What are stale shares in mining

When a farm is running in a pool, users may see in the statistics that not all shares are paid. Usually, miners are not rewarded for stale shares that arrived later than necessary. Stale shares in Ethereum are tasks completed after the pool has received a valid solution. For them, users receive a reduced reward or remain without income, so you should avoid stale shares.

Signs of stale shares

Miners can track statistics in the pool’s personal account or the console of a cryptocurrency mining program. These show the number of accepted, late and invalid orbs.

Some miners face the fact that the pool does not show either stale or invalid. If there are no “bad” orbs, it means that the company deceives users, as it is impossible to completely eliminate errors.

When there is no information about late balls in the console, it is worth checking the farm operation in another pool. If their number does not exceed 1-2%, it means that video cards perform calculations correctly.

How to reduce the percentage of late balls

When the stale indicator crosses the border of 2%, you should find the cause and eliminate it. Because of this, profits are falling. Usually stale orbs in mining occur due to three reasons:

• Overclocking of video cards
• Bad internet
• Incorrect software settings.

Increase system stability

To increase income from cryptocurrency mining, users increase the performance of video cards with the help of programs or in BIOS settings. The correct settings increase the hash rate of the GPU by 5-30%. It is not uncommon for users to set the settings too high, which causes the graphics cards to become unstable.

1

ByBit

5020 $
bonus for new users!

9.8

VISIT Read Review

ByBit provides convenient and safe conditions for cryptocurrency trading, offers low commissions, high level of liquidity and modern tools for market analysis. It supports spot and leveraged trading, and helps beginners and professional traders with an intuitive interface and tutorials.

2

Binance

Earn a 100 $ bonus

for new users!

9.5

VISIT Read Review

The largest crypto exchange where you can quickly and safely start your journey in the world of cryptocurrencies. The platform offers hundreds of popular assets, low commissions and advanced tools for trading and investing. Easy registration, high speed of transactions and reliable protection of funds make Binance a great choice for traders of any level!

When the percentage of stale ball in mining exceeded 2%, it is recommended to return the default settings. If the GPU settings are to blame, there will be no late shares after the reset.

To avoid technical failures of equipment and increase hashrate, it is recommended to overclock graphics cards carefully. First, miners increase the memory frequency by 400 MHz, and then – by 100 MHz. At the same time, they check the hash rate and the percentage of late balls after each overclocking. If technical problems started, it means that the user has reached the “ceiling”. It is not allowed to overclock the equipment more strongly.

Internet connection stability

Solutions are transmitted over the network, because of which much depends on its speed and quality. If data is delivered for too long, the number of stale can reach 50%. A simple option to check the Internet connection is to find out the ping to the server. To do this, you need to:

1. Connect to the pool and start mining.
2. Open the CMD console.
3. Enter the command ping etc.kryptex.network -n 20. The highlighted in bold should be replaced with another coin and pool, and instead of 20 – specify the number of packets that the miner needs to check.
4. Wait for the results. The computer will recognize the data delivery speed and show it in the console. If the average result is less than 100 ms and there are no strong deviations, it means that the connection is normal.

Miners who have increased stale shares should give up Wi-Fi and mobile internet. Wired is a more reliable option, as it has lower ping and users are less likely to experience disconnections.

Connection speed and latency should not be confused. The former is measured in MB or GB per second, i.e. it refers to the volume of data packets. In mining, the speed does not matter much, since the balls weigh a little. The size of an entire block does not exceed 1 MB, so this parameter is not so important. Miners need to look at the ping.

It is also worth giving up VPNs and antiviruses if problems arise. The use of such programs creates additional delays on the path of data from video cards to the pool server.

A radical solution is to find a new Internet provider. Usually users check several companies at once to find out who has the best network infrastructure and equipment.

Additional settings

Performing calculations by a farm, if it happens while the miner has not yet received a new task, increases the percentage of stale shares. To reduce the waiting period, you should request tasks from the pool more often. By default, miners learn about new balls with an interval of 200 ms. It can be shortened using special commands.

After the command you should specify the time (in ms), after which the software will request the latest information from the server. Do not reduce the interval to 50 ms, because the pool may trigger protection against network attacks. As a result, the farm will simply be disconnected from the network.