Bitcoin mining pools evaluated on which payout scheme carries your variance and orphan risk (30%), whether the coinbase transaction pays you directly or the pool holds your balance until it releases it (26%), whether the advertised fee is the whole fee once transaction fees and MEV are counted (24%), and who authors the block template you hash on (20%).
OCEAN
#1 of 8 · published ranking
OCEAN
80ChainChoice Score
4199
Why it leads
Best in the pool on fee completeness txfee MEV and block template control
Cost
Not priced· No comparable price is published
No provider can pay for a position in this table. The code that computes this order cannot read which links earn us a commission, and every build proves it. Every score below rebuilds from the published criteria.Ranking 2026.08 · 4 criteria · 8 products · same inputs, same order
Personal comparison
Bitcoin Mining Pools ranked comparison
No comparable price is published; ranking still uses verified product evidence.
RankProviderBest fitScore
1
OCEANOCEANThe only pool in the set whose non-cust...Top ranked
Payout scheme risk transfer — 9/10Trade-off: That the money is real but you cannot touch it for a quarter. OCEAN's non-custody is...
Ranked on 4 published criteria weighted 30/26/24/20, which set goal alignment — 30 of the 86 points. The rest: regional access 20, evidence depth 18, ease of use 10, institutional trust 8. Profile match is shown in breakdowns but carries no weight.
Audit
Infrastructure
Methodology
2026.09.15
published 2026-09-16
Providers tracked
980+
across 119 categories
Last verified
2026-08-19
newest dated pricing or sentiment read
Named on the roster
2 people
managing directors · 6 automated processes
Decision guide
What matters most before choosing in this category
Decide first whether you want a predictable cheque or control of the block. Most pools have converged on FPPS or a variant, which means the POOL carries variance and orphan risk and you get a steady payout — that part of this market works, and the scores show it. What almost none of them does well is the next question: whether the coinbase transaction pays you directly, or the pool holds your balance until it decides to release it. Not one of the eight scores above 4 out of 10 there. And if you care who chooses the transactions in the block your machines are securing, that narrows the field to almost nothing.
What matters most before choosing in this category
Decide first whether you want a predictable cheque or control of the block. Most pools have converged on FPPS or a variant, which means the POOL carries variance and orphan risk and you get a steady payout — that part of this market works, and the scores show it. What almost none of them does well is the next question: whether the coinbase transaction pays you directly, or the pool holds your balance until it decides to release it. Not one of the eight scores above 4 out of 10 there. And if you care who chooses the transactions in the block your machines are securing, that narrows the field to almost nothing.
Does the coinbase transaction pay you, or does the pool hold your balance until it releases it?
Is the advertised fee the whole fee once transaction fees and MEV are counted?
Who builds the block template you are hashing on — the pool, or you?
Current editor lead
Expert review and scoring weights
OCEAN
OCEANData checked Aug 2026
The only pool in the set whose non-custody claim survives the chain — 45 distinct miner addresses paid straight out of the generation transaction of block 963180 — and the only one whose own terms say that everything you have earned below 0.01048576 BTC "remains OCEAN’s"; at a single S21-class miner that threshold is a 108-day wait, and the Lightning route around it is switched off right now.
The only pool in the set whose non-custody claim survives the chain — 45 distinct miner addresses paid straight out of the generation transaction of block 963180 — and the only one whose own terms say that everything you have earned below 0.01048576 BTC "remains OCEAN’s"; at a single S21-class miner that threshold is a 108-day wait, and the Lightning route around it is switched off right now. Strongest on which payout scheme — and therefore who eats a bad-luck or orphaned-block run, the pool or you? (9/10): SCHEME NAMED AND ARITHMETIC PUBLISHED IN REPRODUCIBLE FORM. TIDES (Transparent Index of Distinct Extended Shares), Bitcoin-only, documented at /docs/tides (Jason Hughes, February 29, 2024) with the split written out algebraically. Weakest on does the coinbase transaction pay you, or does the pool hold your coin until it decides to release it? (4/10): BOTH HALVES ARE TRUE AND THE SCORE RECORDS BOTH. HALF ONE — ABOVE THE THRESHOLD THE COINBASE PAYS YOU, AND THE CHAIN AGREES. The claim, /docs/terms §3: "So rather than take custody of your expected Bitcoin earnings like many other pools, OCEAN remains non-custodial". §22(h): "OCEAN is non-custodial. Published price: FEE — /docs/terms §5 (Last Updated August 4, 2026): "The standard fee for Services rendered is 2% of all Bitcoin network rewards and transaction fees per block found with help from OCEAN (successful “Block Reward”), less any incentives or promotional offers…
Best forPayout scheme risk transfer — 9/10
Main tradeoffThat the money is real but you cannot touch it for a quarter. OCEAN's non-custody is genuine and I verified it on the chain — 45 separate miner addresses paid out of block 963180's generation transaction, matching OCEAN's own leaderboard — but it only starts at 0.01048576 BTC. At difficulty 127,479,855,693,691 one S21-class 200 TH/s machine takes 108.5 days to get there and a 1 TH/s Bitaxe takes 59 years; until then OCEAN's terms are blunt that "the underlying bitcoin remains OCEAN’s, and you hold no property interest in, or claim to, any specific bitcoin", the float sits in a single pool address that has taken in 642.95 BTC, and the one feature that fixes this — Lightning payouts below the threshold — has been switched off since block 961,488 with no restoration date at all (the notice promises only that accrued rewards are not lost and that Lightning "will resume once the situation is unambiguous (a single sharelog operating)"; the "2026-09-06" in the draft was unsupported and is struck). The miner who reads "non-custodial" on the landing page and points a home rig at mine.ocean.xyz:3334 has bought a genuinely superior structure with a three-month payment lag and a currently-disabled workaround, and §10(d) lets OCEAN forfeit and redistribute the accrued balance on a good-faith belief of breach with real-time notice consisting of deleting the address.
Verify before signupFEE — /docs/terms §5 (Last Updated August 4, 2026): "The standard fee for Services rendered is 2% of all Bitcoin network rewards and transaction fees per block found with help from OCEAN (successful “Block Reward”), less any incentives or promotional offers in effect for User at the time a block is found (“Total Fee”)." Homepage: "2% fee" / "1% fee for miners who make their own blocks using DATUM"; /docs/datum: "To further incentivize decentralization, DATUM miners receive a 50% discount on the OCEAN pool fee." || PAYOUT SCHEME — /docs/tides: "TIDES is a Bitcoin mining pool payout system which reduces payout variance as low as possible without the pool operator needing to hold and buffer the Bitcoin rewards as a custodian." with "share_log_window is eight times the block’s difficulty worth of shares." and "Unlike hashrate-rental payout systems such as FPPS, TIDES can only reward miners with Bitcoin that is mined." || MINIMUM PAYOUT — homepage FAQ: "Currently, the threshold is 0.01048576 BTC or 1,048,576 sats." plus "If you stop mining altogether or change to a new Bitcoin address, the pool will attempt to make discretionary payouts for balances above 0.00065536 BTC, should it be practical to do so. We reserve the right to change this policy from time to time." and /docs/lightning: "OCEAN will retry paying the owed amount via Lightning every block until the accumulated earnings reach the on-chain threshold (currently 0.01048576 BTC). At that point, earnings will payout on-chain to your Bitcoin address." — Lightning currently suspended: "Lightning payouts pause at block 961,488." (https://ocean.xyz/stats, read 2026-08-19). All four URLs read 2026-08-19.
Methodology
How this category is reviewed
Reviewed on which payout scheme carries your variance and orphan risk (30%), whether payouts come direct from the coinbase transaction or sit in pool custody until it releases them (26%), whether the advertised fee is the whole fee once transaction fees and MEV are counted (24%), and who authors the block template you hash on (20%). Hashprice, hardware and the bitcoin price are market data, shown as facts and never scored.
The order on this page is the published ranking for this category. Every criterion, weight and source behind it is on the methodology page.
Frequently asked
Questions people ask before choosing mining pools
Why does every pool score badly on payout custody?
Because it is the axis where this market genuinely underperforms, and the number is not a grading curve: not one of the eight scores above 4 out of 10, and the mean is 3.12. Most pools accrue your earnings on their own ledger and pay out on a threshold and a schedule they control, which makes you an unsecured creditor of the pool between payouts. Earnings arriving directly in the coinbase transaction carry no such gap. The distinction rarely appears in pool marketing, which is why it is weighted at 26% here.
Does the biggest pool win?
No. The largest pool by hashrate ranks seventh of eight, held down by publishing no fee rate at all — it scores 2 out of 10 on fee completeness while seven of the eight publish something. Scale tells you a pool is trusted with hashrate; it does not tell you what that pool discloses about what it keeps. This page scores the disclosure.
Why does block-template control matter if the payout is fine?
Because hashrate is a vote on which transactions confirm, and in most of this set the pool casts it for you. One of eight scores above 6 on template authorship; six sit at 3 or 4. If the pool builds every template it decides what gets included, and your machines enforce that choice. Stratum V2 job declaration and OCEAN's DATUM hand that back to the miner, which is why the axis is scored rather than merely described.
Not financial advice · For informational purposes only · Always do your own research
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