Quote from: EriksonPartners on March 07, 2019, 10:45:13 AM

Does anyone know, how does the bitcoin network know who is a solo miner and who is mining pool? Or it does not matter at all? Im just thinking about the rewarding process.

A pool is like a solo miner. The pool just happens to have a huge hashrate advantage, so its chances to finding the next block are n times larger. The pool operator decides how the reward is awarded to the pool participants, vs a real solo miner where all the reward goes to that specific miner.

n is a number so ridiculously high that i won't bother calculating.

A "solo pool" sound like a contradiction, but its mean't for lazy miners who don't bother to set up their own nodes. Of course those pools take a fee for their service...

In an ideal world, everyone would pick a 0 fee PPLNS pool (such as ckpool.org) and get the maximum possible reward. But people are too lazy to do math, or to save for the future and need a kind of bank accountant to ensure a steady flow which is the typical PPS pool, for a much higher fee of course...

When people use PPS, they are literally paying someone to manage their money for them so that they are unable to spend it all when the luck is good. Its the miner's private accountant because that miner just can't resist the urge to control themselves. Its also a sort of loaning, in case they start with bad luck, they'll pay as if luck was nearly 100% but in exchange when the luck is good they keep the bonus for themselves... Thats in addition to paying much higher fees, because, they have to handle your money you just can't by yourself.

There is no such thing as a ~~free lunch~~ 0 fee PPS pool.