Bitcoin Cash Mining Pools

Mining pools definition used on https://explorer.melroy.org/mining

Contributing

Contributions welcome. All changes must be applied in pools.json file.

Adding a new mining pool

Regardless of the choosen method, we recommend adding a appropriate slug to each new mining pool you add to pools.json. The slug will be used as a unique tag for the mining pool, for example in the public facing urls like https://explorer.melroy.org/mining/pool/foundryusa (here foundryusa is the slug).

You can specify mining pool slugs in the slugs object in pools.json. If you don't specify one, we will automatically generate one as such.

if (slug === undefined) {
  // Only keep alphanumerical
  slug = poolNames[i].replace(/[^a-z0-9]/gi, '').toLowerCase();
  logger.warn(`No slug found for '${poolNames[i]}', generating it => '${slug}'`);
}

Add a new mining pool by coinbase_tags

You can add a new mining pool by specifying the coinbase tag they're using in the coinbase transaction.

To add a new pool, you must add a new JSON object in the coinbase_tags object. Note that you can add multiple tags for the same mining pool, but you must use the exact same values for name and link in each new entry. For example:

"Foundry USA Pool" : {
  "name" : "Foundry USA",
  "link" : "https://foundrydigital.com/"
},
"Foundry USA Pool another tag" : {
  "name" : "Foundry USA",
  "link" : "https://foundrydigital.com/"
},

Each coinbase tag will be use as a regex to match blocks with their mining pool. This is how we use it in BCH explorer application. You can see the code here.

const regexes: string[] = JSON.parse(pools[i].regexes);
for (let y = 0; y < regexes.length; ++y) {
  const regex = new RegExp(regexes[y], 'i');
  const match = asciiScriptSig.match(regex);
  if (match !== null) {
    return pools[i];
  }
}

Add a new mining pool by payout_addresses

You can add a new mining pool by specifying the receiving address they're using in the coinbase transaction to receive the miner reward.

To add a new pool, you must add a new JSON object in the payout_addresses object. Note that you can add multiple addresses for the same mining pool, but you must use the exact same values for name and link in each new entry. For example:

"1FFxkVijzvUPUeHgkFjBk2Qw8j3wQY2cDw" : {
    "name" : "Foundry USA",
    "link" : "https://foundrydigital.com/"
},
"12KKDt4Mj7N5UAkQMN7LtPZMayenXHa8KL" : {
    "name" : "Foundry USA",
    "link" : "https://foundrydigital.com/"
},

Each address will be use to match blocks with their mining pool by matching the coinbase transaction output address. This is how we use it in BCH explorer application. You can see the code here.

const address = txMinerInfo.vout[0].scriptpubkey_address;
for (let i = 0; i < pools.length; ++i) {
  if (address !== undefined) {
    const addresses: string[] = JSON.parse(pools[i].addresses);
    if (addresses.indexOf(address) !== -1) {
      return pools[i];
    }
  }

Change an existing mining pool metadata

You can also change an existing mining pool's name, link and slug. In order to do so properly, you must update all existing entry in the pools.json file.

For example, if you'd like to rename Foundry USA to Foundry Pool, you must replace all occurences of the old string with the new one in pools.json file, with no exception, otherwise you'll end with two mining pools. The samme idea applies if you want to change the link or the slug.

For example, to rename Foundry USA to Foundry Pool you'd need to update the following (using today's pools.json as reference):

// Original
"Foundry USA Pool" : {
    "name" : "Foundry USA",
    "link" : "https://foundrydigital.com/"
},
  "/2cDw/" : {
    "name" : "Foundry USA",
    "link" : "https://foundrydigital.com/"
},
// Renamed
"Foundry USA Pool" : {
    "name" : "Foundry Pool",
    "link" : "https://foundrydigital.com/"
},
  "/2cDw/" : {
    "name" : "Foundry Pool",
    "link" : "https://foundrydigital.com/"
},

// Original
"1FFxkVijzvUPUeHgkFjBk2Qw8j3wQY2cDw" : {
    "name" : "Foundry USA",
    "link" : "https://foundrydigital.com/"
},
"12KKDt4Mj7N5UAkQMN7LtPZMayenXHa8KL" : {
    "name" : "Foundry USA",
    "link" : "https://foundrydigital.com/"
},
// Renamed
"1FFxkVijzvUPUeHgkFjBk2Qw8j3wQY2cDw" : {
    "name" : "Foundry Pool",
    "link" : "https://foundrydigital.com/"
},
"12KKDt4Mj7N5UAkQMN7LtPZMayenXHa8KL" : {
    "name" : "Foundry Pool",
    "link" : "https://foundrydigital.com/"
},

// Original
"Foundry USA": "foundryusa",
// Renamed - Be aware, this will also change the mining pool page link from
explorer.melroy.org/mining/pool/foundryusa to explorer.melroy.org/mining/pool/foundrypool
"Foundry Pool": "foundrypool",

Block re-indexing

When a mining pool's coinbase tag or addresses is updated in pools.jon, BCH explorer can automatically re-index the appropriate blocks in order to re-assign them to the correct mining pool. "Appropriate" blocks here concern all blocks which are not yet assigned to a mining pool (unknown pool), from block 130635 (first known mining pool block) as well as all blocks from the update mining pool. You can find the re-indexing logic here

You can enable/disable this behavior using by setting the following backend configuration variable:

{
  "MEMPOOL": {
    "AUTOMATIC_BLOCK_REINDEXING": false
  }
}

If you set it to false, no re-indexing will happen automatically, but this also means that you will need to delete blocks manually from your database. Upon restarting your backend, missing indexed blocks are always be re-indexed using the latest mining pool data.

Mining pool definition

When the BCH explorer backend starts, we automatically fetch the latest pools.json version from github. By default the url points to https://gitlab.melroy.org/bitcoincash/mining-pools/-/blob/master/pools.json but you can configure it to points to another repo by setting the following backend variables:

{
  "MEMPOOL": {
    'POOLS_JSON_URL': 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bitcoincash1/mining-pools/master/pools.json',
    'POOLS_JSON_TREE_URL': 'https://api.github.com/repos/bitcoincash1/mining-pools/git/trees/master'
  }
}