-This is one of the first questions you ask yourself before embarking on mining. Should I work in a team or alone? There are a multitude of arguments both for and against pool mining, but most miners today opt for pool mining.
-Advantages and disadvantages
In order to give you a clear picture of what pool mining is, think of pool mining as a lotto prize pool, the pros and cons are similar. Going solo won't have to share your rewards, but your chances of getting will be significantly reduced. By working in a pool, you will have more chances to validate a block to validate a block of transactions and thus to obtain rewards, however these latter are then distributed among the members of the pool.
-Therefore, by joining a pool, you will generate regular streams of income, although the gains will be modest compared to the total amount awarded per validated block. Below is an image to illustrate a mining pool, I took the LiteCoin network as an example, but all pools work the same.
-The difficulty of mining crypto-currencies
In the case of Bitcoin, the level of difficulty is so high today that it is virtually impossible to generate profits by working solo. Unless you have a warehouse full of miners kept in arctic conditions. If you are a beginner, mining pools are a great way to make small profits in a short period of time. Indeed, these pools encourage small users to stay involved.
-Pools rewards
When choosing a pool, it is important to know how each pool allocates the winnings and what fees (if any) are deducted.
-There are a number of formulas according to which the pools share the winnings. Most are based on the number of "shares" a miner submits to the pool as "proof of work."
-This concept of sharing is delicate. Keep two things in mind: first, mining is a process of solving cryptographic puzzles; On the other hand, mining has a difficulty level. When a minor "solves a block" there is a level of difficulty corresponding to the solution. This level of difficulty can be considered as a quality factor. If the difficulty level of a solution is higher than the difficulty level of the entire currency, this is added to the BlockChain and that currency and a currency reward is awarded.
-In addition, the pool of miners defines the level of difficulty to validate blocks. If a miner fails to validate a block, that block is saved as a “share”. These shares are strictly useless but are recorded as "proof of work" to prove that miners are trying to validate blocks. It also indicates how much processing power has been made available to the pool, the better your hardware is, the more shares are generated.
-The simplest version used to distribute earnings is the “Pay per share” (PPS) model; you are paid for each share sent. However, there are limits on the rate paid by “sharing”.
-The last thing is how much the pool is going to deduct from you in fees, because taxes can vary from 1 to 10%, and even some pools do not charge any fees.
