Binance will close its mining pool service on November 10. A mining pool is a group of computers that combine computing power to earn cryptocurrency rewards together. The shutdown ends an operation that ran for over six years. The company cites an ongoing review of its products as the reason. The announcement affects both retail users and large data centers.
The closure covers Pool Savings, Cloud Mining, and the Transaction Accelerator. Pool Savings is a feature that pays interest on idle computing power. The Transaction Accelerator bumps the priority of a pending payment. Binance will also disable mining pool application programming interfaces. These interfaces let software talk to the network. The company will stop sending hashrate notifications to users.
After November 10, the company will disconnect all miners. Miners will stop sending hashrate to Binance. Hashrate measures how fast a computer solves math problems for the ledger. The pool will also stop counting mining shares. A mining share proves that a computer did useful work. Affected products will stop generating rewards immediately. The mining pool APIs will stop accepting new connections. Cloud Mining contracts will expire without renewal.
Binance urges miners to redirect their hashrate to other pools. Users holding Pool Savings balances should withdraw their funds before the deadline. The shutdown removes a familiar entry point for small operators. Bitcoin Cash relies on many small computers sending payments at low cost. This change leaves those computers to find new homes. Small miners often use this service to track their earnings. The loss forces them to configure new addresses on their hardware.
Ordinary users can still send Bitcoin Cash for free if they switch to a different pool before November 10.