Stale shares in mining: what is it and how to solve the problem?

Stale shares in mining: what is it and how to solve the problem?

Stale shares in mining
Everyone knows that when working with pools, miners send balloons to the service, which are a measure of the amount of work done by the equipment. In accordance with the number of balls sent to the miner and accrue a reward. But there are situations when a block has already been found, but the user keeps looking for a signature for it. This phenomenon is called stale shares. In this article, we will talk about what stale shares are in mining.

• STALE SHARES IN MINING: DESCRIPTION

Stale shares literally translates from English as "stale ball". In fact, the definition itself describes this phenomenon very well. Stale shares are stale shares for the XXX block that were sent to the pool after the XXX block was found. That is, they are late decisions.

To better understand the phenomenon, here is a simple and straightforward example. Suppose that there is a group of people (miners) to whom the presenter asks a question (searching for an answer - mining). The participants of this game take turns going through the options, voicing to the presenter, until the right answer is found. The answer has already been given, but for some reason some of the participants keep going through the options - these are the stale shares in mining.

• WHY DO STALE SHARES IN MINING ARISE?

There are several reasons why such a phenomenon as stale shares can occur. These include:

Malfunctions in the pool. Sometimes the pool system simply malfunctions and does not send an "unsubscribe" command to the participants.
Failures in the mining client. Often the reason is in the mining program itself - it stops accepting commands from the pool, so it keeps looking for signatures of an already signed block.
Connection problems. If the pool has a very high computing power, but your network, to which the equipment is connected, is characterized by low rates, then there can be a time gap - between the output of the command from the pool and its arrival to you. Thus, for some time you will send stale shares.
Problems with antivirus. Sometimes the reason for sending stale shares is too "sensitive" antivirus, which doesn't let the pool commands through the firewall.
Probably the most common cause of stale shares is a lack of normal contact between the working components of the farm.
The most common reasons for stale shares are the problems described above.

• HOW TO SOLVE THE STALE SHARES PROBLEM IN MINING?

Actually, to solve the problem, it is necessary to initially establish the cause of stale shares, and then search for a solution in accordance with it. As an option, you can go by the brute-force method:

Try connecting to a different network.
Reinstall the miner program.
Disable antivirus.
Try reconnecting the components of the farm.
Check the stability of your video cards, because sometimes the reason for the delayed orbs is due to their excessive overclocking.
Stale shares in mining - this is a rather serious problem, which can affect the fairness and correctness of the accrual of rewards for the pool participants and you in particular. Accordingly, it is better to solve it quickly, without putting it off.

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