What are accepted and rejected shares?
In this blog post, we will talk about mining shares. To be precise, we will explain what are accepted and rejected shares and what is a good ratio between the two.
What are shares?
A share is a result of the mining process. This result is sent from a miner to a pool and contributes towards finding a new block on the blockchain (confirming transactions in the process).
You can think of a share like a mathematical problem that is solved with a random number. Miner tries many different random numbers until the solution is correct. The more random numbers miner can try out in the given time, the bigger the probability of solving the mathematical problems correctly.
Miners are solving mathematical problems and sending the solutions back to the pool. If they solve the problem correctly they get (rewarded) a new block reward. You can read about how mining works here.
What are the accepted shares?
Accepted shares are, as the name tells, shares that were solved correctly and contributed in time. At NiceHash, you get paid for each successfully accepted share sent to our stratum server. You can read about the “pay-per-share” reward system here.
What are the rejected shares?
Rejected shares is a term for all shares that are rejected for any of the below reasons:
- Stale share - The share was submitted too late (probably because of the high latency or problems with connection). This is the only share that is expected to happen in small quantities thus it is considered normal.
- Share above target (invalid share) - There is a problem with your mining software that needs to be inspected or configured properly. It is also possible that the mining software is not compatible with NiceHash.
- Duplicate share - The share was submitted more than once and indicates a bug in your mining software or incompatibility with NiceHash.
- Other - Any other type of rejected shares usually means a bug in your mining software.
The most common rejected shares are 'share above target' and 'stale' shares.
What is a good accepted/rejected ratio?
You should aim for 100% accepted shares and 0% rejected shares. In the long run, this is practically impossible, since there will always be some latency between the miner and the NiceHash stratum server.
When it comes to types of rejects like an invalid, stale, or duplicate shares, only stale shares should be acceptable (up to 1%-2%, depending on the algorithm). Any other rejected share is a result of a misconfigured system and has the potential to be completely removed.
Example of an ideal accepted/rejected speed ratio
How to check the type of rejected share?
NiceHash Rig Manager shows the detailed reason for rejected shares. Follow these steps to check rejected type:
- Navigate to Rig Manager,
- Open rig details by clicking on the rig name,
- Scroll down and navigate to Mining History Stats graph,
- Change Showing Stats for All Algorithms to the desired algorithm.
Graph display will change to algorithm details. You can remove the redundant information by deselecting the Accepted speed, Payrate, etc. at the bottom of the page.
How to remove the share above target (invalid share)?
Share above target is most commonly caused by an unstable overclock. To solve this problem, lower the overclock setting inside your overclocking tool. To read more about overclocking and underclocking, read this article.
How to remove stale shares?
Stale shares are most likely caused by high latency between your rig and NiceHash stratum server. Normal latency between a miner and NiceHash stratum should be somewhere between 10-100ms (lower is better).
Stale shares can be a result of using a VPN or a slow internet connection. Try disconnecting from the VPN or using a faster internet connection.
Note that some fast job changing algorithms tend to be more sensitive to high latency than others.