A DeepCore Hosting customer named Andreas bought two Antminer S21 XPs from MillionMiner in March and had them shipped directly to our Nebraska facility. Intake was clean. The miners were racked within 72 hours. Then he stalled for four days trying to figure out whether to mine with F2Pool, Antpool, ViaBTC, or Braiins, which payout scheme to choose, and what exactly to type into the DeepCore dashboard. Four days of 870 EH/s network competition passed. At $33.25/PH/day hashprice per Hashrate Index, that delay cost him approximately $35 in foregone revenue per miner. On a 10-unit fleet, $350.
This manual exists so that does not happen to you. By the end of this page, your F2Pool account is live, your BTC payout wallet is configured, you have chosen the payout scheme that matches your cash flow needs, and your miners are hashing. Total hands-on time: about 15 minutes, plus a 10-minute wait to watch your first share land.
The scope of this guide is specific. It covers F2Pool (the pool) and DeepCore Hosting (MillionMiner’s US hosting service). If you are self-hosting at home, the same F2Pool steps apply; skip the DeepCore section and apply the stratum URL directly through your Antminer web UI. For the protocol-level foundation of how this all works, the complete guide to Bitcoin mining covers the fundamentals.
Why F2Pool (Context, Not Marketing)
F2Pool was founded in 2013 and is one of the oldest Bitcoin mining pools still operating. It supports over 40 proof-of-work networks. Its infrastructure runs regional servers on five continents. For the practical question, “is this pool going to be around next year,” F2Pool is a yes.
The honest trade-off. D-Central’s 2026 pool comparison notes F2Pool’s centralized block template construction and lack of Stratum V2 support as decentralization concerns. For sovereignty-maximalist miners, Ocean or Braiins are the better fit. For most operators buying hardware to generate predictable BTC, F2Pool’s size provides block discovery frequency and payout reliability that matters more than protocol idealism. Pick what matches your priorities. This guide assumes you have picked F2Pool.
One more practical note. F2Pool does not require KYC to mine Bitcoin. You register with an email, configure a payout address, and start hashing. The privacy profile is better than pools that require identity verification, though worse than anonymous-by-design options like Ocean.
Before You Start: What You Need
Do not open the F2Pool signup page until you have these four items ready. Missing any one of them will stall the setup mid-flow.
A Bitcoin wallet address you control.
If you do not have one yet, a hardware wallet (ColdCard, Ledger, Trezor) is the right answer for long-term BTC accumulation. A software wallet like Sparrow or Electrum works too. An exchange address technically works but has two weaknesses: exchanges have failed (FTX, Celsius, Gemini Earn) and exchange deposits create KYC trails on every payout. A dedicated Bitcoin wallet for mining payouts is the cleaner path.
An email address for the F2Pool account.
Any working email. F2Pool does not require phone verification or KYC for basic Bitcoin mining.
Your DeepCore Hosting dashboard login.
If you have bought miners from MillionMiner and had them shipped to a DeepCore US facility, you received dashboard credentials with your order confirmation. If you did not, email contact@millionminer.com to request them before starting this flow.
A decision on payout scheme (FPPS or PPLNS).
Keep reading. The math is below.
Step 1: Create Your F2Pool Account
Open f2pool.com/user/signup in your browser. F2Pool asks for: an account name (this is what routes your earnings), an email, and a password. The account name is not cosmetic. It is the identifier F2Pool uses to associate every share your hardware submits with your payout balance. Choose something you will recognize at a glance. Lowercase, no special characters, and ideally something you can type from memory. Andreas chose andreas-mining. Abdul at MillionMiner uses mmillionminer-fleet. Either pattern works.
After you confirm the email verification, your account is live. Take 60 seconds to enable two-factor authentication under Security. F2Pool supports TOTP (Google Authenticator, Authy) and hardware keys. Pool accounts get targeted by phishing attacks because they hold payout configuration. TOTP eliminates 90% of that risk.
Step 2: Configure Your BTC Payout Wallet
Navigate to Account Settings > Payout Settings (or visit f2pool.com/user/account#tab-wallet directly). Paste your Bitcoin receiving address. Double-check every character. F2Pool sends payouts on-chain; a typo sends your first month of mined BTC to a void. There is no recovery.
Then set your payout threshold. F2Pool offers five options: 0.005 (default), 0.01, 0.05, 1, or 5 BTC. The 0.005 default pays out frequently, which minimizes the amount of mined BTC sitting on F2Pool servers at any moment. The higher thresholds reduce on-chain fee overhead but mean larger balances sit in pool custody longer. For most operators under 10 miners, 0.005 BTC is the right answer. Fleet operators running 50+ miners sometimes choose 0.05 BTC to reduce transaction fee noise across monthly statements.
Payout mechanics. Once your balance crosses the threshold, F2Pool sends the payout within 24 hours. Payments are processed daily. You can track the on-chain transaction ID in your Revenue page and verify it at mempool.space. A small recommendation: do the address-test dance. Enable payouts at 0.005 BTC, let your first payout land, confirm receipt in your wallet, then you are confident the plumbing works. If something was wrong, you lose 0.005 BTC ($371 at today’s price), not a month of accumulated earnings.
Step 3: Choose Your Payout Scheme (FPPS or PPLNS)
This manual exists so that does not happen to you. By the end of this page, your F2Pool account is live, your BTC payout wallet is configured, you have chosen the payout scheme that matches your cash flow needs, and your miners are hashing. Total hands-on time: about 15 minutes, plus a 10-minute wait to watch your first share land.
The scope of this guide is specific. It covers F2Pool (the pool) and DeepCore Hosting (MillionMiner’s US hosting service). If you are self-hosting at home, the same F2Pool steps apply; skip the DeepCore section and apply the stratum URL directly through your Antminer web UI. For the protocol-level foundation of how this all works, the complete guide to Bitcoin mining covers the fundamentals.
Why F2Pool (Context, Not Marketing)
F2Pool was founded in 2013 and is one of the oldest Bitcoin mining pools still operating. It supports over 40 proof-of-work networks. Its infrastructure runs regional servers on five continents. For the practical question, “is this pool going to be around next year,” F2Pool is a yes.
The honest trade-off. D-Central’s 2026 pool comparison notes F2Pool’s centralized block template construction and lack of Stratum V2 support as decentralization concerns. For sovereignty-maximalist miners, Ocean or Braiins are the better fit. For most operators buying hardware to generate predictable BTC, F2Pool’s size provides block discovery frequency and payout reliability that matters more than protocol idealism. Pick what matches your priorities. This guide assumes you have picked F2Pool.
One more practical note. F2Pool does not require KYC to mine Bitcoin. You register with an email, configure a payout address, and start hashing. The privacy profile is better than pools that require identity verification, though worse than anonymous-by-design options like Ocean.
Before You Start: What You Need
Do not open the F2Pool signup page until you have these four items ready. Missing any one of them will stall the setup mid-flow.
A Bitcoin wallet address you control.
If you do not have one yet, a hardware wallet (ColdCard, Ledger, Trezor) is the right answer for long-term BTC accumulation. A software wallet like Sparrow or Electrum works too. An exchange address technically works but has two weaknesses: exchanges have failed (FTX, Celsius, Gemini Earn) and exchange deposits create KYC trails on every payout. A dedicated Bitcoin wallet for mining payouts is the cleaner path.
An email address for the F2Pool account.
Any working email. F2Pool does not require phone verification or KYC for basic Bitcoin mining.
Your DeepCore Hosting dashboard login.
If you have bought miners from MillionMiner and had them shipped to a DeepCore US facility, you received dashboard credentials with your order confirmation. If you did not, email contact@millionminer.com to request them before starting this flow.
A decision on payout scheme (FPPS or PPLNS).
Keep reading. The math is below.
Step 1: Create Your F2Pool Account
Open f2pool.com/user/signup in your browser. F2Pool asks for: an account name (this is what routes your earnings), an email, and a password. The account name is not cosmetic. It is the identifier F2Pool uses to associate every share your hardware submits with your payout balance. Choose something you will recognize at a glance. Lowercase, no special characters, and ideally something you can type from memory. Andreas chose andreas-mining. Abdul at MillionMiner uses mmillionminer-fleet. Either pattern works.
After you confirm the email verification, your account is live. Take 60 seconds to enable two-factor authentication under Security. F2Pool supports TOTP (Google Authenticator, Authy) and hardware keys. Pool accounts get targeted by phishing attacks because they hold payout configuration. TOTP eliminates 90% of that risk.
Step 2: Configure Your BTC Payout Wallet
Navigate to Account Settings > Payout Settings (or visit f2pool.com/user/account#tab-wallet directly). Paste your Bitcoin receiving address. Double-check every character. F2Pool sends payouts on-chain; a typo sends your first month of mined BTC to a void. There is no recovery.
Then set your payout threshold. F2Pool offers five options: 0.005 (default), 0.01, 0.05, 1, or 5 BTC. The 0.005 default pays out frequently, which minimizes the amount of mined BTC sitting on F2Pool servers at any moment. The higher thresholds reduce on-chain fee overhead but mean larger balances sit in pool custody longer. For most operators under 10 miners, 0.005 BTC is the right answer. Fleet operators running 50+ miners sometimes choose 0.05 BTC to reduce transaction fee noise across monthly statements.
Payout mechanics. Once your balance crosses the threshold, F2Pool sends the payout within 24 hours. Payments are processed daily. You can track the on-chain transaction ID in your Revenue page and verify it at mempool.space. A small recommendation: do the address-test dance. Enable payouts at 0.005 BTC, let your first payout land, confirm receipt in your wallet, then you are confident the plumbing works. If something was wrong, you lose 0.005 BTC ($371 at today’s price), not a month of accumulated earnings.
Step 3: Choose Your Payout Scheme (FPPS or PPLNS)
Per the F2Pool official guide, the two current options for Bitcoin mining on F2Pool are:
FPPS (Full Pay Per Share) at 4% commission.
Every share your hardware submits is paid out at its expected value, including the transaction fee portion of block rewards. You receive smooth, predictable daily revenue regardless of whether F2Pool actually found blocks that day. The 4% fee is the premium you pay for that variance reduction.
PPLNS (Pay Per Last N Shares) at 2% commission.
You are paid based on the proportion of shares your hardware contributed during a rolling window of the last N shares across the pool. When F2Pool finds blocks, you earn. When F2Pool has a dry spell, you earn less. The 2% fee is lower because you absorb the variance the pool takes on under FPPS.
The concrete math at April 2026 rates. For a single Antminer S21 XP (270 TH/s) at $0.08/kWh hosted electricity: FPPS nets +$1.62/day ($591/year). PPLNS nets +$1.80/day ($657/year). The gap is $66 per miner per year. On a 10-unit fleet, $660/year. On a 50-unit fleet, $3,300/year.
The recommendation. If your hosting bill is due monthly and your cash flow depends on predictable mining revenue, pick FPPS. The 4% fee is insurance against variance. If you can absorb day-to-day fluctuations and you want the mathematical upside, pick PPLNS. Most single-miner and small-fleet DeepCore customers pick FPPS for the same reason most salaried workers prefer a steady paycheck over a commission structure with higher expected value.
Configure your choice under Account Settings > Mining > Payout Scheme on F2Pool. You can change it later, though frequent switching is not recommended because it confuses revenue comparison over time.
Step 4: Configure Your Miners Through the DeepCore Dashboard
FPPS (Full Pay Per Share) at 4% commission.
Every share your hardware submits is paid out at its expected value, including the transaction fee portion of block rewards. You receive smooth, predictable daily revenue regardless of whether F2Pool actually found blocks that day. The 4% fee is the premium you pay for that variance reduction.
PPLNS (Pay Per Last N Shares) at 2% commission.
You are paid based on the proportion of shares your hardware contributed during a rolling window of the last N shares across the pool. When F2Pool finds blocks, you earn. When F2Pool has a dry spell, you earn less. The 2% fee is lower because you absorb the variance the pool takes on under FPPS.
The concrete math at April 2026 rates. For a single Antminer S21 XP (270 TH/s) at $0.08/kWh hosted electricity: FPPS nets +$1.62/day ($591/year). PPLNS nets +$1.80/day ($657/year). The gap is $66 per miner per year. On a 10-unit fleet, $660/year. On a 50-unit fleet, $3,300/year.
The recommendation. If your hosting bill is due monthly and your cash flow depends on predictable mining revenue, pick FPPS. The 4% fee is insurance against variance. If you can absorb day-to-day fluctuations and you want the mathematical upside, pick PPLNS. Most single-miner and small-fleet DeepCore customers pick FPPS for the same reason most salaried workers prefer a steady paycheck over a commission structure with higher expected value.
Configure your choice under Account Settings > Mining > Payout Scheme on F2Pool. You can change it later, though frequent switching is not recommended because it confuses revenue comparison over time.
Step 4: Configure Your Miners Through the DeepCore Dashboard
This is the step where self-hosted owners and DeepCore customers diverge slightly.
For DeepCore Hosting customers
Log into your DeepCore Hosting customer dashboard using the credentials from your order confirmation. Navigate to Fleet > Pool Configuration. You will see every miner assigned to your account, grouped by rack and facility. The dashboard lets you apply pool settings to all miners at once, which matters enormously when you own more than two. Per-miner IP access is not required. You do not need to SSH, use BTC Tools, or interact with the Antminer web UI directly. DeepCore handles the propagation to hardware.
Enter the following three values:
Stratum URL: stratum+tcp://btc.f2pool.com:1314 (use the regional endpoint btc-na.f2pool.com:1314 if you want absolute lowest latency; our US facilities are all North America, so btc-na is the preferred pick).
Username: accountname.workername (more on the naming system below).
Password: anything. F2Pool does not validate this field. A common convention is x or 123. It has zero impact on mining.
Backup endpoints. DeepCore’s dashboard lets you configure three backup stratum URLs. Populate them with btc.f2pool.com:3333, btc-na.f2pool.com:1314, and btc-euro.f2pool.com:1314. If the primary endpoint ever becomes unreachable, your miners automatically fail over to the backups without downtime.
Save. DeepCore propagates the configuration to every miner in your fleet within 2–5 minutes.
For self-hosted owners
Find your miner’s IP (use Bitmain IP Reporter or BTC Tools). Log into the Antminer web UI with username root and your password (if you never changed it from the default root, change it now; we cover the security argument in a separate guide). Go to Miner Configuration > General Settings and populate the three pool slots with the same stratum URL, username, and any password. Save and reboot when prompted.
Step 5: Verify Your First Share
For DeepCore Hosting customers
Log into your DeepCore Hosting customer dashboard using the credentials from your order confirmation. Navigate to Fleet > Pool Configuration. You will see every miner assigned to your account, grouped by rack and facility. The dashboard lets you apply pool settings to all miners at once, which matters enormously when you own more than two. Per-miner IP access is not required. You do not need to SSH, use BTC Tools, or interact with the Antminer web UI directly. DeepCore handles the propagation to hardware.
Enter the following three values:
Stratum URL: stratum+tcp://btc.f2pool.com:1314 (use the regional endpoint btc-na.f2pool.com:1314 if you want absolute lowest latency; our US facilities are all North America, so btc-na is the preferred pick).
Username: accountname.workername (more on the naming system below).
Password: anything. F2Pool does not validate this field. A common convention is x or 123. It has zero impact on mining.
Backup endpoints. DeepCore’s dashboard lets you configure three backup stratum URLs. Populate them with btc.f2pool.com:3333, btc-na.f2pool.com:1314, and btc-euro.f2pool.com:1314. If the primary endpoint ever becomes unreachable, your miners automatically fail over to the backups without downtime.
Save. DeepCore propagates the configuration to every miner in your fleet within 2–5 minutes.
For self-hosted owners
Find your miner’s IP (use Bitmain IP Reporter or BTC Tools). Log into the Antminer web UI with username root and your password (if you never changed it from the default root, change it now; we cover the security argument in a separate guide). Go to Miner Configuration > General Settings and populate the three pool slots with the same stratum URL, username, and any password. Save and reboot when prompted.
Step 5: Verify Your First Share
Open F2Pool’s home page at f2pool.com after signing in. Within 10 minutes of your configuration change, you should see: your account hashrate climbing from zero toward its expected value (for a single S21 XP, around 270 TH/s), accepted shares ticking upward, and the worker showing as online. On the DeepCore dashboard side, your miners should display pool status Connected and a hashrate value that matches what F2Pool is showing.
If the two dashboards disagree on hashrate by more than 5%, the difference is usually a stale-share rate issue (latency from your facility to the pool) or a network connectivity issue at DeepCore. Give it 30 minutes; hashrates average out. If the gap persists, jump to the Common Problems section below.
F2Pool also offers a watcher link under Account Settings. This is a read-only URL that lets you share your pool stats without sharing your login. Email it to yourself, bookmark it on your phone, and you can check your miners from any device without authenticating every time. Per Compass Mining’s F2Pool reference document, this is useful for troubleshooting and for operators who want to give support teams read-only visibility without credentials.
The Accountname.Workername System: Why This Format Exists
Most pool-setup guides show you the accountname.workername format and move on. That is the wrong place to stop, because the two halves of that string do different jobs and the distinction matters once you own more than one miner.
The accountname routes money.
It is the identifier F2Pool uses to aggregate shares across all your hardware and credit the resulting BTC to your payout balance. Every miner you ever connect to F2Pool submits shares under this accountname. If you registered andreas-mining in Step 1, every miner on your account shares that prefix.
The workername routes diagnostics.
It is a sub-identifier that lets F2Pool (and you) distinguish which specific miner submitted which share. If you name your workers s21xp-01 and s21xp-02, F2Pool shows you separate hashrate and share-rate statistics for each one. When one of them starts producing rejected shares or drops offline, you know exactly which physical machine to investigate. If you name them both miner, you see aggregate stats and have no way to pinpoint failures from pool data alone.
The constraint. Per F2Pool’s support documentation, worker names must be 1–15 alphanumeric characters. No special characters. The system converts all names to lowercase automatically. Andreas named his two miners s21xp-ne-01 and s21xp-ne-02 (S21 XP, Nebraska facility, units 1 and 2). Fourteen characters each, readable, sortable, diagnostically useful.
A scheme that survives growth. A naming convention like {model}-{facility}-{number} works for up to 999 miners per facility without collision. Larger operations use {facility}-{rack}-{position}. Adopt one pattern and apply it rigidly. Refactoring worker names later is painful because pool statistics tie to the exact string and changing it resets historical hashrate tracking for that worker.
Common Connection Problems (and the Fixes)
Problem 1: Accepted shares show zero after 20 minutes.
Most likely your accountname is wrong. Log back into F2Pool, confirm the exact accountname under Account Settings, and compare it to what you typed into the DeepCore dashboard. F2Pool is case-insensitive for accountnames but not for whitespace. A leading or trailing space breaks the match.
Problem 2: Miners show pool connection errors in DeepCore dashboard.
Check the stratum URL. stratum+tcp:// is sometimes stripped by copy-paste and the miner ends up trying to connect to a plain hostname. The DeepCore dashboard validates this, but if you are self-hosted, the Antminer web UI does not. Confirm the URL renders exactly as stratum+tcp://btc.f2pool.com:1314.
Problem 3: Connected but hashrate is 0.
Your miner is talking to the pool but not submitting work. This is almost always a hardware or firmware issue, not a pool configuration issue. Check the Antminer web UI (via DeepCore dashboard remote access if hosted) for chain status. If you see “ooooo” patterns on any chain, you have a failing hashboard and need to run the warranty claim flow.
Problem 4: Rejected share rate above 3%.
Latency from your facility to the F2Pool endpoint is too high. For DeepCore customers at US facilities, switch from the global btc.f2pool.com:1314 endpoint to the regional btc-na.f2pool.com:1314. That alone usually drops rejected rate below 1%. For self-hosted users in Europe, switch to btc-euro.f2pool.com:1314.
Problem 5: First payout has not arrived after a week.
Check your accumulated balance under Revenue. At a single S21 XP’s production rate (about 0.00362 BTC/month), it takes roughly 42 days to cross the 0.005 BTC threshold. If you are running one miner and your balance is below 0.005 BTC, nothing has gone wrong. If you are running a fleet and the balance looks low, verify the payout address in Payout Settings matches your actual wallet. If the address is wrong, the coins have been sent and are unrecoverable.
DeepCore Hosting-Specific Considerations
Facility locations and latency.
DeepCore operates four US facilities across Nebraska, Mississippi, and Missouri per MillionMiner’s hosting overview. All four have sub-40ms latency to F2Pool’s North American endpoint. Stale-share rates on btc-na.f2pool.com:1314 typically run below 0.8%.
Pool changes happen in the dashboard, not through the Antminer UI.
DeepCore intentionally does not expose the raw Antminer web UI for security reasons. If you decide in six months to try Braiins Pool or Ocean, you change pool settings through the DeepCore dashboard, not by logging into each miner individually. This actually saves time at fleet scale.
Uptime and how it affects F2Pool stats.
DeepCore targets 99% uptime across all hosted miners. F2Pool’s reporting aggregates hashrate over 10-minute, 1-hour, and 24-hour windows. Brief outages (under 10 minutes) do not meaningfully distort the 24-hour average. Extended outages (over 2 hours) show up clearly. If your 24-hour hashrate drops more than 10% below expected, something is wrong and the DeepCore support team should be notified.
Pool fee impact at hosted rates.
At MillionMiner’s $0.08/kWh all-in hosting rate, an S21 XP nets $1.98/day gross before pool fees. The 4% FPPS fee takes $0.36/day (net $1.62). The 2% PPLNS fee takes $0.18/day (net $1.80). For context, the economics of this setup are covered in detail in the profitability scenarios analysis.
When to Escalate (and to Whom)
F2Pool account issues:
Open a support ticket at f2pool.zendesk.com/requests/new or email F2Pool support through their contact channels on f2pool.io/mining/support. Typical response time: 24–48 hours. For account recovery or payout issues, include your accountname, approximate payout dates, and any relevant transaction IDs.
DeepCore Hosting issues:
Email contact@millionminer.com or reach the team via WhatsApp. For urgent production issues (fleet-wide downtime), the contact page has regional phone numbers.
Hardware issues (even when hosted):
MillionMiner’s hosting agreement includes free on-site repair at DeepCore facilities. You do not need to ship anything anywhere. Open a ticket through the dashboard and a technician inspects the miner within the uptime SLA window. For warranty claims that require a Bitmain RMA, the DeepCore team handles the shipping logistics on your behalf.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does F2Pool require KYC for Bitcoin mining?
No. F2Pool does not require identity verification to mine Bitcoin. You register with an email address, configure a payout wallet, and start hashing. This is different from some institutional-focused pools (like Foundry USA) that require KYC. F2Pool’s non-KYC model is one reason it remains popular with retail miners and sovereignty-conscious operators.
What is the difference between FPPS and PPLNS on F2Pool?
FPPS (Full Pay Per Share) pays out every accepted share at its expected value including transaction fees, at a 4% commission. You receive smooth daily revenue regardless of whether F2Pool found blocks. PPLNS (Pay Per Last N Shares) pays based on your share contribution during a rolling window, at a 2% commission. You earn when the pool finds blocks and less when it does not. At a single S21 XP over 12 months, PPLNS earns about $66 more than FPPS but with higher day-to-day variance.
What is the F2Pool BTC payout threshold?
The default minimum payout threshold is 0.005 BTC. You can change it in Payout Settings to 0.01, 0.05, 1, or 5 BTC. Payouts are processed daily within 24 hours of the balance crossing your threshold. At current network difficulty, a single Antminer S21 XP takes approximately 42 days to reach the 0.005 BTC default; a single S23 Hydro takes about 20 days.
Can I run F2Pool from a DeepCore Hosting miner?
Yes. DeepCore Hosting (MillionMiner’s US hosting service) supports any Bitcoin pool including F2Pool, Antpool, ViaBTC, Braiins, and Ocean. Pool configuration is done through the DeepCore customer dashboard rather than the Antminer web UI directly. The stratum URL, username (accountname.workername), and password are entered once and propagated to all your hosted miners.
What stratum URL should I use for F2Pool in the US?
For maximum reliability, use the global endpoint stratum+tcp://btc.f2pool.com:1314 with backup ports 25 and 3333. For absolute lowest latency from US facilities (including all DeepCore Hosting locations), use the regional North American endpoint stratum+tcp://btc-na.f2pool.com:1314 with backup ports 25, 1315, and 3333. Regional endpoints typically reduce stale-share rates by 0.2–0.5 percentage points compared to the global endpoint.
How do I name my workers for a multi-miner fleet?
Worker names must be 1–15 alphanumeric characters (lowercase, no special characters). A naming convention that scales is {model}-{facility}-{number} (for example, s21xp-ne-01 for S21 XP, Nebraska, unit 1). Each worker gets its own hashrate and share statistics on F2Pool, so distinguishable names let you diagnose which specific miner is failing when something goes wrong. Adopt a pattern early and apply it rigidly; renaming workers later resets historical pool statistics for that worker.
How long until I see my first share after configuring F2Pool?
Usually within 10 minutes of saving the configuration. Log into F2Pool’s home page and watch the hashrate graph. It should climb from zero to the expected value for your hardware. Accepted shares tick upward in the worker table. If 20 minutes pass with zero shares, the most likely cause is a typo in the accountname or an incorrect stratum URL format. Check both against the reference above.
Does F2Pool support Stratum V2?
No, not as of April 2026. F2Pool currently operates on Stratum V1, which is the legacy unencrypted protocol. D-Central’s 2026 pool comparison flags this as a decentralization concern because it leaves pool-side control of block template construction and makes traffic inspection possible. Pools that support Stratum V2 include Braiins and Ocean. If Stratum V2 is a priority for you, consider switching pools; if it is not, F2Pool’s reliability and size are reasonable trade-offs.
What happens if my payout address is wrong?
The BTC goes to whoever controls the wallet at that incorrect address, and you cannot recover it. Bitcoin transactions are irreversible. Always test a new payout address with the smallest threshold (0.005 BTC) first, confirm receipt in your wallet, and only then increase the threshold if you want fewer transactions. This is the cheapest insurance against typos you will ever buy.
Is it worth switching pools later?
Possibly. Pool economics change as fee structures evolve, Stratum V2 gains adoption, and decentralization-focused pools grow. For most operators, switching pools more than once a year creates more reporting noise than value. If you start with F2Pool and it works, stay. If you become interested in Stratum V2 or the specific censorship-resistance properties of Ocean and Braiins, switching is straightforward through the DeepCore dashboard or your Antminer web UI. Plan to re-evaluate annually, not monthly.
F2Pool is a proven, reliable pool with transparent fees and global infrastructure. For DeepCore Hosting customers, the combination of F2Pool’s reliability and DeepCore’s fleet-management dashboard is a 15-minute setup that generates BTC for the next two to three years of your hardware’s operational life. Andreas, who lost four days stalling, now runs his two S21 XPs on F2Pool via DeepCore and has not thought about pool configuration since. That is the point. Set it up once, correctly, and move on to the more interesting problems: when to sell versus accumulate, when to add capacity, and what to do as the April 2028 halving approaches. For the broader strategic context on whether to add more capacity, the case for Bitcoin mining as a hedge against geopolitical uncertainty lays out the framework.
Next Steps
Register on F2Pool: f2pool.com/user/signup
F2Pool official setup guide: f2pool.io/mining/guides/how-to-mine-bitcoin
Start with DeepCore Hosting: MillionMiner.com/asic-miner-hosting
Browse Bitcoin miners: MillionMiner.com/shop/asic-miners/bitcoin-miners
Hydro-cooled range (S23 Hydro): MillionMiner.com/shop/asic-miners/hydro-miners
Ship DDP worldwide: MillionMiner.com/shipping
Try a free hosting demo: MillionMiner.com/cloud
Talk to the team: MillionMiner.com/contact
Sources
F2Pool official Bitcoin mining guide (f2pool.io/mining/guides/how-to-mine-bitcoin). F2Pool mining support documentation (f2pool.io/mining/support). F2Pool BTC mining Zendesk article. Compass Mining F2Pool reference document. D-Central 2026 Bitcoin mining pool comparison. Hashrate Index weekly roundup April 13, 2026. All URLs, fee structures, and payout parameters verified April 17, 2026.
Last updated: April 17, 2026.
Verified on live F2Pool and DeepCore Hosting dashboards. Quarterly refresh cycle. Pool URLs, fee percentages, and payout thresholds are re-verified each quarter. Next scheduled refresh: July 2026.
If the two dashboards disagree on hashrate by more than 5%, the difference is usually a stale-share rate issue (latency from your facility to the pool) or a network connectivity issue at DeepCore. Give it 30 minutes; hashrates average out. If the gap persists, jump to the Common Problems section below.
F2Pool also offers a watcher link under Account Settings. This is a read-only URL that lets you share your pool stats without sharing your login. Email it to yourself, bookmark it on your phone, and you can check your miners from any device without authenticating every time. Per Compass Mining’s F2Pool reference document, this is useful for troubleshooting and for operators who want to give support teams read-only visibility without credentials.
The Accountname.Workername System: Why This Format Exists
Most pool-setup guides show you the accountname.workername format and move on. That is the wrong place to stop, because the two halves of that string do different jobs and the distinction matters once you own more than one miner.
The accountname routes money.
It is the identifier F2Pool uses to aggregate shares across all your hardware and credit the resulting BTC to your payout balance. Every miner you ever connect to F2Pool submits shares under this accountname. If you registered andreas-mining in Step 1, every miner on your account shares that prefix.
The workername routes diagnostics.
It is a sub-identifier that lets F2Pool (and you) distinguish which specific miner submitted which share. If you name your workers s21xp-01 and s21xp-02, F2Pool shows you separate hashrate and share-rate statistics for each one. When one of them starts producing rejected shares or drops offline, you know exactly which physical machine to investigate. If you name them both miner, you see aggregate stats and have no way to pinpoint failures from pool data alone.
The constraint. Per F2Pool’s support documentation, worker names must be 1–15 alphanumeric characters. No special characters. The system converts all names to lowercase automatically. Andreas named his two miners s21xp-ne-01 and s21xp-ne-02 (S21 XP, Nebraska facility, units 1 and 2). Fourteen characters each, readable, sortable, diagnostically useful.
A scheme that survives growth. A naming convention like {model}-{facility}-{number} works for up to 999 miners per facility without collision. Larger operations use {facility}-{rack}-{position}. Adopt one pattern and apply it rigidly. Refactoring worker names later is painful because pool statistics tie to the exact string and changing it resets historical hashrate tracking for that worker.
Common Connection Problems (and the Fixes)
Problem 1: Accepted shares show zero after 20 minutes.
Most likely your accountname is wrong. Log back into F2Pool, confirm the exact accountname under Account Settings, and compare it to what you typed into the DeepCore dashboard. F2Pool is case-insensitive for accountnames but not for whitespace. A leading or trailing space breaks the match.
Problem 2: Miners show pool connection errors in DeepCore dashboard.
Check the stratum URL. stratum+tcp:// is sometimes stripped by copy-paste and the miner ends up trying to connect to a plain hostname. The DeepCore dashboard validates this, but if you are self-hosted, the Antminer web UI does not. Confirm the URL renders exactly as stratum+tcp://btc.f2pool.com:1314.
Problem 3: Connected but hashrate is 0.
Your miner is talking to the pool but not submitting work. This is almost always a hardware or firmware issue, not a pool configuration issue. Check the Antminer web UI (via DeepCore dashboard remote access if hosted) for chain status. If you see “ooooo” patterns on any chain, you have a failing hashboard and need to run the warranty claim flow.
Problem 4: Rejected share rate above 3%.
Latency from your facility to the F2Pool endpoint is too high. For DeepCore customers at US facilities, switch from the global btc.f2pool.com:1314 endpoint to the regional btc-na.f2pool.com:1314. That alone usually drops rejected rate below 1%. For self-hosted users in Europe, switch to btc-euro.f2pool.com:1314.
Problem 5: First payout has not arrived after a week.
Check your accumulated balance under Revenue. At a single S21 XP’s production rate (about 0.00362 BTC/month), it takes roughly 42 days to cross the 0.005 BTC threshold. If you are running one miner and your balance is below 0.005 BTC, nothing has gone wrong. If you are running a fleet and the balance looks low, verify the payout address in Payout Settings matches your actual wallet. If the address is wrong, the coins have been sent and are unrecoverable.
DeepCore Hosting-Specific Considerations
Facility locations and latency.
DeepCore operates four US facilities across Nebraska, Mississippi, and Missouri per MillionMiner’s hosting overview. All four have sub-40ms latency to F2Pool’s North American endpoint. Stale-share rates on btc-na.f2pool.com:1314 typically run below 0.8%.
Pool changes happen in the dashboard, not through the Antminer UI.
DeepCore intentionally does not expose the raw Antminer web UI for security reasons. If you decide in six months to try Braiins Pool or Ocean, you change pool settings through the DeepCore dashboard, not by logging into each miner individually. This actually saves time at fleet scale.
Uptime and how it affects F2Pool stats.
DeepCore targets 99% uptime across all hosted miners. F2Pool’s reporting aggregates hashrate over 10-minute, 1-hour, and 24-hour windows. Brief outages (under 10 minutes) do not meaningfully distort the 24-hour average. Extended outages (over 2 hours) show up clearly. If your 24-hour hashrate drops more than 10% below expected, something is wrong and the DeepCore support team should be notified.
Pool fee impact at hosted rates.
At MillionMiner’s $0.08/kWh all-in hosting rate, an S21 XP nets $1.98/day gross before pool fees. The 4% FPPS fee takes $0.36/day (net $1.62). The 2% PPLNS fee takes $0.18/day (net $1.80). For context, the economics of this setup are covered in detail in the profitability scenarios analysis.
When to Escalate (and to Whom)
F2Pool account issues:
Open a support ticket at f2pool.zendesk.com/requests/new or email F2Pool support through their contact channels on f2pool.io/mining/support. Typical response time: 24–48 hours. For account recovery or payout issues, include your accountname, approximate payout dates, and any relevant transaction IDs.
DeepCore Hosting issues:
Email contact@millionminer.com or reach the team via WhatsApp. For urgent production issues (fleet-wide downtime), the contact page has regional phone numbers.
Hardware issues (even when hosted):
MillionMiner’s hosting agreement includes free on-site repair at DeepCore facilities. You do not need to ship anything anywhere. Open a ticket through the dashboard and a technician inspects the miner within the uptime SLA window. For warranty claims that require a Bitmain RMA, the DeepCore team handles the shipping logistics on your behalf.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does F2Pool require KYC for Bitcoin mining?
No. F2Pool does not require identity verification to mine Bitcoin. You register with an email address, configure a payout wallet, and start hashing. This is different from some institutional-focused pools (like Foundry USA) that require KYC. F2Pool’s non-KYC model is one reason it remains popular with retail miners and sovereignty-conscious operators.
What is the difference between FPPS and PPLNS on F2Pool?
FPPS (Full Pay Per Share) pays out every accepted share at its expected value including transaction fees, at a 4% commission. You receive smooth daily revenue regardless of whether F2Pool found blocks. PPLNS (Pay Per Last N Shares) pays based on your share contribution during a rolling window, at a 2% commission. You earn when the pool finds blocks and less when it does not. At a single S21 XP over 12 months, PPLNS earns about $66 more than FPPS but with higher day-to-day variance.
What is the F2Pool BTC payout threshold?
The default minimum payout threshold is 0.005 BTC. You can change it in Payout Settings to 0.01, 0.05, 1, or 5 BTC. Payouts are processed daily within 24 hours of the balance crossing your threshold. At current network difficulty, a single Antminer S21 XP takes approximately 42 days to reach the 0.005 BTC default; a single S23 Hydro takes about 20 days.
Can I run F2Pool from a DeepCore Hosting miner?
Yes. DeepCore Hosting (MillionMiner’s US hosting service) supports any Bitcoin pool including F2Pool, Antpool, ViaBTC, Braiins, and Ocean. Pool configuration is done through the DeepCore customer dashboard rather than the Antminer web UI directly. The stratum URL, username (accountname.workername), and password are entered once and propagated to all your hosted miners.
What stratum URL should I use for F2Pool in the US?
For maximum reliability, use the global endpoint stratum+tcp://btc.f2pool.com:1314 with backup ports 25 and 3333. For absolute lowest latency from US facilities (including all DeepCore Hosting locations), use the regional North American endpoint stratum+tcp://btc-na.f2pool.com:1314 with backup ports 25, 1315, and 3333. Regional endpoints typically reduce stale-share rates by 0.2–0.5 percentage points compared to the global endpoint.
How do I name my workers for a multi-miner fleet?
Worker names must be 1–15 alphanumeric characters (lowercase, no special characters). A naming convention that scales is {model}-{facility}-{number} (for example, s21xp-ne-01 for S21 XP, Nebraska, unit 1). Each worker gets its own hashrate and share statistics on F2Pool, so distinguishable names let you diagnose which specific miner is failing when something goes wrong. Adopt a pattern early and apply it rigidly; renaming workers later resets historical pool statistics for that worker.
How long until I see my first share after configuring F2Pool?
Usually within 10 minutes of saving the configuration. Log into F2Pool’s home page and watch the hashrate graph. It should climb from zero to the expected value for your hardware. Accepted shares tick upward in the worker table. If 20 minutes pass with zero shares, the most likely cause is a typo in the accountname or an incorrect stratum URL format. Check both against the reference above.
Does F2Pool support Stratum V2?
No, not as of April 2026. F2Pool currently operates on Stratum V1, which is the legacy unencrypted protocol. D-Central’s 2026 pool comparison flags this as a decentralization concern because it leaves pool-side control of block template construction and makes traffic inspection possible. Pools that support Stratum V2 include Braiins and Ocean. If Stratum V2 is a priority for you, consider switching pools; if it is not, F2Pool’s reliability and size are reasonable trade-offs.
What happens if my payout address is wrong?
The BTC goes to whoever controls the wallet at that incorrect address, and you cannot recover it. Bitcoin transactions are irreversible. Always test a new payout address with the smallest threshold (0.005 BTC) first, confirm receipt in your wallet, and only then increase the threshold if you want fewer transactions. This is the cheapest insurance against typos you will ever buy.
Is it worth switching pools later?
Possibly. Pool economics change as fee structures evolve, Stratum V2 gains adoption, and decentralization-focused pools grow. For most operators, switching pools more than once a year creates more reporting noise than value. If you start with F2Pool and it works, stay. If you become interested in Stratum V2 or the specific censorship-resistance properties of Ocean and Braiins, switching is straightforward through the DeepCore dashboard or your Antminer web UI. Plan to re-evaluate annually, not monthly.
F2Pool is a proven, reliable pool with transparent fees and global infrastructure. For DeepCore Hosting customers, the combination of F2Pool’s reliability and DeepCore’s fleet-management dashboard is a 15-minute setup that generates BTC for the next two to three years of your hardware’s operational life. Andreas, who lost four days stalling, now runs his two S21 XPs on F2Pool via DeepCore and has not thought about pool configuration since. That is the point. Set it up once, correctly, and move on to the more interesting problems: when to sell versus accumulate, when to add capacity, and what to do as the April 2028 halving approaches. For the broader strategic context on whether to add more capacity, the case for Bitcoin mining as a hedge against geopolitical uncertainty lays out the framework.
Next Steps
Register on F2Pool: f2pool.com/user/signup
F2Pool official setup guide: f2pool.io/mining/guides/how-to-mine-bitcoin
Start with DeepCore Hosting: MillionMiner.com/asic-miner-hosting
Browse Bitcoin miners: MillionMiner.com/shop/asic-miners/bitcoin-miners
Hydro-cooled range (S23 Hydro): MillionMiner.com/shop/asic-miners/hydro-miners
Ship DDP worldwide: MillionMiner.com/shipping
Try a free hosting demo: MillionMiner.com/cloud
Talk to the team: MillionMiner.com/contact
Sources
F2Pool official Bitcoin mining guide (f2pool.io/mining/guides/how-to-mine-bitcoin). F2Pool mining support documentation (f2pool.io/mining/support). F2Pool BTC mining Zendesk article. Compass Mining F2Pool reference document. D-Central 2026 Bitcoin mining pool comparison. Hashrate Index weekly roundup April 13, 2026. All URLs, fee structures, and payout parameters verified April 17, 2026.
Last updated: April 17, 2026.
Verified on live F2Pool and DeepCore Hosting dashboards. Quarterly refresh cycle. Pool URLs, fee percentages, and payout thresholds are re-verified each quarter. Next scheduled refresh: July 2026.
