Despite suggestions that Bitcoin mining pools are not as profitable as they used to be, the new open-source platform by China’s website for Bitcoin block statistics seems to have found a place on the list of the top ten mining pools. According to the pool distribution statistics provided by Blocktrail as at the time of writing, BTC.com launched the new platform about two weeks ago and is now at the tenth spot on the list of pools covering 2.40% of the market share, based on the past week’s record. In a chat with CoinTelegraph, Bitmain’s Nishant Sharma says the pool has been launched now despite the halving having cut the block rewards in half because the mining community remains strong and is still growing. Zero mining fee Bitmain’s BTC.com which started as a block explorer last year is using some incentives to draw users. It will be charging zero mining fee for the pool until 2017, and will offer a 1% subsidy to every new user within the first three months of its launch, provided the user maintains a hashrate for at least one month. Some of the pool’s new features are its “PoolWatcher” function to “listen” to other mining pools to reduce the number of orphaned blocks and increase the pool’s productivity; and the “BtcAgent” software which enables mining farm owners or miners with multiple workers to monitor workers in their LAN on the mining pool. Whether these features will enhance its competition with other operators and rise on the list cannot be determined yet especially with all the incentives still attached to its services. Welcome to the club It is still a long way from established pools such as DiscusFish / F2Pool which currently holds 16.12% of the market, AntPool 14.78%, BW Pool 13.24%, BTCC 12.38% and […]
