{"id":334,"date":"2018-03-26T18:11:10","date_gmt":"2018-03-26T18:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/2miners.com\/blog\/?p=334"},"modified":"2022-01-11T09:34:18","modified_gmt":"2022-01-11T09:34:18","slug":"what-is-share-and-the-share-difficulty-when-you-are-mining-at-the-pool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2miners.com\/blog\/what-is-share-and-the-share-difficulty-when-you-are-mining-at-the-pool\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Share and the Share Difficulty When You Are Mining at the Pool"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this article, we will explain what a share and a share difficulty mean, how a share is different from a block solution and why you shouldn\u2019t confuse them. We strongly recommend that you read our post What is Mining and Mining Luck?<\/a> before you start with this one. Let\u2019s take a look at the 2Miners Ethereum pool<\/a>. The pool uses the PPLNS<\/a> reward system, and on the main page, you\u2019ll see that share difficulty is 8.6G.<\/p>\n

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What is a Mining Share?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Here is a quote from the article \u2018How the Mining Pool Works: PPLNS vs. SOLO\u2019<\/a>:<\/p>\n

At the earliest days of the mining, any processor or GPU had the sufficient power required for finding many solutions per day and getting a reward for the detected block.<\/em><\/p>\n

With an increase of the interest in cryptocurrencies, the difficulty level of the \u201cpuzzles\u201d also increased, and a standalone PC could not find many solutions anymore.<\/em><\/p>\n

Difficulty level was rising because the reward for the newfound block was growing as well as its equivalent in value. That was the time when miners decided to unite their efforts and create the mining pools.<\/em><\/p>\n

Therefore, even weak devices that are working simultaneously on solving the same \u201cpuzzle\u201d have a chance to find its solution which would enable miners to create a new block.<\/em><\/p>\n

Mining pools get solutions from all the connected miners, and if one of those numerous solutions appears to be a proper one, the pool gets a reward for the created block. This reward is shared proportionally to the efforts applied by the miners and forwarded to their wallets.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Share is a potential block solution. So it may be a block solution, but it is not necessarily so.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For example, suppose a block solution is a number that ends with 10 zeros and, a share may be a number with 5 zeros at the end. Sooner or later one of the shares will have not only 5, but 10 zeros at the end, and this will be the block solution.<\/p>\n

A big mistake among beginning miners is to think that they find a block (or even two), when they see phrases like \u2018Share Found\u2019 and \u2018Share accepted\u2019 in their mining software.<\/p>\n

\"Share<\/p>\n

Mining pools need shares to estimate the miner\u2019s contribution to the work performed by the pool to find a block.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Based on the shares that a miner sends to the pool, the pool then plots a miner hashrate graph. It also allows you to determine whether a miner is online or not, etc.<\/p>\n

There are numerous miner reward systems: PPS, PROP, PPLNS, PPLNT, and many more. It would take too much time to describe all of them, so let\u2019s focus on PPLNS for now.<\/p>\n

How does PPLNS Work?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

PPLNS stands for \u2018Pay Per Last N Shares\u2019, where \u2018N\u2019 is a random number determined by the mining pool operator. Suppose N equals 20,000. What does it mean?<\/p>\n

It means that when the pool finds a block, your reward is calculated based on your contribution to the last 20,000 pool shares. So if Ether block reward is 2 ETH and you account for 1,000 of the last 20,000 pool shares, then you\u2019ll get 5% of the reward \u2013 0.1 ETH. On 2Miners you can automatically check your statistics and your current share rate on the pool.<\/p>\n

For example, if you enter the following miner wallet address 0x244c12d0c1148f59d3f1684e562d3d5f9d1df8c6 in the upper right corner on the pool web page, you will get access to its statistics<\/a>. In the top right corner you\u2019ll find a miner\u2019s share rate.<\/p>\n

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Share Difficulty<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Let\u2019s see what share difficulty means. In this case, we talk about 8.6G, although it may be 8G\/16G\/1000000G, etc.<\/p>\n

Make sure to read our article about mining luck<\/a> if you haven\u2019t already. Now let\u2019s take a look at Ethereum Network Difficulty<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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At the time when this article was written, Ethereum difficulty was 2.55 P = 2,550 T = 2,550,000 G. Sometimes it is measured in Ph\/Th\/Gh, but it\u2019s all the same \u2013 Ethereum difficulty, in this case, is 2 Petahash = 2,000 Terahash = 2,000,000 Gigahash.<\/p>\n

For the sake of simplicity, we will only consider the ideal world conditions, that is, 100% mining luck. Suppose pools line up to get blocks in ascending order of their hash rates: since 2Miners has 2 Th\/s, it gets 10 blocks per day, while XMiners with its 10 Th\/s gets 50 blocks per day.<\/p>\n

In reality, it may go differently: today a specific pool with 2 Th\/s might get 5 blocks, while tomorrow it might get 10 blocks, and the day after \u2013 13 blocks, even though its hashrate is always 2 Th\/s. But if you consider the more extended time factor, luck is still aimed at 100%, as mentioned in this article.<\/p>\n

So, we have \u2013 an ideal world, 100% luck, Ethereum cryptocurrency network:<\/p>\n