Ethereum mining has been very profitable for many of the cryptocurrency users and traders. You can mine Ethers in two ways- One way is the Solo Mining where you do on your own in your home or office using your computer. Here the profits are all yours but you are not guaranteed since it requires a lot of effort and time to mine individually and solve a block. More practical is the second option of joining an Ethereum mining pool.
What is a mining pool?
Mining pool is a group of individuals working together to mine the Ethereum cryptocurrency. You may have built the best of rigs with the top hardware, but profits are not assured individually as you are assured in a pool. Mining of Ethereum can be faster and more profitable by linking to an Ethereum mining pool. Users can be assured of a regular flow of ethers into their wallet. They pool their resources and split the rewards based on the contribution they have made while completing a block.
Requirements:
Before joining an Ethereum mining pool, the interested miners must be ready with the hardware needed to mine ethers. To have an efficient mining, you need specific Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) which is faster and more reliable than the CPUs.
Secondly an Ethereum wallet where they would store the ethers. The wallet can be downloaded from the official website. It carries an address where the senders will pay the rewards and for you to store your ethers.
Select a pool with care:
No doubt, earning ethers is fun and exciting, but to make sure you get the maximum benefits and riskless transactions, you must choose an Ethereum mining pool with care. The most important factor is its reputation. It must be reliable and trustworthy.
There have been many scams and abandonments by the users as well as the pool initiators in some of the cryptocurrencies in the past. This should not happen to you. Make sure to check the reputation, the years since it has been operating, and the people in the pool. Joining a new pool of inexperienced miners can be a wrong move at times so far as profits are concerned.
Transaction costs:
Equally important is the fees that the pool charges you. While you join a pool to ensure better and faster transactions, you would not want to lose unnecessary money by paying more for a pool. There are a few pools that do not take any transaction fees. Look for a pool that charges match with the market rates which varies anything between 1to 4%. Generally, the new pools may charge less than the established ones.
Location:
Join a Ethereum mining pool that is somewhere close to your country of residence. There are many countries that are skeptical about cryptocurrencies and may impose restrictions.
Payment method:
There are no set rules and regulations that bind the mining pools. Rules and procedures will differ from one to another. While some pools adopt a policy of daily payouts, others follow weekly payouts. There are a few that make monthly payouts while the smaller ones insist on paying only after a block is completed. There could be a few that require you to reach a minimum amount before they implement the payouts. The method depends largely on risk bearing. When the payouts are frequent, the risk is to the pool while if the waiting is long, the risk is to the miners.
Top mining pools
Some of the best Ethereum mining pools include Ethpool, Dwarfpool, F2Pool, Nanopool etc. the transaction speed varies, the transaction confirmations procedure are different.
