Key facts:
Bitmain pools top the list, thanks to their consistently high mining power.
Poolin started operations in mid-2018 and is the youngest pool on the list.
From its invention in 2010 to the present year (2022), the best mining pools for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have played a very important role in the operation of these networks, their economies and security.
It is quite complicated, if not impossible, to say for sure that a certain Bitcoin mining pool is the best of all in 2022. This is because not all pools are the same. One pool may be convenient for a particular miner, while another may prefer the features of a different pool.
A mining pool, as explained by our Cryptopedia, consists of a group of miners who combine the mining power of their teams in order to get rewards for adding more blocks to the chain. The rewards obtained are distributed among the miners and administrators of the pool.
Bitcoin mining in groups or pools owes its origin to the need for miners to be able to compete with those who have a higher mining power or hashrate. Mining nodes with higher hashrate, either because they have more advanced hardware or a larger number of equipment, are more likely to get rewards.
Pool mining allows those Bitcoin miners with inefficient hardware to pool their hashrate and compete against other mining giants for rewards.
Top 5 Bitcoin Mining Pool Nominees for 2022
In view of the difficulty of selecting only one pool among all, as mentioned above, the following selection contains the five mining pools that have the highest hashrate in the Bitcoin network during 2022.
The fact that a pool has a higher mining power than most does not mean that it is the best. However, if he is able to attract that much hashrate, he must offer something that will be beneficial to his workers.
Foundry USA
Foundry USA is the pool that has enjoyed the highest hashrate on the Bitcoin network for the first three months. The pool is headquartered in the United States and its Bitcoin hash rate averages 37.9 EH/s, which they are equivalent to 17.1% of the total hashrate of the network.
Although a pool can be made up of hundreds of thousands of users with different hardware, to reach a hashrate like the one shown by Foundry USA, about 340,000 ASIC miners model Whatsminer M30S++, from MicroBT, one of the most powerful teams in mining would be necessary. Bitcoin.
Foundry USA was opened to the public in March 2021, after having mined more than 780 bitcoins (BTC) privately with its beta version. Its rapid rise to the top of the list among the most influential mining pools was greatly aided by the exodus of Chinese miners to the United States, as reported by CriptoNoticias at the time.
The migration of Asian miners in mid-2021 was a consequence of the Chinese Government’s measures related to the total prohibition of activities related to the issuance and use of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
The official website of Foundry USA does not reveal details about the operation of the pool to those who are not subscribers. However, websites like The Block claim that this pool uses the FPPS payment method or Full Pay Per Share. This form of payment consists of the pool distributing all the profits generated among its miners; that is, both the profits obtained from the rewards for mined blocks, and those that come from the commissions included in said blocks. The payment portion is equivalent to the mining power contributed by each miner.
AntPool
AntPool started operations in August 2014 from its main headquarters in China. However, after being separated from Bitmain (its former owners), he moved to Singapore in 2021. This move came in a timely manner in the face of China’s bans on Bitcoin mining, which were already mentioned above.
During 2022, AntPool has contributed 14.8% of the total hashrate of the Bitcoin network. This translates to about 39.4 EH/s of mining power. To get that magnitude of hashrate, it would take about 150,000 ASIC miners Antminer S19 Pro+ Hyd model from Bitmain, which is the most powerful they have released so far.
The workers who work at AntPool mining Bitcoin have two payment methods to choose from. One of them is FPPS, the same one used by Foundry USA, and the other is PPLNS (Pay Per Last N Shares). PPLNS consists of paying the miner according to his contribution to the pool, taking into account the percentage of shares he achieved, in relation to the total obtained by the pool.
To mine in AntPool, each miner must pay a commission It will depend on the payment method you choose. Miners who prefer the FPPS method must pay 4% of their earnings to the pool. On the other hand, miners who choose the PPLNS method do not pay commission. This is because miners risk making less profit if the entire pool is not generating much BTC.
In addition to Bitcoin, AntPool also has pools to mine other cryptocurrencies such as: ether (ETH) from Ethereum, litecoin (LTC), bitcoin cash (BCH), ethereum classic (ETC), zcash (ZEC), dash (DASH), among other. In addition to this, AntPool allows you to do merged mining, which consists of mining two cryptocurrencies simultaneously with the same hardware. In the case of the Bitcoin pool, it is possible to do it with vcash (XVC) and namecoin (NMC).
F2Pool
Discus Fish It was the name by which F2Pool was known at its inception, in April 2013. In fact, to this day, the blocks they mine still have that signature included. Between 2014 and 2015, F2Pool remained the pool with the highest Bitcoin hashrate with 30% of the mining power of this network. Added to this, this pool has been the largest block miner in the history of Bitcoin for yearswith 69,285 and counting.
While F2Pool is not at the top of the most powerful Bitcoin mining pools, its average 24.6 EH/s of mining power over the past few months keeps it among the largest on the list. This would be equivalent to the hashrate generated by 175,000 S19 XP model Antminers. So far in 2022, F2Pool has provided 14.6% of the Bitcoin hash rate.
F2Pool miners receive their payments with the PPS+ method, which is very similar to FPPS, since the rewards obtained by mining Bitcoin are distributed along with a portion of the commissions from the transactions that the blocks added to the chain include.
The commission for mining in F2Pool It is 2.5% of what is obtained, which is destined to the maintenance of the pool, that is, to the payment of the personnel that manages it and operating expenses that its support may imply.
As for the options to do merged mining, F2Pool Bitcoin miners can choose between namecoin and syscoin (SYS). In addition to Bitcoin, F2Pool also offers its users the possibility of mining a number of cryptocurrencies, including: bitcoin cash, litecoin, ether, ethereum classic, dash, zcash and ravencoin (RVN), among others.
BinancePool
Binance Pool is the youngest of the leading pools on the Bitcoin network based on hashrate. Its launch was made in April 2020 and has recently averaged about 23.2 EH/s, which are equivalent to 11.4% of the total hash rate of Bitcoin. To match the current hash rate of Binance Pool, 257,000 AvalonMiner 1246 model miners would be needed, the most powerful of those launched by the Canaan company.
Bitcoin miners who work with BinancePool they get their payments under the FPPS method, which was discussed earlier. As for the commission for using the Binance Bitcoin pool, this is 2.5%.
Binance Pool also offers the option to make merged mining to its users. Bitcoin miners can mine vcash or elastos (ELA) alongside BTC to try and maximize their profits when profitable. In addition to Bitcoin, it is also possible to mine ether, litecoin and bitcoin cash in this pool.
poolin
Poolin was founded in 2017 by former employees of BTC.com and AntPool, the two largest Bitcoin mining pools at the time. Initially, Poolin only offered the possibility to mine altcoins. This was due to a non-competition agreement that the owners of BTC.com and AntPool had signed with Bitmain at the time.
Poolin, after claiming that Bitmain had not complied with the agreed compensation, opened its Bitcoin mining pool. However, in 2020, CriptoNoticias reported that the justice in China ruled in favor of Bitmain in this case and the Poolin co-founders were forced to return the compensation they had received from Bitmain.
Throughout 2022, Poolin has averaged a hash rate of 22.9 EH/s which is 11.3% of the total mining power of the Bitcoin network. Poolin’s hashrate is equivalent to that generated by 208,000 B2 model miners of the iPollo brand, which is the third most powerful on the market today.
To mine Bitcoin in Poolin, as in Binance Pool, its workers must pay a commission of 2.5% of their profits to the pool and their payments are received under the FPPS scheme. Hand in hand with Bitcoin, it is also possible to mine namecoin or vcash thanks to the tool merged mining of this pool.
Among the cryptocurrencies that can be mined in poolinApart from Bitcoin, there are ether, zcash, dash, bitcoin cash, horizen (ZEN) and decred (DCR), among others.
Here you can see the best payment methods to mine Bitcoin in pools
Other major Bitcoin mining pools
There are other relevant pools in the history of Bitcoin, such as Slush Pool, the first mining pool that existed and is still operationalalbeit under new management.
It is also worth mentioning the defunct GHash.IO, which was the first pool to maintain a mining power of more than 50% of the total Bitcoin network. When this event occurred, the same pool administrators advised their users to abandon GHash.IO, to avoid the risks of centralization in Bitcoin.