DiagnosticsBeginner11 min read

Reading Your Worker Stats on mkpool (2026)

Published July 24, 2026

Once your miner is connected, the mkpool dashboard becomes your window into whether it is healthy and how it is doing. Every figure means something specific, and a couple of them, best share especially, are widely misunderstood. This guide walks the numbers one by one so you can read your own worker at a glance.

Where to find your stats

There is no login. Everything is keyed to your address:

The chain dashboard, e.g. the Bitcoin dashboard, shows the pool as a whole, total hashrate, workers and blocks.
Your address page lists every worker mining to your address, each with its own hashrate and shares. Open it from the miners page or by searching your address.
Each worker has its own detailed page with a hashrate history chart and full share breakdown.

Because it is keyed only to your address, the page is shareable, anyone with the link sees the same read-only stats, and nothing there can change your mining.

Hashrate: why there are several numbers

The pool cannot measure your chips directly. It estimates your hashrate from the accepted shares you submit, and shows that estimate over several time windows. On your address page, each worker lists three: Current (about the last ten minutes), 30 minutes and 1 hour. Open a worker's own page and it adds longer averages, 5-minute, 1-hour, 1-day, 7-day and 30-day.

The short windows (Current and 5-minute) are the most responsive and the jumpiest: they react fast when a miner starts or stops, but bounce around on normal variance.
The longer windows (1-hour, 1-day and up) are smoother, and a fairer read of what the miner is actually doing.
The 1-day average is the number to compare against your miner's rated hashrate.

Pool hashrate vs your miner's readout

Because it is inferred from shares, the pool figure lags real time and usually reads a little below your miner's own directly-measured number, especially on short windows. That gap is expected. Compare like for like: the pool's 1-hour or 24-hour average against your miner's average, not its instantaneous reading.

Shares: Valid, Invalid, Stale

Shares are the proof-of-work your miner sends in. mkpool breaks them into three counts, often shown together as Shares (V/I/S):

Valid, accepted, correct work. This is the number you want climbing steadily.
Invalid, rejected because they did not meet the required difficulty or were malformed. A few are harmless; a steady stream usually means a difficulty misconfiguration or a failing hashboard.
Stale, valid work that arrived too late, because a new block or job replaced the one they answered. A handful is normal; many points to latency between your miner and the pool.

A healthy worker has invalid and stale shares as a small fraction of valid ones, the dashboard's reject rate captures this in one number. If it climbs, the split between invalid and stale tells you where to look: invalid points at difficulty or hardware, stale at the network. A distant connection is a common cause of stales; a closer endpoint often fixes it.

Current difficulty

This is the share difficulty the pool has assigned your worker right now. On a vardiff port it rises as the pool learns your hashrate and settles at a level that keeps your share rate sensible. It is normal for it to climb in the first few minutes after connecting and then hold roughly steady. It does not affect your odds of a block, only how often you submit shares.

Best share: how close you came

Best share, also labelled best difficulty or best ever, is the single highest-difficulty share your worker or address has ever submitted. It is the luckiest hash you have found so far, and it is the most interesting and most misunderstood number on the page.

To read it, compare it with the network difficulty. A block is found when one of your shares reaches the network difficulty, so your best share tells you how close you have come:

A best share at, say, 1% of network difficulty means your luckiest hash was about a hundredth of the way to a block.
If your best share ever reaches or exceeds the network difficulty, that share was a block.

Best share is a record, not progress

It is tempting to read a high best share as being "close" to a block, but solo mining has no progress bar. Every share is an independent random event, so a big best share does not make the next block any nearer or more likely. It is a personal record, bragging rights, not a fuel gauge. Chasing it is the gambler's fallacy.

Last share

The last-share timestamp is your quickest health check. A recent time means the worker is actively submitting; a timestamp that has stopped advancing means the miner has disconnected, lost power, or dropped off the network, even if an old hashrate figure is still fading out on the chart. If a worker's last share is minutes old when it should be seconds, start troubleshooting there.

Reading a fleet

If you named your workers (address.rig1, address.rig2, and so on), each appears as its own row under the address page. That makes problems obvious: a unit whose hashrate has dropped, whose last share is stale, or whose reject rate is creeping up stands out against its siblings instead of hiding inside a combined total. Scan the rows, not just the headline number.

Putting it together

A worker in good health looks like this:

Healthy at a glance

1-hour hashrate near the miner's rating.
Valid shares climbing; invalid and stale near zero.
Current difficulty settled and steady.
Last share only seconds old.
Best share is whatever luck has given you, and it does not matter for your next block.

If those look right, the miner is doing its job and the rest is variance. To understand why blocks can be so far apart even when everything is healthy, see solo mining luck and variance, and to estimate your real odds run your hashrate through the chance calculator.

Disclaimer

Dashboard labels and time windows are current as of July 2026 and may be refined over time. Nothing here is financial advice. Solo mining is probabilistic and can lose money depending on electricity cost and network conditions.

Frequently asked questions

What is best share on mkpool?

Best share (also shown as best difficulty or best ever) is the highest-difficulty share your address or worker has ever submitted, the single luckiest hash it has found. Compare it to the network difficulty: if your best share ever reached the network difficulty, that share was a block. It is a record of how close you have come, not a running total.

Does a high best share mean I am close to finding a block?

No. Every share is an independent random event, so a high best share does not make the next block any nearer or more likely. It only tells you the best single result you have had so far. Solo mining has no progress bar, you do not accumulate toward a block, you keep rolling the dice each share.

Why is the pool's hashrate lower than my miner's?

The pool cannot see your chips; it estimates your hashrate from the accepted shares you submit over a time window. That estimate lags real time and is noisier over short windows, so it usually reads a little below and jumpier than your miner's own directly-measured figure. Compare the pool's 1-hour or 24-hour average with your miner's average for a fair check.

What is a stale share, and are stales bad?

A stale share was submitted for a job that is no longer current, usually because a new block or template arrived while your share was in flight. A few stales are normal, especially over a slow or distant connection. A high stale rate points to latency or a network problem, try a nearer endpoint or check for packet loss.

What is the difference between invalid and stale shares?

Invalid shares are rejected because they did not meet the required difficulty or were malformed, usually a difficulty misconfiguration or a hardware fault. Stale shares were valid work that simply arrived too late for the job they answered. Both are shown separately in the Shares (V/I/S) figure so you can tell a config or hardware problem from a latency problem.

My worker shows shares but the pool lists zero blocks. Is something wrong?

No. Shares are proof your miner is doing valid work; they are not blocks. Solo mining is high-variance, so a miner can submit millions of shares before it ever finds a block, or find one early. Zero blocks with healthy shares means everything is working, you simply have not won the lottery yet.

Newsletter

Mining insights in your inbox

New guides, hardware reviews, and pool updates. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.

Keep reading

Setup & First ShareBeginner11 min read

Connect Any Miner to mkpool: The Universal Setup Guide (2026)

One pattern connects every miner to mkpool: a stratum URL, your own wallet address as the username, and the password x. Match your hardware's algorithm to a chain, pick a port, and mine straight to your wallet, no account, no custody.

Mecanik1337Read →

Connection & SecurityIntermediate10 min read

Which Stratum Port and Difficulty Should You Use? (2026)

mkpool offers vardiff and fixed-difficulty ports on every chain. Here is what share difficulty actually is, why it does not change your block odds, and exactly which port to use for a Bitaxe, an owned ASIC, or rented NiceHash hashrate.

Mecanik1337Read →

Setup & First ShareIntermediate12 min read

Antminer S21 Series: Solo Mining Setup on mkpool (2026)

Point an Antminer S21, S21 Pro, S21 XP or S21 Hydro at mkpool and solo mine straight to your own wallet. Web UI access, exact stratum ports, difficulty tiers, TLS and Stratum V2, AsicBoost, fleet naming and how to verify the connection.

Mecanik1337Read →

← back to all guides