What a mining pool does, how FPPS pays you, why there is a payout minimum, and why pool hashrate readings wobble.
Advanced
Your machines do not mine alone. They send their work to a mining pool, and the pool pays you. Knowing what the pool does explains when you are paid, why a balance waits, and why the hashrate it reports is never a flat line.
A block is found by one miner at a time, and the network is enormous. A single machine mining alone could wait many years for a block, then receive a whole reward at once. A pool joins the hashrate of many miners, finds blocks often, and shares the rewards according to the work each one sent in. You trade a rare, large reward for a small, steady one.
The pool measures your work in shares. A share is proof that your machine tried a certain amount of hashes. The more shares your machines send, the more you are paid.
Pools differ in how they share rewards. Under FPPS (Full Pay Per Share), the pool pays you for every share you send, at the value that work is expected to earn, with an estimate of transaction fees included. You are paid whether or not the pool found a block that day: the pool carries the luck, and charges a fee for it. Under schemes such as PPLNS, you are paid only out of the blocks the pool really finds, so income swings with the pool's luck. FPPS is the steadier of the two, and it is why your daily bitcoin follows your hashrate closely.
| Stage | What it means | Where you see it |
|---|---|---|
| Earned | The pool has counted your shares for the day | Your pool accounts: Yesterday or Last 24 hours |
| Unpaid balance | Earned and held by the pool until the next payout | Your pool accounts: Unpaid balance |
| Paid out | Sent to your wallet in a Bitcoin transaction | Your pool accounts: Paid out, all time |
The pool posts a day's revenue during the next day. That is why the most recent day on your charts fills in a little later.
Every Bitcoin transaction costs a network fee, so a pool does not send dust. It pays out on its own schedule, once your balance has reached its minimum payout. With one machine, the balance can take longer to reach that minimum. Nothing is lost while it waits: the balance stays yours and keeps growing.
Rental income follows its own rule: it builds as a balance and is sent once it reaches 0.01 BTC. You see it under Rental payouts on Earnings.
A pool cannot see inside your machine. It estimates your hashrate from the shares that arrive. Finding a share is a matter of chance, so over a few minutes a steady machine can look a fifth faster or slower than it is. Over 24 hours the luck evens out.
With Firsthand Bitcoin, your machines mine into a pool account that is yours, at Luxor or F2Pool, and the pool pays your wallet directly. On My miners:
Careful: Payouts go to the address set on the pool account. Before you change it, read Change your payout address safely.