In the past there were 2 main ways you could mine Bitcoin – Solo or in a Pool. Mining solo means that you are trying to find a Bitcoin block on your own, and when you find it you keep the whole reward. Currently the reward in one block is 6.25 BTC. With the increase in total bitcoin hash rate, mining solo has been pretty much impossible, unless you have millions dollars worth of ASIC machines. That is where mining Pool comes in. In a pool, miners from all over the world work together to find a reward block. And then they split the reward among themselves. This way also individuals with just few miners can join the game. There is several main Pools to chose from. I did a short experiment comparing Slush Pool vs ViaBTC pools in the real life.
Slush Pool vs ViaBTC experiment overview
For this experiment I took the miners I purchased through Zionodes (part 1 & part 2 of my experience), and assign half of them to Slush Pool and half to ViaBTC. I would keep these running untouched for 2 weeks and see where do I earn more BTC after all the fees. After this experiment, I am planning to do similar comparisons between different pools on a ongoing basis.
Slush Pool and it’s dependence on luck
Before jumping to the results, we need to explain how Slush Pool works. Slush pool works based a score-based system. Based on the miners you have connected to the pool, you are given a scoring hash rate. This hash rate is calculated based on your actual hash-rate in the last few hours. And whenever the pool finds a block, the rewards are distributed among all the users based on the score they had exactly at the time when the block was mined.
What it really means is that in this system, you are only paid when a pool finds a block. However with multiple pools fighting for blocks, there is a lot of luck involved in how many block Slush Pool will mine during a certain period of time. The result is that the rewards with Slush Pool are very volatile and depend purely on a pool luck during the period of time when your miners are connected.
As an example, let’s have a look at current Slush Pool luck:
- 10 Block Luck = 82.62%
- 50 Block Luck = 96.62%
- 250 Block Luck = 104.20%
However in theory, this luck should not be an issue from a long term perspective. Statistically the pool is going to mine as many Bitcoins as they should based on their total hashrate over long period of time. For example the 10 Block luck was over 100% just few days ago. And if we look at current 250 Block Luck, it is at 104% right now. So from long term point of view, the luck should average at about 100%.
Just to give an idea – from November 24th to December 8th, Slush Pool managed to find 129 Blocks. That’s exactly 14 days. So during this period, Slush Pool found on average 9 blocks per day. That’s why the 10 Block Luck is really just a last for the last day of mining, and no conclusions should be made out of this number. Similar to 50 Block Luck, which would be luck for the last 5-6 days. 250 Block Luck is a luck for approximately the last 1 month of mining. Currently that is over 100%.
ViaBTC: PPS+ results
ViaBTC is currently the 5th largest Bitcoin mining pool. You can select between 2 different payout methods: PPS+ with 4% fee or PPLNS for 2% fee. For this experiment I am using PPS+ payout schema. PPS+ means Pay Per Share – miner will get instant flat payout for each share that is solved, plus share of transaction fees processed on BTC network.
In short, PPS payout schema is not based on luck compared to PPLNS or Hash Scoring done by Slush. With PPS, you will get the same payout regularly every day, even if the pool doesn’t win the block. In this case, the Pool takes on itself the risk of having bad luck days. And in most cases the pool also charges higher fee than other type of pools. But for a final consumer like me, it takes away the luck from the equation and I know approximately how much Bitcoins I will make every single day.
Slush Pool vs ViaBTC mining experiment results
Time to look at the actual results. Chart below shows how many Bitcoins were added to my Slush Pool and ViaBTC accounts by day during the last 10 days.
Both pools had the same amount of workers during this time period. I added 2 machines to each of the pools on December 4th, at the same time. The pattern is clear. ViaBTC payouts are significantly more consistent than Slush Pool. That is because they do not depend on pool luck at all.
On the other hand, Slush pool is luck dependent. I had more days with bad luck than with good luck during this time period. Those are the days where the payout from ViaBTC is higher than payout from Slush Pool.
Total BTC mined in this period, after fees:
Slush Pool: 0.0257
ViaBTC: 0.0261
The results are very very close, which supports the theory that luck should not matter from long-term point of view. Even these 10 days are a really short period of time to compare, and it would be better to do this after 30 or 60 days.
During this 10 days period, I made 1.51% more through ViaBTC despite the fact that they charge 4% fee compared to Slush Pool’s 2% fee. This was caused purely because of lower than 100% Slush Pool luck during the experiment period.
Slush Pool vs ViaBTC summary
ViaBTC pros and cons
- Consistent daily BTC profits
- Choice between different types of payout schema
- Sub accounts creation
- No-fee automatic withdrawal
- Referral program
- Better mobile app
- Mining support for multiple coins
- High fees up to 4%
- Co-owned by Bitmain, threat for centralization
Slush Pool pros and cons
- Great reputation, one of the first pools
- No-fee automatic withdrawal
- Decentralized pool
- Own firmware increasing hash rate (not reviewed yet)
- Adrenaline rush whenever a block is mined
- Lower fees
- Luck based – not good for short term mining or if you plan to jump from pool to pool too often
- There are luck based pools with lower fees
There are multiple pools and pool types out there, and it’s up to final user to determine whether they want to be paid on actual blocks mined by a pool, or to have constant predictable Bitcoin income. But there are other considerations to be made. A lot of miners do not want to support Chinese pools for political or other reasons. Another group doesn’t like to support the largest pools so that no pool has majority of the total hash rate and thing are as decentralized as possible. Whether you care about these things or not is up to you.