Zcash mining payout schemes explained: SOLO, PROP, PPLNS, PPS+ and PARTY

Zcash mining payout schemes decide how your miner’s shares become ZEC, and who carries the luck risk. Before fees, they all average about the same over the long run, so the real difference is variance. This guide explains SOLO, PROP, PPLNS, PPS+ and PARTY, then shows which one suits your hardware.

Shares, rounds, effort and luck

A pool cannot see your hashrate directly. Instead, your miner submits shares: solutions that meet an easier target than a real block. Each share has a known chance of also solving a block, so shares measure work fairly. Every pooled scheme below starts from that count.

A round is the stretch between two blocks from the same pool. Effort compares the work a round took with the work one block needs on average. So a round at 100% took exactly the average work. Below 100% is lucky and above 100% is unlucky, but both happen all the time.

Luck looks at the same data from the other side. It compares blocks found with blocks expected from the pool’s work over a period, such as the last 100 blocks. Unlike effort, a luck figure above 100% means good luck. However, pools do not all follow one convention, so check which way a pool’s luck figure points.

The Zcash numbers behind every scheme

Three protocol facts drive all the maths. First, Zcash targets one block every 75 seconds (ZIP 208), so it adds about 1,152 blocks a day. Second, since NU6 in November 2024, the dev fund split leaves miners 80% of the block subsidy. NU6.1 kept that split in November 2025. Today it means 1.25 ZEC per block for miners, plus transaction fees (z.cash).

Third, one unit of difficulty equals 8,192 expected solutions. That factor comes from the protocol’s easiest target of 2^243 (Zebra documentation), because 2^256 divided by 2^243 is 8,192. So a block needs, on average, difficulty × 8,192 solutions.

Zcash retargets difficulty every block, so the figure moves quickly. On 26 September 2026, the daily average was about 275 million (Blockchair). At that level, one block needs about 2.25 trillion solutions on average. Over 75 seconds, that implies a network rate of roughly 30 billion solutions per second (30 GSol/s).

How Zcash mining payout schemes turn shares into rewards

Each scheme answers one question: who receives the reward when a block arrives? On ZProMiners, SOLO, PROP and PPLNS are live, and all three use direct transparent coinbase payouts. The block’s own coinbase carries the reward to miners’ transparent addresses, so anyone can verify it on an explorer. See the scheme pages for current parameters, such as fees and the PPLNS window.

SOLO: the finder takes the reward

In solo mining, only the miner who finds a block receives its reward. The block’s coinbase sends the miner reward straight to the finder’s address. Shares that do not solve a block earn nothing. As a result, SOLO has the highest variance of any scheme: rewards arrive as full blocks, at random times.

PROP: each round split by its shares

PROP, short for proportional, splits each block among everyone who submitted shares during that round. If your shares made up 2% of the round’s work, you receive 2% of the reward, before fees. In the ZProMiners PROP pool, the block’s coinbase splits the reward among the contributing miners’ addresses. Then the next round starts from zero. PROP suits steady miners who value simple, round-by-round accounting.

PPLNS: the last N shares

PPLNS, short for “pay per last N shares”, ignores round boundaries. When the pool finds a block, the reward goes to the last N shares, whenever they arrived. In the ZProMiners PPLNS pool, the coinbase splits the reward among the addresses behind those shares. So one share can earn from several blocks, from one, or from none. That depends on how many blocks arrive while it stays in the window.

PPS+: a fixed reward per share

PPS+, short for “pay per share plus”, works differently by nature. The operator guarantees a fixed reward for every valid share, whether or not blocks arrive. As a result, the operator takes on the luck risk. It sets the reward from the current difficulty and the 1.25 ZEC miner reward. Transaction fees, the “plus”, usually follow the pool’s actual blocks instead, as the Hashrate Index guide explains. On Zcash, fees stay small: our own check of coinbase totals from late September 2026 shows that a typical block carried about 0.001 ZEC in fees. PPS+ is coming soon on ZProMiners.

PARTY: private group mining

PARTY mining is a custom ZProMiners scheme, also coming soon. It lets a private team mine together and share rewards among its own members. The team’s combined hashrate decides how often it finds blocks, so a bigger team sees steadier rewards. PARTY suits teams that want to combine hashrate privately.

Who carries the luck risk?

Luck risk is the chance that blocks arrive more slowly than average. Every scheme hands that risk to someone.

In SOLO, you carry all of it. Lucky stretches bring blocks early, while unlucky ones leave long gaps. In PROP and PPLNS, pool members share it. The pool finds blocks far more often than any single member would, so each member’s income becomes much smoother. Even so, an unlucky stretch lowers every member’s income at the same time.

PPS+ moves most of the risk to the operator, who needs reserves to survive unlucky periods. Rosenfeld’s “Analysis of Bitcoin Pooled Mining Reward Systems” calls PPS the riskiest method for an operator. That is why PPS-style pools usually charge higher fees. Finally, a PARTY team carries its own luck, so a small team sees more variance than a big pool.

Pool hopping: why PPLNS resists it and PROP does not

Pool hopping means mining at a pool only while its rules favour you, then leaving. PROP invites it. Block discovery has no memory: however long a round has run, the average work left stays the same. So a share sent early in a round expects fewer rivals for the reward than one sent late. Early shares in a PROP round are therefore worth more on average.

Rosenfeld calculated the break-even point. Once a round passes about 43.5% of the expected work, a new PROP share is worth less than average. So hoppers mine the young rounds, leave, and let loyal miners absorb the long ones. In theory, continuous miners could lose up to 43% of their fair reward in the worst case.

PPLNS removes that incentive. A share earns from the blocks the pool finds during the next N shares. So its expected value does not depend on how long the current round has run, and hopping gains nothing. Rosenfeld notes one edge case: when difficulty changes, simple PPLNS is no longer perfectly hopping-proof. He also describes variants that fix it.

Comparing the five Zcash payout schemes

This table sums up the five Zcash mining payout schemes covered above.

Expected value: same average, different variance

Here is the key intuition. Your long-run income depends on your share of the network’s work, not on the scheme. Rosenfeld shows that pooling leaves your expected reward unchanged while it cuts your variance. In other words, a pool trades lumpy income for a steady flow, not for a higher average.

Take one Antminer Z15 at 420 kSol/s and the difficulty above. It supplies about 0.0014% of the network, so on average it earns about six blocks’ worth of rewards a year. That is roughly 7.3 ZEC before fees. SOLO delivers it as whole blocks at random times, while PROP and PPLNS deliver it in many small slices. PPS+ turns it into an almost fixed daily amount, usually for a higher fee. What really changes between schemes is fees, variance and your exposure to other miners’ behaviour.

Which Zcash mining payout scheme fits your hardware?

The examples below use the 26 September 2026 average difficulty of about 275 million. Difficulty changes constantly, so check the mining calculator for live figures. In general, PPLNS suits most miners, from one Z15 to a mid-size farm.

A single Antminer Z15

Mining solo, one Z15 needs about 62 days per block on average. The waits vary widely: the median is about 43 days, and roughly one wait in five runs past 100 days. If you can accept long, uneven waits for a full block, SOLO works. Otherwise, choose PPLNS for a steadier flow of small rewards. PROP also smooths income, but hoppers can dilute it. On ZProMiners, if your PROP or PPLNS slice of a block is under 0.0005 ZEC, it is not written as an output: it is carried over and added to your output in a later block’s coinbase once your running total reaches 0.0005 ZEC, so nothing is lost and every output is large enough to shield at a sensible fee.

A mid-size farm

Take 50 Z15s, or about 21 MSol/s. Mining solo, that farm would average a block every 30 hours, or about 25 blocks a month. Even so, monthly totals would typically swing by around 20%. PPLNS narrows that swing, although the gain shrinks as your farm becomes a larger part of the pool. If you want fixed income instead, watch for PPS+.

A large farm

With 500 Z15s (210 MSol/s), SOLO averages about eight blocks a day, or roughly 245 a month. Monthly swings fall to around 6%, so a farm this size already behaves like a small pool. That makes SOLO a strong fit. Farms that need fixed income for budgets or loans may prefer PPS+ once it launches. Partners who want to mine as one private group can consider PARTY.

Whichever of these Zcash mining payout schemes you choose, our guide on how to start mining covers the setup.