Solo, a small miner might wait years to find a block; in a pool, thousands of machines search together, and each participant earns their proportional share of every block found. The pool charges a fee (0.5–4%) and handles block construction, payout accounting, and infrastructure.
Pool choice involves fee level, payout scheme (FPPS vs PPLNS), minimum payout, server latency, and decentralisation concerns — routing hashrate to a pool nearing half the network is a systemic risk. Our per-coin pool pages compare all of this live.
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