Binance launches Ethereum Mining Pool with 0.5% fees

After launching its Bitcoin mining pool in April, crypto exchange Binance has now launched an in-house mining pool for the market's largest altcoin by market cap, Ether.

For the first month, between Nov. 12 and Dec. 12, Binance is trying to attract miners by offering a zero-fee regime.

Those contributing their hash power to the pool will be charged a competitive 0.5% commission on their earnings.

Binance's instructions for setting up a mining pool account notethat participants will need to use a Windows or Linux operating system, GPU, 5GB virtual memory for each GPU, and mining software, e.g., HiveOS or Easy Miner.

The Ethereum mining pool will use a similar system to the existing Bitcoin pool, called FPPS. Binance's Bitcoin pool notably also offers a feature called smart pool, which enables participants to automatically switch hash rates in order to mine the most profitable of three supported coins based on the SHA- 256 algorithm: Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash or Bitcoin SV. The settlement is still paid out in BTC. An online pool distribution tracker for Bitcoin mining pools, BTC.com, indicates that Binance Pool accounted for 9.4% of Bitcoin's total hash rate over the past week.

Centralization looks set to remain a concern for those committed to the founding decentralizing ethos of cryptocurrency.

BTC.com's data shows that over 50% of Bitcoin's current hash rate is accounted for by four mining pools: F2Pool, Poolin, BTC.com and AntPool.