Choosing a pool: the actual checklist

• Scheme + fee — PPLNS at a low fee is the sensible default; pay PPS premiums only if you genuinely need flat income (the payout schemes lesson prices this trade).
• Minimum payout vs your hashrate — compute the days until *your* rigs cross the threshold. Weeks of accumulation = weeks of counterparty risk.
• Public, real-time stats — live hashrate, workers, per-block effort and luck. A pool that won't publish these is asking for trust where verification belongs.
• Withdrawal fee vs network fee — compare what the pool charges per payout against the chain's typical transaction fee; the gap is a hidden fee.
• Operator track record — age of the pool, incident communication, whether they publish security advisories. Longevity is earned in this industry.

The headline percentage is only the visible fee. Things that quietly behave like fees: withdrawal charges far above the network's actual transaction cost; "maintenance" deductions without a published schedule; and the softest one — hostage thresholds, minimum payouts so high that a small miner's balance sits in the pool for months. If the pool were to shut down before you cross the line, that balance dies with it. A reasonable threshold lets an active miner cash out within days.

What size changes: how often the pool finds blocks (big pools pay many small amounts; small pools pay rarely but bigger — smoother vs lumpier income), and how much operator risk concentrates on one set of servers. What it does not change: your expected value per share, which is the same on any pool running the same scheme and fee. A small honest pool and a large honest pool differ in income *rhythm*, not income *size* — choose on trust and transparency first, rank a distant second.

The one systemic caveat: on small chains, one pool holding most of the hashrate is a network-level risk (the chain's censorship resistance now has a single point of decision). Miners reading the public stats can see that concentration — and vote with their hash.

Every project page's Pools section carries all of this lesson's inputs per pool — scheme, fee, minimum payout, stratum regions, live hashrate and worker counts — so the checklist runs in one scroll.