What to look for when choosing a Signum Mining Pool (Crypto)

Hi guys!   I'm going to go over a few quick things to look for when choosing a mining pool.  Let me start off by saying it's no secret I am a fan of using the nam SIGNA pool (https://SIGNApool.notallmine.net) I'm a bit biased here...  😏   I really really like the nam pool.

What is Signum/Signa?  If you landed here and have no clue what Signum, SIGNA, or mining even is, check out this link here on the project:  Signum.Network

What makes a good pool?   Well you want to make lots of whatever coin you are mining, period. That's most likely your main goal.  So most people think the larger the pool the better, as in more miners, and more total pool capacity.  This is only partially true and very deceiving (I'll go over that in a second).   What else makes for a good pool?  I look for things like uptime, owner integrity, cool features, cool community members, any offerings like bonuses - low or no fees - small miner perks.

What to look for. It's all in the numbers. You want to be able to trace every coin mined, where does it go? How much do I get? What are the fees? Is the pool stealing?    One of the things I first look for is if the pool is running "Official" mining pool software.  Why do I care about this? Well if they wrote their own pool software it's often hard to trace every fraction of a coin mined, how do you know the pool owner isn't siphoning off fractions of coins for themselves?  Or rewarding other miners unfairly? How can you compare custom written pool servers to other pool servers if they are all different?  YOU CAN'T.   This is an issue for me, I look through my personal banking transactions from time to time because I don't trust people not to goof up, or steal my bank card info, or something else.  I like to be able to track and do some math and make sure it adds up.     So what do you actually look for and how do you know the pool is using "official" mining pool software?      

Most pools running official mining pool software will look similar, with the exception of some customizations, themes, or "skin" changes.    For example all official pools will have some kind of "Pool Info" page that tells you things like the pool name, account, fees, and Pool software versions, they will mostly look similar as shown below, three different pools, I just went to the "Pool Info" page. 

But there is also a list of pools running the "Official Pool Software" on their main GitHub site found here: https://github.com/signum-network/signum-pool#pools-using-the-software

Other things to look for when choosing a pool, "Pool Share" of the miners.   Some pools allow "Solo Miners" in their pool.   This usually means they share 20% or less with the rest of the pool, often times 0%.     This is good for people wanting to solo mine without having to go through the trouble of setting up a node and all of that fun stuff, and it's cool that the pool owners offer this service.   But it tends to skew the pool stats, and remember most people are mining to earn coin.   So how do Solo Miners in a Pool hurt the pool members?    Let say you pick a pool because you see it forges lots of blocks compared to another pool, your logic is sound, this should mean you as a pool member will get more rewards because the pool is bringing in more blocks!  Right?    NO.  For example, see below, the pool on the left is a larger pool, brings in a few more blocks than the pool on the right, but the pool on the left has a lot of solo miners, when solo miners forge a block they just keep the whole payout, nothing goes to the pool.  You can see this as 0 SIGNA shared with the pool.   As compared to the pool on the right, almost every block forged gets shared with the pool, on top of that this pool doesn't charge pool fees, AND they give you a 5% bonus on every block payout!   So you can see on the right the Pool shared amount is actually MORE than the reward.     Back to my original point, the pool on the left has lots of solo miners that do not share with the pool, Pool on the right shares with almost every block won.  Even though the pool on the left is larger, and wins more blocks,  due to solo miners in that pool it is less profitable  than the smaller pool on the right.

Another thing to look for when choosing a pool is Physical Capacity vs Effective Capacity vs Total Shared Capacity.  Again don't assume when using https://miningpoolstats.stream/signa that a pool is actually larger due to the Capacity graph here..   For example lets look at these two similar sized pools, VLP and NAM

This graph above doesn't take into effect "Shared Capacity" of the pool.  The pool can contain lots of solo miners that share nothing with the rest of the pool, the pool profitability is based on shared mining capability, that is the real factor that will tell you if the pool will be profitable for you. But doing this requires you to do some manual math. You need to look at the miners list and add up every "Shared Capacity" value to come up with the total pool shared capacity.  I did this below as an example of two pools.  The larger VOIPlanParty pool, and the smaller notallmine.net pool, lets see who is more profitable!

Here is the VOIP pool they have 3.294 PiB Physical capacity, and 2.223 PiB Effective (this is good, means all of their miners have decent commitment) and finally their Total Shared Capacity is only 1.264 PiB..  Humm we lost 2.03 PiB just in lack of commitment and people not sharing with the pool.

Lets look at the nam SIGNA pool, it has less Physical Capacity than VOIP only 2.103 PiB, the Effective Capacity is also lower than VOIP but very close to their Physical (this means all miners have great commitment) and finally Total Shared Capacity, nam has 1.840 PiB. Wait, what? This smaller pool actually has more mining capacity/power than the larger pool!? This is due to everyone in the nam pool sharing and not solo mining for themselves.

In this example the nam SIGNA pool is actually more profitable for pool members than the larger VOIP pool. These examples are why you have to look at the numbers, this is difficult to do if every pool runs their own specialized software that you can not audit, trace, or get apples to apples stats to compare. 

So don't judge a book by its cover, and don't judge a pool by its size!   The above example can be true for very small and/or new pools too, you have to run the numbers.

Fees and Bonuses!    Most mining pools charge you a fee for using their pool, they have to pay for hosting, maintenance, internet, power and other things so you can join and use their pool.   This is pretty normal practice, every block forged and a percentage goes to the pool owner, usually 1% or so, I have seen pools as high as 10% fees.        This is something you need to look at when choosing a pool, some pools offer 0% fees, some pools even offer -% or (negative) fees aka BONUSes!   a -1% fee means every block won/forged gets 1% added to it by the pool owner (usually out of their own pocket) then the new total reward amount goes out to the pool members.  Pool owners do this for various reasons like as a promotion to get more miners in their pool, or just plain old miner appreciation!  Some pools do this for a limited time, some do it as long as they can afford.  Its a pretty neat incentive to join a pool!       

Other bonuses include things like Discord chat "rain" or "Small Miner" Bonuses.  I think only https://signumpool.com is doing this small miner bonus right now.   Its a great concept for small miners under 10 TiB (at time of writing this).   Usually Pools pay out to miners based on their Shared Capacity, a large 100 TiB miner will get a larger chunk of the forged block than a small miner with only 1TiB. SignumPool.com offers a little bonus for small miners above what the block pays out. If you are below xxTiB, small miners get a little extra bonus for mining with SignumPool.com.  

I put this under bonuses, but some pools offer some cool bells and whistles.  Like extra reporting (see history graphs and info on your mining), Discord Bots that aid in mining, alert you when your miner fails, lets you know when blocks are won, status of the pool, etc.   Pool owners that put in this "extra effort" rank high in my book!  

Uptime.  If the pool is down, you are not mining coin.   So talk to the other pool members, get some feedback on pool uptime, owner, whatever, the fellow pool members will be able to tell you if the pool is lacking or works well.  Some pools offer an uptime dash board, I think SignumPool.com has one SignumPool.com UpTime and the nam SIGNA pool UpTime page are examples.   Lots of pools offer this, just check them out and you can usually see historical uptime, to give you an idea of the pools stability. 

Shout out to the below pools I used info from their sites for this post, I have also mined on all of these pools and currently mine on the nam SIGNA pool.   This info may be outdated check on the mining pool stats site for updated info. 

Signum Pool - https://signumpool.com offers: no fees, 4% bonus, small miner bonus, cool bots, neat stats and reporting, allows solo miners, no solo miner fees.

VOIP LAN Party Pool - https://voiplanparty.com offers: low pool fee of 0.25% 

Fomplo Pool - https://fomplopool.com offers: no fees, 8% Promo Bonus

nam SIGNA pool - https://SIGNApool.notallmine.net  offers: no fees, 5% Bonus, cool bots, neat stats and reporting, almost no solo miners, charges fees to solo miners

You can also see a running list of popular pools with links to them on the Mining Pool Stats page. Make sure to do your homework like above, some of these pools use custom written pools software.

https://miningpoolstats.stream/signa