Pay-Per-Last N Shares (PPLNS)
Pay-Per-Last N Shares (PPLNS) is a mining reward system used by several popular cryptocurrency mining pools. It pays miners according to their shares in the last N completed blocks, as opposed to the traditional Pay Per Share (PPS) method which pays out based on miner’s total number of submitted shares. PPLNS rewards miners for submitting valid blocks and also provides an incentive for constant hashing power since it requires that miners stay connected throughout a round of work. The main advantage of this system is its improved fairness compared to other methods, as it reduces cheating opportunities inherent in other systems such as PPS or proportional pooling.
The way PPLNS works is fairly straightforward: when a block is found, all active miners who contributed their hashpower are rewarded based on how many valid “shares” they were able to submit during the previous set amount of time (N). A share refers to any solution provided by a miner that meets certain criteria – typically difficulty requirements established by the pool operator. As long as these conditions are met, each share will count towards the final block reward along with all other validated solutions from participating miners; thus making solo mining much less profitable than joining a pooled effort where individual efforts can be combined more effectively and efficiently towards finding new blocks more quickly.
In order to prevent malicious actors from gaming the system, most pools place restrictions on who can join them – often requiring registration or payment before allowing users access – and use sophisticated algorithms designed specifically for preventing double spending attacks and detecting fraudulent activity within their networks. Additionally, some pools may implement additional rules such as not rewarding idle workers or those who jump between different pools too frequently in order to further protect against possible abuse scenarios that could otherwise occur due to poor network security protocols being employed by particular pool operators.
Overall, Pay Per Last N Shares offers superior payouts and better fairness compared with traditional methods like Proportional Pooling or even Pay Per Share schemes; thereby ensuring that everyone gets fair compensation for their contributions regardless of whether they’re part of large operations or small ones working independently at home!
