P2Pool is a decentralized Bitcoin pool that works by creating a peer-to-peer network of miner nodes. P2Pool generates a new block chain in which the mining difficulty can be adjusted so that a new block is created every 20 seconds.
The blocks that fall into the P2Pool blockchain are the same blocks that can fall into the P2Pool blockchain, the only difference being that they have less complexity.
When a peer finds a new share, it is passed on to another peer, and the remaining peers verify that this block contains payouts for all previous miners who found shares on the P2Pool blockchain.
This continues until a certain peer finds a block that matches the difficulty level of the Bitcoin network. This peer announces the block found to the Bitcoin network, and miners with ready-made shares for it receive payment in proportion to how many shares they found.
About the pool
F2Pool is the world leader and the very first Chinese Bitcoin mining pool. It is also the world's largest integrated digital currency mining pool.
The F2Pool team includes only the best and most talented specialists.
The founders of the pool, Discusfish and Wang Chun, were the first group to express the opinion of crypto enthusiasts of the blockchain industry in China. They led the team to create China's first digital currency mining platform.
F2Pool currently operates in the USA, Canada, Singapore, Russia and other countries. F2Pool has led to the rapid development of the blockchain industry.
Pool history
2011
In 2011-2013
there was a predecessor to F2Pool, a private pool that laid the foundation for future operations. 2013
In April 2013, F2Pool was created as the very first Bitcoin mining pool in China.
2015
In 2015, the pool accounted for a third of the BTC network hashrate, and F2Pool became the world's largest Bitcoin mining pool.
2016
In 2016, ETH was launched on F2Pool.
The F2Pool hashrate is a quarter of the Ethereum network hashrate, and the number of connections to the pool has reached millions. 2018
In 2022, F2Pool continued to lead the digital currency mining industry and changed the world with high-quality digital asset projects.
Mining equipment
To mine Zcash and Ethereum (Classic) cryptocurrencies, you will need a farm with modern powerful video cards. It is better to mine Bitcoin, Dash and other coins on specialized ASICs, which are characterized by high energy efficiency and performance. The exceptions are Monero (XMR) and Decred (DCR). It is profitable to mine XMR on the processor of a farm engaged in mining ZEC or ETH. At the current rate, investing in special equipment for Monero mining is unprofitable. Decred is useful for dual mining, which involves simultaneous mining of ETH and DCR on one video card. At the same time, Decred mining does not reduce the Ether hashrate.
Site interface overview
The F2Pool main page will look like this:
- Switch language . Chinese, English, Spanish supported
- Main menu:
- PoW Rankings – PoW rating. Interesting rating columns:
Place in the ranking, capitalization, exchange rate, volume, power equivalent (how much was earned for this power) in 24 hours, current hashrate, coin algorithm, maximum supply of coins and how much has already been put into circulation as a percentage.
Essentially, this is a description of each coin on the pool.
- Popular Miners - popular miners and their descriptions
- App – link to the mobile application
- Help – help center, FAQ there
- Login/registration/search the site
- Mobile app download link
- Scrolling a little lower, you will see a list of coins on the pool. They are ranked according to 2 lists: main and new coins
- Pool Features:
- One of the first mining pools
- The largest cryptocurrency mining pool
- Leading Technologies
- Guides:
- How to register on the pool
- Miner's choice
- Start of mining (separately for each coin)
- How to Earn More (Guides for Some Coins)
general information
The f2pool resource, known as Discus Fish (discus is a breed of aquarium fish), provides 10% of the hashrate of the Bitcoin network. Since 2014, the owners began to expand their business, offering services for mining other coins. At the time of writing, Discus Fish has servers for mining the following coins:
- Bitcoin;
- Ethereum;
- Zcash;
- Ethereum Classic;
- Litecoin;
- Seacoin;
- Monero;
- Monero Classic;
- Decred;
- Zcoin;
- Aion;
- Dash.
The pool was created by Chinese investors and has only two interface languages - Chinese and English.
f2pool is the only leading platform with the main payment system adopted by PPS (“pay-per-share”). This system involves paying miners for each sent share that the site’s engine considers valid.
The site’s personal account is not designed to accumulate large sums. The pool owners strongly recommend withdrawing funds as they are received. Moreover, according to the user agreement, all money that is not withdrawn for more than 90 days is considered donations for the development of the site. Therefore, the first thing you need to do before starting mining is to create a cryptocurrency wallet into which your earnings will go.
Registration
In order to mine cryptocurrency on F2Pool, you need to register on the pool. This procedure is mandatory, so click here and fill out the registration form:
- Come up with a nickname
- We write your Email - it is better to use email from Google, as it is best protected from hacking
- Enter your mobile phone
- Enter characters from captcha
- Enter the code from SMS
- Coming up with a COMPLEX password
- Repeat password
- We agree to the terms of use of the pool
- Click “Submit”
After entering all the data, you will be sent an email, as you will then need to activate your account via Email.
Go to your mailbox and look for a letter from F2Pool.
Next, you need to log into the pool using the specified Email and password. Don't forget to click on the "I'm not a robot" captcha. Ready! You have registered for F2Pool.
How to start the mining process
F2Pool is a popular online mining system that allows you to mine not only BTC, but also ETH, LTC, ZEC, Monero, SC, ETC and DASH. To configure the f2pool pool as needed and start the mining process, you should:
- Go to the pool;
- Go to the “Help” tab and study information on setting up the system;
- Download the miner program (having studied in advance the topic on how to connect the miner to the f2pool pool);
- Enter the wallet address in the search bar on the pool to have access to statistics.
Mining Bitcoin
The most famous cryptocurrency of our time is Bitcoin. Having become a pioneer in this area, it is still actively developing today, generating more complex blocks. In this regard, exchange trading takes place for huge amounts. Of course, block generation goes much better through a pool, where the computing power is much greater than that of a lone miner. And although in the long term the average amount of reward is the same, the mining process is more uniform.
If you count on the long term, then there is no difference in mining modes. Be it PPS or proportional mode, by “balls” or points. On the pool, the main thing is the “tax” of the system. In the end, the most important thing is to achieve uniformity in the process.
Primary address: stratum.f2pool.com:3333 Secondary address: stratum.f2pool.com:25 American server: stratum-us.f2pool.com
Payments on “balls” by -3 percent. Settlement coin for the day is 0.00009950 BTC/Thash /s.
Mining Litecoin
Recently, the cryptocurrency was “in the shadow” of Bitcoin, with a rate of no more than four dollars per coin. But by the fall of 2022, the cost reached $90. Due to the scrypt algorithm (key generation), the process is very memory intensive.
Litecoin has not gained even greater popularity in the Russian Federation, but this cryptocurrency is spreading well all over the world. According to experts, the market for this electronic currency is stable, and most exchanges will always help you exchange for Bitcoin. This is why many users are looking at Litecoin.
Primary address: stratum.f2pool.com:8888 Secondary address: stratum.f2pool.com:25 American server: stratum-us.f2pool.com:8888
The settlement coin per day is 0.00012036 LTC/Mhash /s, and the payout is PPS 4%.
Mining Ethereum
The Ethereum cryptocurrency, which can be mined through Claymore, is based on Bitcoin. However, unlike other altcoins, ETH has many differences: maximum protection against DDoS attacks, a system of smart contracts and smart contracts, participant authorization through a cryptographic signature. It is also possible to store the data of each transaction on the blockchain. For now, mining can be carried out, for example, through the Claymore miner. However, it is known that last year it was officially announced that Ethereum mining would soon switch to the Proof of Stake system, that is, when transactions will be confirmed not by computer power, but by virtual coins in the wallet. Payouts on F2Pool - PPS 3%.
Connection address: eth.f2pool.com:8008 Secondary address: eth.f2pool.com:8080
Settlement coins - 0.00010042 ETH/Mhash/s.
Mining Ethereum Classic
Currently F2Pool is making PPS payments (5%). The emergence of Ethereum Classic was preceded by a instability in the original project. You can work with this cryptocurrency only in the long term, for example, through the Claymores miner. Analysts note that ETC will rise in price in the near future.
Primary address: etc.f2pool.com:8118
Mining Zcash
By carefully encrypting transactions, Zcash uses an innovative cryptography method for verification. Thus, no traces remain in the chain: no wallets, no amounts. Only the fact of the transaction itself is available. The mining model is Zcash and goes through the URL zec.f2pool.com:3357 or Asic with PPS payouts (5%).
Address: zec.f2pool.com:3357
Mining Dash
You can mine Dash with interest-free payments on F2Pool via PPS. Although cryptocurrency is based on a traditional peer-to-peer network, recording transactions on the blockchain has many interesting features. For example, InstantX instant transactions, X11 mining protocol, two-level network architecture and DarkGravityWave recalculation mechanism.
Pool address: dash.f2pool.com:5588
Mining Siacoin
The main difference between this cryptocurrency and altcoins is integrated inflation. Initially, the reward for mining was equal to 300 thousand coins, but with each subsequent block the figure decreased by one coin. As soon as the reward of 30 thousand coins reaches 270 thousand, the indicator is fixed. Through F2Pool, payments are made at PPS 3%.
Primary pool: sc.f2pool.com:7778 (For GPU & A3 Miner) Secondary pool: sc.f2pool.com:7777 (For ETH + SC Dual Mining)
Mining Monero
Monero is distinguished by its resistance to block analysis, full adaptation to all user needs, operation on the Proof-of-work principle and unrelated payment transactions, as well as interest-free payments on “shares”. The main features of cryptocurrency are open source code and complete anonymity of transactions.
Pool address: xmr.f2pool.com:13531
After registration
As soon as you have registered, some sections are added to the menu and your profile. It all looks like this:
- Menu:
- Home – main page
- Workers - workers
- Payouts - payments
- Labs – new coins
- PoW Rankings – PoW rating
- Popular Miners - popular miners
- Change the language / change the coin for which statistics are displayed on this page
- Your profile:
- Account Settings – account settings
- Help – user help center
- Support - support
- App – download a mobile application and information about it
- Sign Ou t – exit
- Hashrate value for the last 24 hours
- Pool news
Security P2Pool
Unlike other pools where there is no division into shares, P2Pool is more secure. Here, progress in the creation of blocks, as well as ownership of shares, is distributed throughout the network. That is, it is almost impossible to find a vulnerability in such a system.
Moreover, each individual node is reliable and this leads to a high level of protection for the entire network.
Accordingly, this approach using decentralized nodes is a significant advantage.
In the event that attackers are still able to somehow damage one of the nodes, they will not steal mining data or destroy it.
The node operator will be able to reinstall it. At the same time, all information regarding this node is stored in the public network of shares.
After reinstallation, the operator will be able to rejoin the network and receive his share, as well as all the necessary information from the share network in a matter of minutes.
The P2Pool pool provides a high level of protection against well-known DDoS attacks. This decentralized method is considered resistant to DDoS attacks. The fact is that in such a system it is enough for at least one node to withstand the attack. In this case, he will be able to restore the rest of the system.
This is another big advantage of a decentralized system. The fact is that hacking a centralized network will stop all further work.
As for information, in most cases it is either destroyed or lost forever. This is one of the reasons why the Bitcoin network is also decentralized.
In the case of centralized networks, situations are also possible when part of the pool can receive more than 50% of the hashrate. In this case, there is a danger of manipulation by such a “cartel”. In the case of decentralized networks, this is simply impossible.
In practice, this means that even if 100% of miners used P2Pool, it would be impossible to gain an advantage in the Bitcoin network thanks to P2P.
go
Setting up security on F2Pool (2fa)
We recommend setting up account security right away. To do this, click on the nickname and go to Account Settings – Security Settings – 2-Step Verification – Open.
Instructions for setting up 2fa open:
- First, download the 2fa application to your smartphone:
Android application https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.authenticator2
Application for IOS https://itunes.apple.com/ru/app/google-authenticator/id388497605?mt=8
- Open the application, click on “+” in the upper right corner. Select “scan barcode”
- Save your 2fa access recovery code in case your smartphone is lost.
- After scanning, a line with a six-digit code opens in the application - enter this code on the PC in the “Verification Code” column
Important! If you have the opportunity to install 2fa on several devices at the same time, do it. This action will secure your account even more. Don't worry: the same code will be displayed on all devices, there will be no errors.
If for some reason the QR code cannot be recognized, try increasing the brightness of the PC screen.
If this does not help, download a third-party application for recognizing QR codes and scan with it (for iOS, just open the camera and point at the QR code).
After scanning, the application itself will offer to go to the 2FA application, where all you have to do is click on the “add” button.
Sometimes the pool writes that the six-digit code you enter is not suitable or has expired. If this happens several times in a row, but you are sure that you are entering everything correctly, we recommend deleting your 2fa account on your smartphone and adding it again, but not through a QR code, but manually. Then everything will work out.
Selecting a wallet
The appropriate type of crypto wallet depends on your plans for further use of your coins:
- Accumulation. An offline software or hardware wallet is suitable for these purposes. The second option is more convenient and reliable, but the cost of the device does not suit all miners. The cheapest USB cryptocurrency wallet costs between $60-$80.
Hardware wallets – Keepkey, Trezor, Ledger Nano S. - Exchange for fiat money. If you are going to convert cryptocurrency through an exchange, use an exchange account in the appropriate cryptocurrency. To work with exchange sites, it is better to choose web wallets. This is due to the fact that exchanges charge withdrawal fees and send funds with a long delay.
Setting up mining using Grin as an example
In order to start mining coins on the pool, you need to download the miner.
On our website you can use all GPU algorithms presented in this pool.
Next you need to get a coin wallet. To do this, register on a safe and convenient exchange for you (the one where the coin you need is traded) and receive a digital wallet for this coin on it.
Or you can download the coin wallet and get the key. A guide to secure wallets can be found here.
Next we move on to setting up the Bat file. To get all the information about the pool, go to the main page of the site https://www.f2pool.com/.
Scroll below and see the list of coins presented on the pool.
If for some reason you do not see the coin you need, then use the search in the upper right corner.
Let's go through the header of the presented table with coins:
- Coins – list of pool coins (token + picture)
- Pool Hashrate – the pool hashrate (pool power) the higher, the easier it is to mine.
- Hashrate – hash rate
- Coin Price – online coin price (in USD). In the upper right corner of the header there is a “USD” button; if you click on it, the price changes from USD to CNY
- Daily Revenue - daily income. This means income from 1 (Mh/s, Th/s, Gh/s, Ksol/s and so on) for a general idea
- Algo – coin algorithm
Next we see 2 more additional buttons in the rightmost column, they are the same for each coin.
Tutorial – manual in English, general description, types of miners for this coin and a brief description of the settings in English.
Calc – online calculator. If you know the hashrate of your farm, enter it into the “Calc” of the coin you need and the calculator will automatically calculate your profit (in coin and in USD) at the current rate.
- Enter the hashrate of your farm
- The calculator will automatically calculate the estimated amount of coins you received in 24 hours
- If you want to do the same with another coin, click on this button (list of coins) and change to the one you need. For example, from Grin to Ethereum
Please note that the pool and calculator constantly issues a reminder:
*Please Note: This calculator uses the current network difficulty to estimate the PPS revenue. It should be used as a reference only.
Please note: This calculator uses the current network difficulty to estimate PPS revenue.
To understand how this happens, read our guide to mining reward structures.
Let's move on to setting up the Bat file. To do this, click on the coin you need in the table (on any empty space), after which the information you need will unfold.
As an example, let's look at setting up the mining of the Green coin on the F2pool pool, the Bminer program.
The finished Bat file should look like this:
@echo OFF START bminer.exe -uri cuckaroo29://bytwork.rig1::13654 pause
Let's start the analysis in order:
START "Bminer: - program name
-uri cuckaroo29:// - coin algorithm
bytwork. – name during registration (what you entered in the “Username” field)
rig1 – the name of your farm
:foo – password (not needed, just leave “:foo”
@grin29.f2pool.com:13654 – pool address and port
There is no need to create a worker.
The pool address and port must be obtained by clicking on a coin from the list.
In the window that opens we will see the address and port of the pool (everything is the same for each coin)
Then save the batch file and run the miner!
A step-by-step guide to mining Grin is described in this article.
Other parameters:
- pool address and port
- Online calculator. Enter the hashrate of your farm, for example, you have 90 graph/s on Grin, enter this number, and the calculator will immediately show how many coins you will receive per day.
- Mining Machine – type of equipment (GPU or ASIC) for your convenience and understanding
- Difficulty
- Payout – payment of 3% PPS (you can find out what PPS is and whether it is profitable in this article)
- Payout Threshold – payout threshold (5 coins for Green)
How to set up mining via F2Pool
In order to join the pool, you need to enter the username, password and server 1 in the Bitcoin client, in the bitcoin.conf file. It is better to create a fairly long password, which would consist of 20-25 characters.
The client is better off using version 0.8.5 or any newer version. It is important that the client is synchronized before mining begins. The next step is to launch the pool. In the Windows py2exe line you need to write run_p2pool.exe, and in the source field - python run_ p2pool.py.
After this, you need to launch the daemon miner with a connection to IP 127.0.0.1 port 9332. It is also recommended to use the bfgminer miner with similar parameters.
How to receive payments
F2Pool partners with some major exchanges to support the withdrawal of earnings from the most popular cryptocurrencies. You can use the wallet node URL or link your exchange account details to withdraw coins.
To set up payments, go to your account, click on your nickname - Account Settings - Payout Settings.
A window will appear as shown in the figure below. Click on the username you used when mining. Click on the coin you mined and want to withdraw, click “Add Address”.
Next, a window will open to add a wallet address. Enter the address of the digital wallet, the code from the SMS and click “Submit”.
After submitting the information, F2Pool will send an email to your email address. Once you receive your activation email, click on the link in the email to complete the final setup step.
After completing the above steps, the Pool will withdraw funds automatically to the specified address in accordance with the information received.
Payments occur automatically upon reaching the minimum threshold. You can see the minimum payout threshold here (https://blog.f2pool.com/en/faq-en/the-threshold-for-each-coin)
If payments do not arrive, then you need to wait until the minimum threshold is reached.
Withdrawals and rewards
In addition to the main rewards for mining, F2Pool users receive a “bonus” of 3%. This is the only pool that works through P2P payments. An important point: it is advisable to withdraw funds within 90 days, otherwise the miner’s profit may be transferred to the system as “charity”. The commission will not exceed 4%.
Payments on the server are made daily to a wallet that can be connected in “Payout Settings”. You can withdraw funds if you have a minimum amount of cryptocurrency in your account: 0.1 XMR, 0.001 BTC, 0.1 ETH/ETC, 0.02 LTC, 500 SC, 0.1 ZEC or 0.1 DASH.
