<p>Broadly speaking, there are two ways of paying pool miners. The first way is to have a wallet and send payments to miners through that when they ask for them.</p>

<p>The second way, which both eligius.st and p2pool use, is to keep track of how many shares people get, and set the coinbase transaction to pay the block reward directly to them once a block is found. This has the advantage that you never have any Bitcoins to steal on your pool server.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-04-14T02:51:35.870Z
_This has the advantage that you never have any Bitcoins to steal on your pool server._ But non-P2Pool pool managers still have complete control over the payout queue, viz., who to include in the next block's generation transaction and how much to pay them. So, P2Pool is more secure against pool manager fraud, even than Eligius.
Geremia
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-04-14T02:57:22.193Z
@Geremia Well, sure. If someone can control what address(es) you mine to, they can steal future mining payouts. [It doesn't require compromising the mining server, just intercepting traffic.](http://www.secureworks.com/cyber-threat-intelligence/threats/bgp-hijacking-for-cryptocurrency-profit/)
Nick ODell
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-04-14T05:32:34.960Z
Why do you say it "just [requires] intercepting traffic"? No traffic has to be intercepted when a single pool operator has full control over creating the generation transaction.
Geremia
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-04-14T05:37:20.920Z
@Geremia Intercepting traffic is, generally speaking, easier than taking control of a server.
Nick ODell
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-04-13T22:23:40.207Z
2015-04-13T22:23:40.207Z
Nick ODell
<p>When I pool mine, do my payments come from the pool operator's personal account? From the pool's wallet? Or from somewhere else?</p>

<p>When using <a href="https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/P2Pool" rel="nofollow">P2Pool</a>, the payments appear in <code>bitcoin-qt</code> as though I had mined the block myself.</p>

<mining-pools><p2pool><pool-payout-methods>
Who pays me when pool mining?
Geremia
# Who pays me when pool mining?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2015-04-13)

When I pool mine, do my payments come from the pool operator's personal account? From the pool's wallet? Or from somewhere else?

When using [P2Pool](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/P2Pool), the payments appear in `bitcoin-qt` as though I had mined the block myself.

**Tags:** mining-pools, p2pool, pool-payout-methods


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2015-04-13. Score: 5 | Accepted answer

Broadly speaking, there are two ways of paying pool miners. The first way is to have a wallet and send payments to miners through that when they ask for them.

The second way, which both eligius.st and p2pool use, is to keep track of how many shares people get, and set the coinbase transaction to pay the block reward directly to them once a block is found. This has the advantage that you never have any Bitcoins to steal on your pool server.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: _This has the advantage that you never have any Bitcoins to steal on your pool server._ But non-P2Pool pool managers still have complete control over the payout queue, viz., who to include in the next block's generation transaction and how much to pay them. So, P2Pool is more secure against pool manager fraud, even than Eligius.  
> **username_1**: @username_0 Well, sure. If someone can control what address(es) you mine to, they can steal future mining payouts. [It doesn't require compromising the mining server, just intercepting traffic.](http://www.secureworks.com/cyber-threat-intelligence/threats/bgp-hijacking-for-cryptocurrency-profit/)  
> **username_0**: Why do you say it "just [requires] intercepting traffic"? No traffic has to be intercepted when a single pool operator has full control over creating the generation transaction.  
> **username_1**: @username_0 Intercepting traffic is, generally speaking, easier than taking control of a server.  

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