3

How does a mining pool insure that the miner who will find the valid share for the current block will not use it for his solo mining?

1 Answer 1

5

The address the block reward goes to is in the data that is being hashed. That address is the pool's. If a miner finds a hash that meets the block difficulty, changing the address to the miner's own will cause a different hash, and you don't have control over the distribution of the bits in that second hash. So you don't get a block if you change the address.

Going the other way is the same: if the miner mines using his or her own address, that miner will not be able to send shares to the pool to secure part of next block the pool finds.

A miner can withhold the winning share though, which is detrimental to the pool, but cannot pocket the reward.

1
  • what about holding the hash hostage with a zero-knowledge proof?
    – JBaczuk
    Commented Sep 5, 2023 at 22:16

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.