While mining, you probably noticed that your earnings vary day to day: mining rewards grow, then suddenly drop. Do not worry, though — that’s how mining works, and there are many reasons for the fluctuations in its rewards. Let’s focus on these reasons.
The growth of mining rewards in early May
Early May turned out to be very successful for miners due to increased transaction fees in the Bitcoin network. This was facilitated by the interest in the Ordinals protocol, which allowed digital artifacts to be recorded in the Bitcoin blockchain.
You can read more about this in our previous article Why Is Minto Earning Twice as Much in May Than in April?
Rewards for the first half of each month ‘23:
This table contains Minto mining results for the first 15 days of each month over the last six months, including in terms of 100 TH/s of mining capacity, i.e., 10,000 BTCMT in staking.
In the first half of May, Minto distributed more than 1.2 BTC of net profit among users, exceeding the result of April 2-fold, the result of March — almost 3-fold, and the result of December 2022–4-fold.
Significant fluctuations in mining rewards in various mining services are a normal phenomenon, but these services do not always provide an opportunity to check the source of income: transactions of mining pools to mining services, client reward transactions, the actual projects’ hashrate used, audit of their smart contracts, etc.
Since Minto initially embraced full transparency, it is not difficult for us to answer any questions related to project operation, including reward accrual. Most often we are asked why the rewards differ so much from day to day.
Indeed, if you look at the table above, e.g., at the data for May 10, the total reward was 0.1883 BTC, whereas the next day it was only 0.0558 BTC, i.e, 3 times less. Or, on December 06, 2022, Minto distributed less than 0.01 BTC, whereas exactly a month later the reward was up to almost 0.05 BTC!
Why the rewards differ from day to day
Minto smart contract distributes rewards daily between users who staked BTCMT tokens, however, these rewards are always different.
Why is it that despite the fact that the total Minto hashrate changes quite rarely (the last time it happened on February 14, when the hashrate reached 70 PH/s), reward value fluctuates quite a lot from day to day? There are several reasons for this.
1. Hashrate and difficulty of the Bitcoin network
The total hashrate of the Bitcoin network is constantly changing. Over the past two years, the hashrate has been growing almost steadily without significant drawdowns, which means that miners who do not increase the number of mining hardware’s units are losing their market share.
To balance the computational process, the Bitcoin network automatically recalculates the so-called difficulty about every two weeks, increasing it if the network hashrate has increased, and decreasing it if it has decreased. This is necessary so that the average time of block mining and its reward payout remains about 10 minutes. According to BTC creators, mining should work like clockwork, regardless of the number of participants involved in it and the mining power.
For instance, when mining was banned in China in mid-2021, BTC network hashrate fell almost twofold due to mining hardware disconnection, and its difficulty was also significantly reduced afterwards.
In the table below, note how mining rewards increased dramatically due to the drop in difficulty during this ban:
Similar effects provoked by hashrate fluctuations occur almost every minute, but on a much smaller scale. As a result of these changes, mining revenues are also constantly changing.
2. F2Pool vs. other mining pools
Minto’s mining facilities are connected to one of the largest mining pools in the world, F2Pool. As with any other pool, the total F2Pool hashrate and its share of the total Bitcoin network mining capacity are constantly changing due to market reasons. This means that the number of blocks mined by F2Pool per unit of time and the rewards received for it is also constantly changing, leading to the change in the daily income of miners connected to the pool, in particular Minto miners.
Rating of mining pools (as of 05/18/2023):
According to BTC.com, as of May 18, 2023, F2Pool ranks third in the pools’ ranking by hashrate, taking up about 14% of the total Bitcoin network hashrate. The constant change of F2Pool’s positions in the overall rating also contributes to fluctuations in mining rewards.
3. 65% mining hardware uptime algorithm
Minto uses the 65% mining hardware uptime algorithm in its operation, which you can read more about in the article How Does the 65% Mining Hardware Uptime Technology Work?
Let’s turn to the Hashrate watcher. This page of the F2Pool mining pool is completely dedicated to Minto and contains all the information related to mining rewards in the project.
The top shows the total number of Bitcoins mined over the entire time of operation (excluding electricity costs), below is a chart of the hashrate used and a table of daily BTC mining rewards.
It would seem that the Minto hashrate is 70,000 TH/s, and the hashrate chart on the pool page should be a straight line, however, it looks like this:
On the half-hour chart, you can observe periodic shutdowns of the Minto hashrate, and on the daily (below) — an alternating averaged low and maximum values:
The thing is when the electric grid load increases, the electricity price is higher than usual, which makes mining unprofitable at the current Bitcoin exchange rate, so during these hours Minto puts miners into idle mode according to the following schedule:
As you can see from the charts on the F2Pool page, fluctuations in the Minto hashrate are quite significant. In fact, mining hardware only works at full capacity on weekends and holidays, which is why the maximum rewards are earned on these days, while rewards decrease with the beginning of the working week.
As a result, in the current market situation, Minto’s mining capacity works at about 65%, and its timely activation and deactivation allows you to earn the maximum while reducing costs by as much as possible. This is the 65% mining hardware uptime algorithm. When the market allows it, Minto will return to 100% uptime.
Below you can see the daily payouts from F2Pool mining rewards to Minto for MAY 2023, which were subsequently distributed among BTCMT token holders in proportion to their shares:
F2Pool — Minto stats:
Even despite the constant Bitcoin network difficulty (the right column), these rewards differ significantly from day to day due to the above-listed reasons. So, the increased payouts highlighted in green due to Minto’s use of 100% capacity on weekends, and in blue — even higher payouts associated with a surge in user interest in the Ordinals project (placing the so-called inscriptions or digital artifacts in the Bitcoin blockchain), as we described in the very beginning of the article.
The table below shows that if Minto’s mining capacities were constantly working at 100%, this would inevitably lead to negative financial results, whereas using a smart algorithm of 65% uptime allows the project not only to remain profitable, but also to earn successfully:
The final May results, which have not yet been included in the table, promise to be impressive thanks to Ordinals. In the meantime, we are publishing a comparative analysis of the first third of 2023, where “selective mining” made it possible to earn almost 16 BTC of revenue and a net profit of about $117,000 against a loss of $45,700 with revenue of 24.7 BTC if mining was conducted nonstop at full capacity.
That’s why mining rewards are always different
So, let’s go back to the report published at the very beginning of this article and take a glance at the daily mining rewards again:
Fluctuations in mining payouts are not a cause for concern
Despite the fact that mining rewards can vary quite a bit from day to day, there is no reason to worry if you suddenly notice that your rewards have decreased dramatically. This only reflects fluctuations in the Minto hashrate share in total Bitcoin network hashrate, which, in turn, also fluctuates.
However, this does not negate the pleasant surprises in the form of increased commissions from Ordinals transactions, the growth of the Bitcoin exchange rate, the growth of the Minto hashrate itself and many other reasons arising from favorable market conditions or even forming it.
Unlike many mining services, Minto is absolutely transparent, so you can easily track all the transactions related to reward transfers from F2Pool to Minto, ask questions in the Minto chat, calculate future profits, that is, fully control your investments and the return on them.
