GetBlok.io SmartPool is a new smart-contract based mining pool that promotes transparency for miners.  Each action done by the SmartPool is visible on-chain, including changes in fees, distribution of payouts, and modifications made to the smart pool itself. The SmartPool provides the base framework for additional features that are to be built on top of it such as SubPools.

 Each payment distribution handled by the Smart Pool is considered an “epoch”. Each epoch represents the state of the SmartPool and the distribution it performed at any given point. All of the important information used by the smart pool to distribute its payouts are stored on chain. This, in combination with the rules laid out by the smart contracts, ensure that changes made to the smart pool are visible by everyone.

In addition to the transparency it provides, the SmartPool is made to be modular and can change itself to support new payment methods and types of transactions. This ensures that new features can be added while still staying transparent about what these features can do.

What can the SmartPool do?

A: One of the initial goals of GetBlok.io is to provide miners a way to create SubPools among themselves, thereby allowing miners to choose how they get paid. The SmartPool provides the base framework for sub-pooling to work and will ensure that smart contracts control the transparency of payments through every possible step.

Another use-case for the Smart Pool is the distribution of tokens through SubPooling. Many users of Cardano will be familiar with ISPOs or Initial Stake Pool Offerings. GetBlok’s answer to this is IMPOs, or Initial Mining Pool Offerings. This gives Ergo dApps another way to promote the fair distribution of tokens. The modular nature of the Smart Pool ensures that the distribution can be done in multiple ways (including distribution by hashrate, equal distribution to members, etc).

Governance, block bounties, programmable fees, and more are all possible within the Smart Pool framework. Stay tuned for more information about the first Smart Pool event in the coming weeks: governance tokens for the upcoming soft-fork emissions vote, backed by a Proof-Of-Vote mechanism. You can see the whitepaper/project proposal here.

• Ergo Emissions Soft-Fork and Proof-Of-Voting Tokens Whitepaper

Currently, we are supporting the Ergo Blockchain. GetBlok.io SmartPool was built and supported by Ergo community miners and developers alike.

We have several ways to connect.  We recommend following our how-to connect guide (link below) to review the connection options available. How to Connect?

• US East
• US West
• Germany West
• APAC (Singapore)
• Brazil
• Middle East (UAE)
• East Australia

This list is ever expanding so please check back often.

Our fees are aligned with different features of the Smart Pool. Below is our schedule of fees at the time of wring, but all fees are prominently displayed in our SmartPool pages (main pool or subpools).

• GetBlok.io Common Smart Pool: 1%
• GetBlok.io SOLO Sub Pool: 1% + 1% (Base Fee + Bonus fee for SubPool)
• GetBlok.io Specialty Sub Pool: 3% + SubPool Owner’s fee.

The SubPool Owner may charge their own fee that is collected as part of the smart contract and paid to Sub Pool operator.

Our min. payout is 0.1 ERG.  However, you can set your min. payout to anything >0.1.

For SubPools which payout in a coin other than ERG, there min payout has a variable ratio to the native token payout. Please see the SubPool for details.

Our current payment scheme is PPLNS (N=50000).  See the link below for further details regarding PPLNS

• Coinguides.org – pps-vs-pplns

Currently payments are processed after 20 confirmations from the block find. This is typically less than 1 hr or shortly after 20 confirmations for the block find.

*Note:  As we are continually improving our code, currently all SubPools process payments in batches of 5 blocks. This means that payments are not initiated until 5 blocks are found by a particular SubPool before payment is processed. This will be changed in upcoming code releases.

To help understand how Smart Contracts-based payment processing occurs, the following is a break down of the sequence status and what happens in each phase:

• Confirmed – Block has received 20 confirmations. Effort for the block has been calculated now, and our notification bot has sent a message to our miners about it.
• Pre-Processed – Block has had its shares calculated and an estimate of unconfirmed balances have been made.
• Processing – Block has been sent to the smart contracts. We’re awaiting confirmation of the transaction to finalize balances.
• Processed – The transaction which sent the block to the smart contracts has been confirmed, and unconfirmed balances have been finalized. Because some of our SubPools requires that we interact with external exchanges (such as ErgoDEX), unconfirmed balances may change slightly once we send it to the smart contract.
• Initiated – Initial payments have been made and are awaiting confirmation of these transactions on-chain.
• Paid – All payment transactions have been confirmed on-chain. Miners have received their assets in their wallet. Payment, earnings, and confirmed balances are also updated at this point.

   

The following exceptions may cause delayed payments:

• Issues with blockchain and ability to submit payments to miners
• Significant surge in miners to SmartPool which may cause unexpected congestion of payout processing.
• Infrastructure our dependency outages which may prevent our ability to submit payouts to the blockchain.

While disruption in payment processing is rare, they can occur. If you believe you are impacted by payment processing issues, please contact us in Telegram/Discord and our team members are happy to assist.

Pending shares are the shares you have accumulated towards PPLNS (50000 shares).   We are looking to modify the way this is displayed in our v2.0 of the dashboard.

Unfortunately, not currently.  We do plan to include this in v2.0 of the dashboard, although you may be able to enable dark mode in your web browser.

We roll out updates to the User Interface based on demand, capability, and bugfixes.  The best way to get your bug/issue/enhancement in our development pipeline is as follows:

• Chat with us on Telegram/Discord – our dev team is constantly communicating with the community on these items. 
• Submit your enhancements/ideas in our official enhancement register: GetBlok.io Feedback

Currently, you can see your miner/payout information by logging onto our dashboard at Ergo.GetBlok.io and entering your mining address.

Once your address is entered, a personal stats icon will appear in the top right corner.  By clicking this icon it will bring you to your personal stats page.  Here you will see your miner contribution information as well as payment details.   You can click on each tile and a table will slide over showing you additional details for each section.

                                                  Personal Stats (example)

                                                    Payments Table(example)

We have a full tutorial posted here that explains how to connect / switch to a new SubPool.   It is recommended that you wait for all blocks to be marked as pre-processed.  You can track block status on our Blocks Page

Plasma is a scaling solution that uses data structures called AVL Trees to efficiently compress large pieces of data and post them onto the blockchain. By leveraging smart contracts, Plasma can be used to create secure, transparent protocols that use data compression to increase speed and throughput. 1 Scalability