.

Rebuilt in Rust: a share DAG with uncles, per-miner vardiff, PPLNS paid in the coinbase to the top N miners; everyone else gets share-chain outputs they can sell for BTC via Lightning/Ark atomic swaps.

+ Decentralizes accounting too, not just templates; self-custodial payouts.

− Not on mainnet yet; you need your own node.

Each block's full reward is split over the last 8 blocks' worth of work (8 × network difficulty); shares are never discarded, so each share is paid ~8 times on average. Paid straight from the coinbase.

+ Non-custodial, auditable, full fees, low variance for a PPLNS-type scheme.

− Ramp-up before full income; earnings still depend on OCEAN finding blocks.

Not a payout scheme but a work-distribution protocol: the DATUM Gateway on your node builds the template (your transaction choice) and sends work to your ASICs over Stratum V1; OCEAN only accounts shares and pays via TIDES.

+ Miner-built templates today with stock firmware; lower fee.

− Needs your own full node; one pool.

DMND's scheme: subsidy split by hashrate, fees split by the value each miner's own declared templates built. Designed for Job Declaration.

+ Rewards miners for building good templates; lower variance than PPLNS per DMND.

− New, one pool; public detail on the formula is limited.