Ethereum mining: large Ethereum pools and their peculiarities

Ether (Ethereum, ЕТН) is the world’s second cryptocurrency in terms of capitalization and one of the first in terms of popularity. Therefore, Ether is economically advantageous as both an investment tool and for mining: currently, there are several large Ethereum mining pools in the world.

Cryptocurrency characteristics

Developed for making payments within the Ethereum platform (service for creating decentralized applications), Ether tokens have quickly gained inherent value. Now they are traded at several large cryptocurrency exchanges and what is more Ethers can be exchanged for US dollars and Bitcoins.

As a young cryptocurrency, Ether is prone to exchange fluctuations (up to 30% per day). But experienced traders can successfully play on drops and surges and make a quick profit.

Ethereum mining

Similar to Bitcoins, Ethers can be generated using computer capacities, i.e. in the process of mining. With the growth of any cryptocurrency network, more power capacity is required to mine new blocks. Today, not a single home computer has enough capacity to mine Bitcoin. Therefore, crypto enthusiasts use special hardware (ASIC miners) and join pools (associations for cooperative mining, where the task of mining a block is distributed among all participants).

As for Ethereum, back in August 2015, the network complexity was so high that computers with less than 100 Mhash/s of capacity could not mine new blocks. That is why to mine this cryptocurrency today, you will have to invest in hardware and join one of the Ethereum pools.

Private mining farm that uses special hardware

Popular Ether mining pools

Any pool is a server, where tasks to mine blocks are distributed among all registered participants. The reward is also distributed among all participants. Each pool uses its own calculation schemes, but miners’ reward always depends on their computer capacity.

There are different types of pools. For example, P2Pools (decentralized) are carefully protected against hacking attacks and abusive activity of administration. Some pools can mine several cryptocurrencies and allow miners to switch between them, depending on their current profitability.

Here are several popular Ethereum pools:

• Ethpool / Ethermine. Different websites that apparently belong to the same pool. Currently, it is the largest Ether mining server, accounting for around 26% of the network hashrate.
• F2pool mines Ethers and Bitcoins. It is available only in Chinese language, so it is unlikely to be a good option for miners from Europe, the USA, and Russia. Аccounts for around 24% of hashrate.
• Nanopool – large association of miners that accounts for 12% of hashrate.
• Miningpoolhub – a large multicurrency pool that allows choosing among 30 cryptocurrencies for mining, including Ethereum and Ethereum-Classic. Аccounts for around 8,3% of hashrate.

The largest Ether pools and their hashrate in the Ethereum network (Mining statistics: Last 24h)

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