Mining pool
A Bitcoin mining pool is a group of miners who work on the same block and share the reward, so each earns a steady income instead of a rare whole block.
Miners who share their work and split the rewards, so each gets a steady income instead of a rare jackpot. A pool names itself in the coinbase of the blocks it finds: a claim, not proof.
How does a pool know who did the work?
Members send in "shares": hashes that are not good enough for a block but below an easier target set by the pool. Shares are counted and paid for, under schemes such as FPPS or PPLNS. Now and then one of them is good enough for the real target, and the pool has found a block.
How do you know which pool found a block?
From what the block says: pools write a tag in the coinbase and are paid at known addresses. This site matches both against a public list of pools. It is a claim, not proof, and a few blocks stay unknown.
Sources
Updated 10 Oct 2026
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