claude-dev-suite Pool Architectures & Reward Schemes
Pools allow many miners to collectively find blocks. Differences are in how rewards are distributed.
Reward schemes
PPS (Pay-Per-Share)
Miner gets fixed payment per accepted share. Pool absorbs all variance:
- Pro: predictable income for miners.
- Con: pool needs cash reserve to cover bad-luck periods.
Fee: typically 4-5% to compensate pool variance risk.
FPPS (Full Pay-Per-Share)
PPS but miner also receives proportional share of transaction fees beyond just the subsidy.
Most popular scheme as of 2024-2025.
Fee: 2-3%.
PPLNS (Pay-Per-Last-N-Shares)
Reward = block_reward × (your_shares_in_last_N / total_shares_in_last_N).
- Pool doesn't pay until block found.
- Miners experience variance directly.
- Discourages pool-hopping (you must mine consistently to be in the N window).
Fee: 1-2% (lower because pool doesn't bear variance risk).
PPS+
PPS for subsidy + PPLNS for fees. Hybrid.
Score (deprecated / niche)
Older scheme that decayed share scores over time. Largely replaced by PPLNS.
Proportional
Reward = your_shares / total_shares_this_round × block_reward.
Vulnerable to pool-hopping; rarely used.
Pool block-finding
Pool's core function:
- Construct block templates.
- Distribute work to miners (Stratum V1 or V2).
- Verify share submissions.
- When a share is also a block (≤ network target), submit to network.
- Distribute rewards per scheme.
Variance considerations
A solo miner finding a block:
- Expected time = network_time × (network_hashrate / your_hashrate).
- For 100 TH/s on 800 EH/s network: 8000 days = 22 years.
Pooled:
- Get reward proportional to your hashrate share, daily/hourly.
- Variance reduced.
Pool centralization risks
- 51% attack: top pools by hashrate can theoretically reorg.
- Censorship: pools have OFAC-compliance pressure.
- Selfish mining: pool with > 25% hashrate could selfish-mine.
Mitigations:
- Stratum V2 (miners choose own tx).
- Decentralized pools (P2Pool, Ocean Datum).
- Solo mining (CKPool, Public-Pool).
Major pools (2025)
- Foundry USA — largest by hashrate.
- AntPool (Bitmain) — second.
- F2Pool — historical leader.
- Braiins Pool (formerly Slush Pool) — SV2-capable.
- ViaBTC, MARA Pool, Luxor.
- Ocean — non-custodial; decentralized template via Datum.