Share
16/04/2026
Share is a unit of proof-of-work submitted by a miner to a mining pool. A share demonstrates that the miner performed hashing work — even if the hash did not satisfy the full network difficulty — and is used by the pool to measure each miner's contribution and distribute rewards fairly.
Share difficulty vs network difficulty
The full network difficulty can be extremely high — finding a valid block hash directly may take a single GPU years. Pools therefore accept hashes meeting a lower, share difficulty target. This gives the pool a continuous stream of evidence that a miner is working.
Only rarely does a submitted share happen to also meet the full network difficulty — when it does, it becomes a valid block and the pool earns the block reward.
Types of shares
- Accepted — valid share that counts toward the miner's reward
- Rejected — invalid share (wrong target, malformed, duplicate) — does not count
- Stale — calculated correctly but arrived after the pool moved to a new job; partially counted or dropped depending on pool policy
High rejection or stale rates usually indicate high latency, misconfigured mining software, or unstable hardware.
Shares and payouts
Under most payout schemes (PPS, PPS+, PPLNS, FPPS), a miner's share of the pool's rewards is proportional to the accepted shares they submit.
