Payout address safety: the one typo that costs everything
Your payout address is where the pool sends your income. It is also the highest-value string in your mining stack — malware, clipboard hijackers, and fat fingers all target it. Verify it the way accountants verify bank details.
The address is the bank account
Most pools credit shares to whatever address is embedded in your worker name or account. Get it right once and payouts flow automatically; get it wrong — or let something change it — and coins go somewhere you do not control. There is no fraud desk to call.
- Set the address by pasting FROM your wallet, then verify the first 6 and last 6 characters against the wallet display — every time.
- Beware clipboard malware: it silently swaps a copied address for the attacker's. A re-read after paste catches it.
- Prefer pools that require address confirmation via a signed message or email/2FA before first payout.
- Do a small test withdrawal and confirm arrival before pointing serious hashrate.
Rotation and reuse
Some pools support address rotation or multiple payout addresses — useful hygiene for privacy and for migrating wallets, but every active address is another thing to audit. Keep a dated record: pool, worker, address, wallet derivation, first-payout date. If an address ever surprises you, stop mining and investigate before the next payout window.
See it live on pow.family
Our project quick-start blocks show the exact worker-name format each pool expects — address formats are chain-specific and listed per coin.