<p>The concept of "worker" is necessary for the pool to track the hash rate of individual mining devices and adjust difficulty accordingly. If the difficulty is too high then it may take hours for you to get a share, and if difficulty is too low you may report a dozen shares every second and put unnecessary burden on the pool and on your network connection.</p>

<p>In addition to hash rate tracking, the pool also needs to assign different extraNonce values (this is part of data in the generation transaction) for different workers to ensure that workers do not work on colliding merkleRoot values. This helps eliminate duplicate shares.</p>

<p>If you run many different mining devices at different speed, then each device must use a different worker name so the pool knows to track them separately.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-02-27T00:59:35.303Z
2014-02-27T01:07:58.157Z
2014-02-27T01:07:58.157Z
uminatsu
<p>It's simply an identifier for you to use so that you can track different machines within your account. This can be useful, e.g. to let you monitor the hash/sec rate of your machines: if they drop unexpectedly, there may be something else eating resources or a cooling issue that you need to address.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-02-14T20:54:33.300Z
Can't you have more than one worker per machine?
Kinnard Hockenhull
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-02-14T20:56:25.413Z
Yes. It might make sense to do so if you have multiple mining sources in your machine (e.g. 2 GPUs and a USB ASIC device).
Tim S.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-01-27T23:42:52.250Z
2014-01-27T23:42:52.250Z
Tim S.
<p>Lots of cryptocoin sites and in particular mining pools use the term 'worker,' but there is no clear definition. What is a worker?</p>

<mining-pools><terminology>
What is a worker?
Kinnard Hockenhull
# What is a worker?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2014-01-27)

Lots of cryptocoin sites and in particular mining pools use the term 'worker,' but there is no clear definition. What is a worker?

**Tags:** mining-pools, terminology


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## 2 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2014-02-27. Score: 3

The concept of "worker" is necessary for the pool to track the hash rate of individual mining devices and adjust difficulty accordingly. If the difficulty is too high then it may take hours for you to get a share, and if difficulty is too low you may report a dozen shares every second and put unnecessary burden on the pool and on your network connection.

In addition to hash rate tracking, the pool also needs to assign different extraNonce values (this is part of data in the generation transaction) for different workers to ensure that workers do not work on colliding merkleRoot values. This helps eliminate duplicate shares.

If you run many different mining devices at different speed, then each device must use a different worker name so the pool knows to track them separately.


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### Answer by username_2 on 2014-01-27. Score: 2

It's simply an identifier for you to use so that you can track different machines within your account. This can be useful, e.g. to let you monitor the hash/sec rate of your machines: if they drop unexpectedly, there may be something else eating resources or a cooling issue that you need to address.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: Can't you have more than one worker per machine?  
> **username_2**: Yes. It might make sense to do so if you have multiple mining sources in your machine (e.g. 2 GPUs and a USB ASIC device).  

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