Pool Configuration: Connecting Your Miner to a Mining Pool

Your ASIC miner is an incredibly powerful machine, but on its own, it’s like a factory with no address to ship its products. Pool configuration is how you tell your miner where to send its work — and ultimately, how you get paid. Get this wrong, and your miner will happily burn electricity while earning you nothing.

Let’s walk through every field on the pool configuration page and make sure you get it right.

Why You Need a Mining Pool

Before we jump into the settings, a quick refresher on why pools exist. Bitcoin mining is a lottery — your miner is trying to find a specific number that solves a mathematical puzzle. The odds of a single miner finding a block on its own are astronomically small (think winning the Powerball kind of small). A mining pool combines the hashing power of thousands of miners, finds blocks more frequently, and splits the reward among participants based on how much work each contributed.

Solo mining is like buying one lottery ticket. Pool mining is like joining an office lottery pool where everyone chips in and splits the winnings.

The Three Fields You Need to Fill

Every miner’s pool configuration page has three essential fields, typically repeated three times (for Pool 1, Pool 2, and Pool 3):

1. Pool URL — the address of the mining pool server
2. Worker Name — your unique identifier within the pool
3. Password — almost always irrelevant, but the field exists

Let’s break each one down.

Pool URL: The Server Address

The pool URL tells your miner where to connect. It looks something like this:

stratum+tcp://stratum.example-pool.com:3333

Let’s dissect that:

• stratum+tcp:// — the protocol. Stratum is the communication protocol used between miners and pools. Think of it like “https://” for websites — it defines how the miner and pool talk to each other. The “tcp” part means it’s using a standard TCP network connection.
• stratum.example-pool.com — the hostname of the pool server. This is the actual address of the server your miner connects to.
• :3333 — the port number. Different ports often correspond to different difficulty levels or features. Common ports include 3333, 25, and 443.

Protocol Variations

You might see a few different protocol prefixes:

Protocol	What It Means
stratum+tcp://	Standard unencrypted Stratum connection (most common)
stratum+ssl://	Encrypted Stratum connection (more secure, slightly more CPU overhead)
stratum2+tcp://	Stratum V2 protocol (newer, more efficient, not yet widely adopted)

Tip

If your pool offers both TCP and SSL options, SSL is generally preferred when available. It encrypts the connection between your miner and the pool, preventing man-in-the-middle attacks that could redirect your mining rewards. The performance difference is negligible on modern hardware.

Choosing the Right Server

Most large pools operate servers in multiple regions. Pick the server closest to your physical location for the lowest latency. You’ll see options like:

• us-east.pool.com — United States, East Coast
• eu.pool.com — Europe
• asia.pool.com — Asia

Lower latency means your shares reach the pool faster, reducing the chance of stale shares (work that’s no longer valid because someone else found a block in the meantime).

Common Port Numbers

Pools typically offer multiple ports:

• Low difficulty ports (3333, 25) — for smaller miners or testing
• Medium difficulty ports (443, 1800) — for standard ASIC miners
• High difficulty ports (3334, 8888) — for large operations with many miners

Using the right port matters. If you connect a high-powered ASIC to a low-difficulty port, the pool gets flooded with easy shares. Most modern pools auto-adjust difficulty regardless of port, but it’s still good practice to use the recommended port for your hardware.

Worker Name: Your Identity on the Pool

The worker name is how the pool identifies your specific miner. The format depends on the pool, but the most common convention is:

account.workerName

For example: myUsername.farm_rack1_unit3

• account — your username or account name on the pool. On some pools, this might be your Bitcoin wallet address instead of a username.
• workerName — a name you choose for this specific miner. This is entirely up to you, but smart naming helps when you have multiple machines.

Worker Naming Best Practices

If you have one miner, worker names don’t matter much. But once you have several, good naming saves headaches:

• By location: warehouse.row2_rack5_pos3
• By model: s19pro.unit07
• By function: production.miner042

Caution

Avoid spaces and special characters in worker names. Stick to letters, numbers, underscores, and hyphens. Some pools and miners handle special characters poorly, which can cause connection failures that are frustrating to debug.

Wallet Address as Account Name

Some pools (especially “anonymous” or “no-registration” pools) use your Bitcoin wallet address as the account name instead of a traditional username:

bc1qxy2kgdygjrsqtzq2n0yrf2493p83kkfjhx0wlh.miner01

This is perfectly valid. The pool pays directly to this address, so there’s no account to create or manage. Double-check the address carefully though — if you mistype it, your rewards go to someone else (or nowhere), and there’s no way to get them back.

Password: The (Mostly) Useless Field

Here’s a field that trips up a lot of beginners: the password. In 95% of cases, it doesn’t matter what you put here. Most pools ignore this field entirely. Common values people use:

• x
• 123
• anything
• Just the letter d

The password field exists as a legacy from early Bitcoin mining protocols. Some pools use it for optional features (like setting a custom payout threshold or flagging a difficulty preference), but for standard operation, just type x and move on.

Note

A few smaller pools do use the password field for authentication or configuration. Always check your specific pool’s setup documentation. But if the pool’s guide doesn’t mention the password field, x is the safe default.

Backup Pools: Your Insurance Policy

This is where many miners make a costly mistake — they configure Pool 1 and leave Pool 2 and Pool 3 empty. Don’t do this.

Your miner’s pool configuration page usually has three pool slots:

• Pool 1 (Primary) — where your miner sends work under normal conditions
• Pool 2 (Backup) — where your miner switches if Pool 1 goes down
• Pool 3 (Tertiary) — the last resort if both Pool 1 and Pool 2 are unavailable

Why Backup Pools Matter

Pools go down. It happens. Server maintenance, DDoS attacks, network issues — even the biggest pools occasionally have outages. Without a backup pool configured, your miner sits idle during that downtime, burning electricity and earning nothing.

Think of it like this: if your favorite gas station is closed, you don’t just park and wait. You drive to the next one.

How Failover Works

When your miner can’t connect to Pool 1 (or stops receiving work from it), it automatically switches to Pool 2. If Pool 2 also fails, it moves to Pool 3. When Pool 1 comes back online, most miners will automatically switch back (this behavior can usually be configured).

Backup Pool Strategy

There are several approaches to setting up backups:

Same Pool, Different Server

Use the same pool but a different regional server. This protects against a single server going down while keeping all your mining under one pool account.

• Pool 1: stratum+tcp://us-east.mypool.com:3333
• Pool 2: stratum+tcp://eu.mypool.com:3333
• Pool 3: stratum+tcp://asia.mypool.com:3333

Different Pools

Use completely different pools. This protects against an entire pool going down.

• Pool 1: stratum+tcp://stratum.poolA.com:3333
• Pool 2: stratum+tcp://stratum.poolB.com:3333
• Pool 3: stratum+tcp://stratum.poolC.com:3333

Note: You’ll need accounts on all three pools, and your hashrate will be split across them during failover, potentially affecting payout thresholds.

Solo Pool as Backup

Use a solo mining pool as your third backup. If both main pools are down, you might as well take a lottery ticket.

• Pool 1: Main pool
• Pool 2: Same pool, different server
• Pool 3: Solo mining pool

Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Over the years, these are the pool configuration mistakes that trip people up most often:

Mistake 1: Typos in the Pool URL

A single wrong character in the pool URL means your miner can’t connect. The most common typos:

• Missing the stratum+tcp:// prefix
• Wrong port number
• Misspelled hostname

Always copy-paste the URL directly from your pool’s website rather than typing it manually.

Mistake 2: Wrong Worker Name Format

Different pools have different naming conventions:

• Some pools want username.workerName
• Some want just a wallet address
• Some want username_workerName (underscore instead of dot)

Check your pool’s setup page for the exact format.

Mistake 3: No Backup Pools

We covered this above, but it’s worth repeating. Always configure at least Pool 2. A 4-hour pool outage with no backup means 4 hours of wasted electricity.

Mistake 4: Leaving Pool 1 Set to the Default

Some miners ship with a default pool URL pre-configured (often the manufacturer’s own pool). If you don’t change it, you’re mining for someone else. Always verify Pool 1 is set to your chosen pool.

Mistake 5: Using the Wrong Wallet Address

If your pool uses wallet-based accounts, double-check the address every time. Bitcoin addresses are long and easy to mess up. A single wrong character means your rewards go into the void. Copy-paste from your wallet software and verify the first and last few characters.

Caution

Some malware specifically targets clipboard data, replacing copied Bitcoin addresses with the attacker’s address. After pasting a wallet address into your miner’s config, always verify it matches the original. Compare at least the first 6 and last 6 characters.

Mistake 6: Forgetting to Click “Save” or “Apply”

This sounds silly, but it happens constantly. You fill in all the fields, close the browser tab, and wonder why nothing changed. Most miner interfaces require you to explicitly save the configuration and sometimes restart the mining process for changes to take effect.

Verifying Your Pool Connection

After saving your pool settings, here’s how to verify everything is working:

1. Check the dashboard — the pool status should show “Active” or “Connected” within a minute or two
2. Check the pool’s website — log into your pool account and look for your worker. It might take 5-10 minutes to appear
3. Check for accepted shares — your miner’s dashboard should show accepted shares counting up. If you see “rejected” shares increasing rapidly, something is misconfigured
4. Check your hashrate on the pool — the pool’s dashboard should show hashrate roughly matching what your miner reports locally (it will take 15-30 minutes to stabilize)

If the miner shows “connected” but the pool doesn’t show your worker, the most likely issue is the worker name format. If the miner can’t connect at all, it’s the URL or a network issue.

A Note on Pool Fees

While not technically a “configuration” setting, it’s worth knowing that every pool charges a fee (typically 1-3% of your mining rewards). This fee is automatically deducted — you don’t configure it anywhere on your miner. The fee is part of the pool’s terms of service, and it’s the same regardless of how you configure your worker.

Wrapping Up

Pool configuration is one of those things that takes five minutes to set up correctly but can cost you real money if done wrong. Take the time to copy-paste URLs carefully, set up backup pools, and verify your connection is working. Once it’s done, you rarely need to touch it again unless you’re switching pools or adding new miners.

In the next article, we’ll look at network settings — making sure your miner can reliably connect to the internet and that you can find it on your local network.