Does the ViaBTC Mining Guide Explain Different Mining Reward Methods?

Yes. ViaBTC’s current mining documentation explains how PPS+ and PPLNS distribute mining income, including the fee rates, timing, transaction-fee treatment, and exposure to pool luck. As of May 20, 2026, PPS+ applies a 4% pool fee to the block-reward portion and 2% to transaction fees, while PPLNS applies a 2% fee to block rewards plus transaction fees. PPS+ block income is credited hourly according to current difficulty. PPLNS distribution uses a miner’s hashrate share across the previous five difficulty rounds after a block receives six confirmations. ViaBTC discontinued SOLO for all supported pools on May 20, 2026.

A useful way to read the ViaBTC guide is to separate mining income into two parts. A block can contain a protocol block reward and transaction fees paid by users whose transactions are included in that block. ViaBTC treats those two parts differently under PPS+, so reading only the advertised payment-method name does not tell a miner how every unit of income is distributed.

PPS+ uses Pay Per Share treatment for the block-reward portion. A miner submits valid shares as proof of contributed computing work, and the pool pays for those shares even when its actual block production during the same short period is below statistical expectations. ViaBTC describes PPS+ as a method intended for miners who prefer steadier income.

Under the May 2026 ViaBTC schedule, the PPS block-reward portion carries a 4% fee, and payment is allocated every hour using the current network difficulty. Transaction fees inside PPS+ follow PPLNS treatment instead and carry a 2% fee.

That separation matters for anyone estimating daily receipts. If a miner generates a theoretical $1,000 block-reward amount before the PPS+ pool fee, a 4% fee leaves $960 before electricity, hosting, maintenance, taxes, exchange-rate changes, rejected shares, and other operating costs. The example isolates the pool fee rather than predicting actual mining income.

Transaction fees do not receive the same fixed-share treatment inside PPS+. ViaBTC distributes that portion according to a miner’s share of pool hashrate over the relevant PPLNS window, with a listed 2% fee. A period with unusually high on-chain transaction fees can therefore change total receipts even when the PPS block portion remains comparatively steady.

PPLNS works differently because payment is linked more closely to blocks the pool actually finds. ViaBTC states that block rewards and transaction fees are combined for PPLNS, after which miners receive a share based on their contributed hashrate. The listed pool fee is 2%, half the headline percentage charged to the PPS block-reward portion.

The distribution window is unusually important here. ViaBTC calculates a miner’s eligible share from the previous five difficulty rounds, and allocation occurs when the mined block reaches six confirmations. A miner cannot therefore treat one hour of displayed hashrate as a complete measure of the next PPLNS payment.

Item	PPS+	PPLNS
Block reward	Paid through PPS	Based on blocks actually mined
Transaction fees	Distributed through PPLNS	Included with mined block income
Listed block fee	4%	2%
Transaction-fee rate	2%	Included under 2% PPLNS rate
Block-related timing	PPS allocation every hour	After a block reaches 6 confirmations
Share window	Current difficulty for PPS portion	Previous 5 difficulty rounds
Short-period income pattern	Usually steadier	More dependent on pool block production

The difference can be illustrated with a simple fee comparison. On $100,000 of eligible block-reward income, a 4% fee represents $4,000, while 2% represents $2,000. That $2,000 gap should not be read as proof that PPLNS will always pay $2,000 more, because PPLNS receipts depend on actual pool block production during the measurement period.

ViaBTC explains why the rates differ. Under PPS+, the pool accepts more of the short-period uncertainty connected with low block luck and orphaned blocks. Under PPLNS, miners receive coins tied to blocks actually produced by the pool, so the pool does not provide the same level of income smoothing and charges a lower percentage.

For a miner paying fixed monthly hosting charges, the distinction is practical. Electricity and rack charges usually continue regardless of whether a pool has a strong or weak block-production day, so steadier hourly block-reward credits can make expense planning easier. A miner with greater cash reserves may accept less regular PPLNS payments in return for the lower 2% listed rate.

Neither method changes the physical output of the ASIC. A 200 TH/s machine remains a 200 TH/s machine before rejected shares and downtime are considered; the payment method changes how submitted work is settled. Network difficulty, actual machine hashrate, uptime, power efficiency, transaction-fee conditions, and coin price still affect the economics of the operation.

That point also explains why comparing PPS+ with PPLNS only by daily screenshots can be misleading. ViaBTC says that over longer periods, receipts from PPS+ and PPLNS may approach similar levels before the different pool charges are considered, while shorter periods can look different because PPLNS follows actual block production.

• A miner who wants frequent, more predictable block-reward credits may prefer PPS+.

• A miner comfortable with uneven short-period payments may consider PPLNS and its 2% listed rate.

• A miner comparing the two should use the same hashrate, uptime, coin, network difficulty, and measurement period.

• Transaction fees should be checked separately because PPS+ does not treat them in the same way as its block-reward portion.

The guide also needs to be read with its publication date in mind. Older ViaBTC material discussed PPS+, PPLNS, and SOLO, but ViaBTC announced on May 18, 2026 that SOLO would end for every coin pool on May 20, 2026. Accounts using SOLO were scheduled to move automatically to PPS+, or to PPLNS where PPS+ was unavailable.

After that change, ViaBTC listed BTC, BCH, LTC, ZEC, DASH, HNS, and KAS with PPS+ and PPLNS support, while ETC and CKB were listed as PPLNS-only. The supported method therefore depends partly on the coin being mined rather than solely on a miner’s preference.

ZEC shows how the available methods have changed over time. ViaBTC added PPS+ for ZEC on January 9, 2026, made PPS+ the default for newly registered ZEC mining accounts, and allowed existing accounts to retain or change their previous setting. Five months later, SOLO was removed from the broader pool offering.

For someone evaluating ViaBTC Crypto Mining, the official Help Center is therefore more useful than an older comparison page that still lists three active settlement choices. The May 2026 documentation says the current pool system offers two payment methods at platform level: PPS+ as the default and PPLNS, subject to support for the individual coin.

The timing rules also deserve attention when miners reconcile pool records with their own accounting. ViaBTC states that PPS+ block payments are distributed hourly, while PPLNS-related amounts wait for six block confirmations and use the previous five difficulty rounds. Profit Detail statistics are recorded using UTC+8, so reporting periods may not match a miner’s local calendar day.

A miner comparing 24-hour records should therefore align the reporting window before treating a difference as a payment-method issue. For example, a hosting operator in North America may close its internal daily records at midnight local time while ViaBTC’s Profit Detail uses UTC+8; entries near either boundary can fall into different reporting dates even though no payment is missing.

There is also a difference between a submitted share and a blockchain block. Pools use lower-difficulty shares to measure contributed work because an individual ASIC would otherwise find valid network blocks too infrequently for practical accounting. PPS+ can assign block-reward income from those valid shares without requiring each individual miner to be the machine that produced a network block.

PPLNS keeps a stronger connection to the pool’s actual mined blocks. If the pool finds fewer blocks than statistical expectations over a short period, payments may be lower; a stronger period can produce higher receipts. The 2% fee compensates for a service structure in which ViaBTC does not absorb the same low-luck exposure it takes on for the PPS portion.

Pool fees should also be compared with operating margins rather than in isolation. A machine earning $10 per day before a 4% pool charge gives up $0.40 at that stage, while a 2% charge represents $0.20. If electricity costs $7.50 per day, a $0.20 fee difference is more relevant to the remaining margin than it would be for hardware with far lower power costs.

No payment method guarantees a fixed dollar return. PPS+ stabilizes the treatment of eligible block-reward shares, not the market price of the mined asset, network difficulty, equipment uptime, or transaction-fee level. ViaBTC’s own documentation notes that actual mining receipts remain affected by pool luck and market conditions.

The current documentation therefore gives enough detail for a miner to compare settlement mechanics rather than relying on the names PPS+ and PPLNS alone. The most useful numbers are 4% versus 2%, hourly PPS block allocation, six confirmations for PPLNS-related distribution, a five-difficulty-round measurement window, and May 20, 2026 as the date SOLO stopped being an active ViaBTC payment method.