I. What is an Earnings Calculator?

An earnings calculator is a calculation software that can assist miners in estimating their daily earnings. It adopts the PPS+ theoretical earnings estimated based on the current difficulty and the average miner fees of the most recent 7 days, with an estimation made at a 0% fee rate. You can access it from the cryptocurrency information section on the homepage of the mining pool or through the 【Earnings Calculator】 in the navigation bar tools.

Select the cryptocurrency you need to calculate and fill in the computing power information, and then you can estimate the daily earnings. It also supports customizing the cryptocurrency price, mining difficulty, and fee rate for calculation.

Note: Essentially, the earnings calculator is used to predict theoretical earnings in the future based on the current situation. It depends on multiple factors such as the settlement mode, mining difficulty, miner fees, and the mining pool's luck value (which will be explained in detail below). Therefore, there will be a certain margin of error between the estimated earnings and the actual earnings. It is for reference only and does not constitute a commitment to earnings.

II. Overview of the Calculation Principle

The earnings calculator estimates earnings by adopting the PPS+ settlement mode. The earnings in the PPS+ mode consist of two parts: the basic block reward + the miner fee reward. The "basic block reward" is settled using the PPS mode, that is, it is settled according to the theoretical earnings corresponding to the user's computing power. The "miner fee reward" is settled using the PPLNS mode, which means it is settled based on the miner fees included in the actual blocks generated by ViaBTC.

When the earnings calculator makes an estimate, the basic block reward estimates future earnings based on the current difficulty (or the difficulty you set) and the computing power value you input, while the miner fee reward estimates future earnings based on the average miner fees of WhalePool's blocks in the most recent 7 days.

III. Why Are the Actual Mining Earnings Different from the Estimated Earnings by the Earnings Calculator?

1. Settlement Mode

The earnings calculator estimates earnings based on the PPS+ settlement mode. If the earnings settlement mode you choose (currently, WhalePool supports PPS+, PPLNS, and SOLO) is not PPS+, there will be a relatively large margin of error in the estimation results.

2. Mining Difficulty

If the mining difficulty fluctuates significantly, there will be a relatively large margin of error between the theoretical earnings calculated by the earnings calculator and the actual earnings. The reason is that the WhalePool earnings calculator makes estimations based on the current mining difficulty, but the actual changes in difficulty may not be fully predicted or taken into account when calculating the earnings.

3. Mining Pool's Luck Value

The ratio of the actual number of blocks mined daily to the theoretical number of blocks is called the luck value. Fluctuations in the mining pool's luck value will cause estimation errors in the earnings calculator.

If the mining pool's luck value drops in the short term (below 100%), that is, the actual number of blocks generated decreases, the miner fee earnings of users will also decrease accordingly, and the actual earnings will be lower than the estimated earnings by the earnings calculator. Conversely, if the mining pool's luck value increases in the short term, the actual earnings will be higher than the estimated earnings by the earnings calculator. However, in the long run, as the WhalePool luck value is higher than 100%, miners don't need to worry too much.