Another of my experiments where I am comparing 2 different mining pools. Last time I did Slush pool vs ViaBTC review. This time I had half of my Zionodes miners running on ViaBTC and half on F2 Pool. After my experiment with Slush pool I decided that depending so much on luck is not for me. Even though Slush has a great history and from a long term point of view the luck part of it shouldn’t matter, I do not want my business to be based on luck. I prefer regular predictable levels of income, and so I switched my miners from Slush to F2Pool so I can analyze the results.
ViaBTC vs F2 Pool profitability analysis method
In my previous review I used actually mined BTC to calculate which pool was more profitable. One of the reasons I chose that method was that with Slush Pool where you are paid based on each BTC mined by the pool. But I must admit that due to some miners over-hashing and some under-hashing at some times, such a calculation is just not accurate. Luckily for me, I did not have large swings in total hash rates in either of the pools during the first experiment, so the results are fairly accurate.
For this analysis however, I am going to look at a revenue per TH. So I am going to divide my daily BTC revenue by daily average hashrate I achieved on each of the pools, and compare those results. Both of these data points are provided by each of the pools, so the calculation is really easy.
ViaBTC vs F2 Pool comparison
Before jumping to the summary data, let’s look at these pools little more in details.
F2 Pool:
- 3rd largest pool
- Currently 25 EH/s connected
- PPS+ with 2.5% fee
ViaBTC pool:
- 5th largest pool
- currently 22 EH/s
- PPS+ with 4% fee
- PPLNS with 2% fee
- Solo with 1% fee
ViaBTC offers more ways to mine. My experiment is based on PPS+ mining, where the fee is significantly larger on ViaBTC (4%) than on F2 Pool (2.5%)
Test Results
So let’s have a look at the test results. I created chart comparing daily BTC revenue on each of the pools per 1 TH/s.
From the chart it is clear, that F2Pool is slightly more profitable than ViaBTC when using PPS+ payout method. This makes sense, since the pool has lower fees. Going into details, let’s calculate how much more you can make with F2Pool.
I am going to use a scenario when you have 1330 TH and you want to decide which pool to use. Why 1330 TH? That’s how much performance you get from 14 units of S19 95TH Bitmain miners. And since right now I am running 14 of them, my theoretical hash rate is 1330 TH/s.
I have data for 23 days, from December 28th 2021 to January 19th 2022 and so that is the data that I will use.
F2Pool BTC reward in 23 days: 0.1559747 BTC
ViaBTC reward in 23 days: 0.153424073 BTC
Difference: 0.002550616 BTC
Difference in percentage: 1.66%
So through F2Pool, my payout is higher by 1.66%. And that is almost exactly as much as the difference in the pool fees – 2.5% with F2Pool vs 4% with ViaBTC.
Recalculated to monthly levels, the difference is around 0.003327 BTC a month. If the price of BTC was $50,000 this equals to $166 a month, or $1,996.13 a year. Considering the miners capital costs was around $135,000, the difference represents only around 1.5% increase in ROI a year and that is not taking consideration increase in difficulty over time.
F2Pool vs ViaBTC summary
This analysis was focused purely on payouts and profitability on these pools. I did not go into details on the user interface, mobile apps, etc. However, since this is a business, I am inclined to start using F2Pool more in the future. $166 extra a month is not ground breaking, but it just adds up. If BTC will ever be $100,000, this difference will be $4000 a year and that is nice amount of money. So if I want to mine as many BTC and store it in my Ledger, F2Pool is the way thanks to it’s lower fees. I will be testing other pools soon as well and share the results.
Also, Zionodes announced recently that they are going to launch some kind of cooperation directly with ViaBTC. Part of this deal should be also lower fees for Zionodes users on the ViaBTC pool. That would be a nice surprise and definitely a reason to stay with this pool.