A brief history of Bitcoin mining pools: More than 17 mining pools have ceased operations

Today, an announcement from the veteran Bitcoin mining pool BTCC that it would stop operating indefinitely has caused great sadness among participants in the cryptocurrency circle. It mentioned:

“Today, we regretfully announce that due to business adjustments, BTCC Mining Pool will shut down all mining servers on November 15 and stop operations indefinitely from November 30. To avoid unnecessary losses, please complete the hashrate switch before November 15 and bind the mining income address before November 20. We will distribute the income to all miners in a timely manner. We firmly believe that digital encrypted assets and blockchain industries represented by Bitcoin will continue to develop and improve. Everyone, keep thinking about it, there will be a response, we will see you again!”

Many veterans in the cryptocurrency world may be surprised by the announcement. In fact, from the recent performance of the BTCC mining pool, we can see that this decision is not puzzling. According to data provided by btc.com, the number of bitcoin blocks mined by the BTCC mining pool in the past month is actually 0, and in the past three months, the number of blocks it has mined is 72. At its peak, the BTCC mining pool was once the third largest mining pool in the Bitcoin network.

(Image from: btc.com)

In the rest of the article, the author will take stock of some representative Bitcoin mining pools in history, including the world’s earliest Bitcoin mining pool, China’s earliest Bitcoin mining pool, the most dominant Bitcoin mining pool in the past, and the two most competitive Bitcoin mining pools at present.

The first Bitcoin mining pool, now the third largest

Back to November 27, 2010, SatoshiLabs, headquartered in Prague, Czech Republic, established the world's first Bitcoin mining pool. Its founder Marek Palatinus once said in an interview with Babbitt:

“SlushPool was founded in late 2010 when I was mining on my own computer and realized that mining alone would soon become unprofitable. Thankfully I thought of a solution, so I created a system where miners can join together, pool their resources and share the profits proportionally, that’s why it’s called “pooled mining.”

According to the information provided by the slushpool.com website, the current computing power of the slushpool mining pool has reached 5.471 Eh/s, accounting for about 10.2% of the total network computing power. It is currently ranked third in the entire network, and the number of active users of its mining pool is 16,236.

(Picture from: slushpool official website)

It is understood that the mining pool will charge a 2% fee on all expenditures, but slushpool will share transaction fees with miners. At the current level, the transaction fee for each block will be 1-2 BTC.

The most powerful Bitcoin mining pool in history has long disappeared into the long river of history

However, the most dominant mining pool in Bitcoin history is not slushpool, nor the currently most powerful btc.com and AntPool, but the GHash.IO mining pool that has long disappeared in the long river of history.

(Image from: http://ghash.io/official website)

GHash.IO was founded in July 2013. In its heyday (July 2014), the mining pool's computing power once exceeded the critical value of 51% of the entire network, which also caused the community's concerns about 51% attacks. Under the strong appeal of the community, some miners withdrew from the Ghash.io mining pool, which brought it back to the level of 42% of the total network computing power. The reason why GHash.IO can become a giant in the mining pool industry has a lot to do with its non-collection of mining pool fees. However, in October 2016, this once most dominant Bitcoin mining pool was forced to close under the impact of emerging mining pools such as F2Pool, AntPool, and BTCC.

Afterwards, some people analyzed that after being continuously subjected to large-scale denial of service (DoS) attacks, coupled with the decline in coin prices in the bear market, the operator of the mining pool chose to stop the operation of GHash.IO.

F2pool, China's earliest Bitcoin mining pool, was once ranked first in the world and is now ranked sixth

In April 2013, F2Pool, co-founded by Wang Chun and Mao Shixing (also known as Shenyu), was the earliest Bitcoin mining pool in China. In the era when GHash.IO mining pool dominated, F2Pool was the only Chinese mining pool that could compete with it. In the second half of 2014, F2Pool surpassed GHash and became the largest Bitcoin mining pool in the world at that time.

As of press time, according to the information provided by the official website of F2Pool, the real-time computing power of the mining pool is 4.539Eh/s, ranking sixth in the entire network, and it adopts the PPS+ settlement mode, that is, on the basis of the traditional PPS settlement method, it adds the distribution of mining fees. The fee it charges is 2.5% PPS+.

(Image from: f2pool official website)

It is reported that in addition to providing Bitcoin mining, F2Pool also involves mining of 13 cryptocurrencies including Ethereum, Litecoin, ETC, Monero, Dash, and Zcash.

BTC.com and AntPool currently dominate the Bitcoin network

BTC.com and AntPool, the two largest mining pools, have occupied the first and second positions on the Bitcoin network since last year, and both have very close ties with the largest mining company, Bitmain.

According to the introduction of the two major mining pools, the BTC.com mining pool currently adopts the FPPS settlement model, which distributes all block revenues including transaction fees. Theoretically, the transaction amount of each block will be 1-2 BTC, which means that its theoretical revenue will be 108%-116% of the normal block revenue. Of course, after deducting the transaction fees, the actual revenue will be slightly lower.

AntPool supports multiple mining modes including PPS, PPS+, PPLNS, and SOLO.

(Image from: antpool official website)

According to the information on the official websites of BTC.com and AntPool, the real-time computing power of the BTC.com mining pool is 8.576Eh/s, ranking first in the entire network, while the real-time computing power of the AntPool mining pool is 6.433Eh/s, ranking second in the entire network. In terms of the currencies involved in the mining pool, the BTC.com mining pool provides mining of 6 cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum, etc.

AntPool involves more currencies. In addition to Bitcoin, the mining pool also involves 10 cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Litecoin, Ethereum, ETC, Zcash, and Bytom (BTM).

Summarize

By reviewing the history and current status of some Bitcoin mining pools, we can understand how fierce the competition in the mining pool field is. Some of the former mining pool overlords have completely disappeared, and some have lost their dominance. As for the current mining pool pattern, who can guarantee that it will last forever? Perhaps there will be new competitive challengers...

Attached are some of the Bitcoin mining pools that have disappeared:

BCMonster.com was founded on 2016-01-13

BitcoinAffiliateNetwork was founded on 2014-07-15

BitMinter was founded on 2011-06-26

BTCC Pool was established on 2014-10-21

BTCDig was founded on 2013-07-04

btcmp.com was established on 2011-06-28

btcZPool.com was established on 2017-06-25

Eligius was founded on 2011-04-27

GHash.IO was founded on 2013-07-01

Give Me COINS was established on 2013-08-12

Golden Nonce Pool was established on 2018-03-27