The Bitcoin client protocol is well documented in the Bitcoin Wiki, but I can't find much on the protocol used by pools and miners. Is it described anywhere?
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1 Answer
When there were no pools, all of the first mining clients interfaced directly with Bitcoin. They connected to Bitcoin's JSON-RPC interface and used the getwork RPC method to get the required work. Getting work from a pool is the same as getting work from Bitcoin. The client connects to the pool over HTTP, often using the same HTTP authentication that Bitcoin's JSON-RPC interface uses; the client sends a JSON-RPC getwork message; and the pool sends back a JSON-RPC getwork response.
Many pools nowadays support some extensions to the getwork protocol that Bitcoin does not.
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1Since this answer was written there are two new protocols; Stratum and gbt (getblocktemplate). Stratum seems the most popular, and getwork is being phased out by most clients and servers. Sep 7, 2013 at 9:23