Hashrate

Hashrate is how many attempts your hardware makes each second at the puzzle a coin's mining algorithm sets. Each attempt is one hash. A higher hashrate means more chances to find a valid result, so a larger share of the rewards over time.

Hashrate is written with the same prefixes as other units, and each step is 1,000 times the one before. 1 kH/s is a thousand hashes per second, 1 MH/s a million, 1 GH/s a billion, 1 TH/s a trillion, then PH/s and EH/s. A CPU on a CPU-friendly algorithm may show a few kH/s, while an ASIC on SHA-256 shows hundreds of TH/s. Those two numbers are not comparable, because each algorithm's hash costs a very different amount of work.

What matters for earnings is your hashrate as a fraction of the whole network. Say you run 500 MH/s on a network of 50 TH/s. That is 0.001 percent of the network. If the network finds 720 blocks a day, you would expect about 0.0072 block rewards a day on average, before fees.

Your miner shows its own local speed, measured on the device. The pool cannot see your hardware, so it estimates your hashrate from the shares it receives. Shares arrive at random, so the pool figure jumps around over short windows and settles over longer ones.

A common worry is that the pool figure is lower than the miner says. Small gaps are normal. Compare the 24-hour average with your miner's average over the same time, not with a single live reading. A gap that stays large usually points to rejected or stale shares, an unstable overclock or a slow connection.

To check your rig, look at the accepted, rejected and stale counts in your miner, and at your worker list on the pool's miner page. If one worker reads far below the others, start there.