What is the best mining pool for DigiByte?
We get asked this a lot in the Support / Mining channel, what is the “best” pool?
What I’m going to do today is teach you why it’s not a clever question, and what you should be asking, to get the most out of your mining!
You see there is no one answer to this, what is the “best”, because what’s the best for one person likely won’t be for another.
DigiByte has 5x mining algorithms, these are currently:
- SHA256
- Scrypt
- Odocrypt
- Skein
- Qubit
If you have a miner that mines SHA256, then there’s little point finding a mining pool that only supports Scrypt mining. Many pools support all 5x algorithms, however some don’t, so look into that. The first thing you MUST know is: What algorithm am I using to mine DigiByte?
This is going to depend on your hardware. If you’re unsure, a quick Google will help you:
Funnily enough, this search shows a great result, advising “No, the S3 cannot mine using the Scrypt algorithm”, because the Antminer S3 only supports the SHA256 algorithm.
The same goes for other hardware:
So if you had the Innosilicon A6+, you’ll be mining with Scrypt.
Perfect, now you know the algorithm you’ll be mining with, it’s time to find a mining pool that supports that algorithm, but which one should you choose?
You see if you go to DGBWiki under Pools, you’ll see there’s dozens!
Which one should you choose?
You want to try and mine with the one that’s closest to your physical location, as it likely has the lowest latency:
If you’re in Austin Texas, then Brutangs Dallas pool is probably a good idea.
However if you’re in the Netherlands, then it’s going to be a much worse idea. It’ll still work, but you’ll have a lot more rejected “shares”, and should instead be looking at Mining Dutch or similar.
But, why?
Well, what you’re doing with a mining pool is being divvied up a task, a whole lot of math. You’re working cooperatively with others in the pool to find an answer to a mathematical calculation, while racing against miners in other pools.
The mining pool will give you a bunch of “work” to do based on roughly how fast your miner is. You complete that work, and give it back to the pool, who then checks that work, and gives you more.
However, if someone else in your pool found the block during that time, and you’ve just spend the last 5 out of 15 seconds doing “work” that the mining pool has deemed invalid (Because it’s already moved on to the next problem, the next block) then you’ve just wasted ~30% of your hashrate.
You want to avoid rejected shares, and the best way to do that is to ensure that your miner can give it’s “work” back to the pool in-time before the pool has moved on to the next job.
As such, the faster your connection to the mining pool, both in terms of lowest latency and maximum throughput / speed, the better the results you’re going to have. There are ways to measure it, but for simplicity sake, finding a server that is physically near to your location is probably a good starting place.
This is why there is no one “best” mining pool, and why you shouldn’t be afraid to move around. You’re not finding a life-partner with a mining pool, you pay them (usually a 1–2% fee) so you might as well find one that’s going to give you maximized returns on the hashrate you’re providing, and avoid it going to waste!
