what is mining ?

 mining for cryptocurrency. How a Mining Pool Works Individually, participants during a mining pool contribute their processing power toward the hassle of finding a block. If the pool is successful in these efforts, they receive an award, typically within the style of the associated cryptocurrency. Rewards are usually divided between the individuals who contributed, consistent with the proportion of every individual's processing power or work relative to the full group. In some cases, individual miners must show proof of labor so as to receive their rewards. Anyone who wants to create a profit through cryptocurrency mining has the selection to either go solo with their own dedicated devices or to hitch a mining pool where multiple miners and their devices combine to reinforce their hashing output. as an example, attaching six mining devices that every offers 335 megahashes per second (MH/s) can generate a cumulative 2 gigahashes of mining power, thereby resulting in faster processing of the hash function. Mining Pool Methods Not all cryptocurrency mining pools function within the same way. There are, however, variety of common protocols that govern many of the foremost popular mining pools. Proportional mining pools are among the foremost common. during this variety of pool, miners contributing to the pool's processing power receive shares up until the purpose at which the pool succeeds to find a block. After that, miners receive rewards proportional to the quantity of shares they hold. Pay-per-share pools operate somewhat similarly in this each miner receives shares for his or her contribution. However, these pools provide instant payouts no matter when the block is found. A miner contributing to the current style of pool can exchange shares for a proportional payout at any time. Peer-to-peer mining pools, meanwhile, aim to forestall the pool structure from becoming centralized. As such, they integrate a separate blockchain associated with the pool itself and designed to stop the operators of the pool from cheating moreover because the pool itself from failing thanks to one central issue. Benefits of a Mining Pool While success in individual mining grants complete ownership of the reward, the percentages of achieving success is extremely low thanks to high power and resource requirements. Mining is commonly not a profitable venture for people. Many cryptocurrencies became increasingly difficult to mine in recent years because the popularity of those digital currencies has grown and therefore the costs related to expensive hardware necessary to be a competitive miner moreover as electricity oftentimes outweigh the potential rewards. Mining pools require less of every individual participant in terms of hardware and electricity costs and increase the probabilities of profitability. Whereas a private miner might stand little chance of successfully finding a block and receiving a mining reward, teaming up with others dramatically improves the success rate. Disadvantages of a Mining Pool By collaborating in an exceedingly mining pool, individuals hand over a number of their autonomy within the mining process. they're typically bound by terms set by the pool itself, which can dictate how the mining process is approached. they're also required to divide up any potential rewards, meaning that the share of profit is lower for a personal participating in a very pool. A small number of mining pools, like AntPool, Poolin, and F2Pool, dominate the bitcoin mining process, in keeping with blockchain.com. Although many pools do make an attempt to be decentralized, these groups consolidate much of the authority to manipulate the bitcoin protocol. for a few cryptocurrency proponents, the presence of atiny low number of powerful mining pools goes against the decentralized structure inherent in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies