Why did the community ask miners to leave large Monero pools?

The community asked miners to leave large Monero pools because too much mining power under one operator could put the network at risk. The aim was not to punish successful pools, but to spread control so no single pool could easily decide which payments get confirmed.

Why a pool’s size matters

A mining pool brings together many miners and shares the rewards they earn. Its size is measured by its share of the network’s hashrate, meaning the computing power used to mine.

With a traditional pool, you supply the computing power, but the pool operator usually chooses the transactions included in the blocks your device works on. Blocks are batches of transactions added to Monero’s shared payment record.

That means thousands of independent miners can still give one operator considerable control. You may own your computer and have honest intentions, but your mining work supports the blocks the pool asks you to build.

This is why the community focused on pool concentration, not simply the number of people mining.

What miners were being asked to prevent

The main concern was a 51% attack: a situation where someone controls more than half of the network’s mining power and can reliably outpace the rest.

An operator with that much power could potentially:

• Delay or exclude selected transactions.
• Replace recent blocks with a competing version of the payment history.
• Spend their own coins, then reverse that payment and try to spend those coins again. This is called a double spend.

There are important limits. Majority mining power does not let an attacker take coins from your wallet, reveal every private transaction, or create coins outside Monero’s rules.

Also, 51% is not a magic line below which every risk disappears. A very large pool can still increase the risk of disruptions and successful attempts to replace recent blocks.

Why ask miners to move before anything happened?

The community’s appeals were preventive. You do not need proof that an operator plans to attack before deciding that giving it so much influence is unsafe.

Even a trusted operator can suffer a security breach, face outside pressure, or make a serious mistake. Spreading mining power reduces how much damage any one operator can cause.

A prominent example came in 2022, when public estimates showed MineXMR approaching—and some reports briefly placed it above—half of Monero’s network hashrate. Estimates differed between trackers, but the concentration was enough to prompt calls for miners to switch.

The message was practical: miners could reduce the risk themselves by pointing their mining software elsewhere.

What moving actually achieves

When you leave a dominant pool for an independently operated smaller pool, you reduce the largest operator’s share of mining power.

You still need to check fees, payout rules, reliability, and whether the alternative is genuinely run by someone else. Moving to a different name under the same control does not solve the problem.

Another option is P2Pool, a decentralized pooling system that lets miners share rewards without handing block selection to one central pool operator. Setup and payout patterns differ from traditional pools, so check whether it suits your equipment and mining software.

The bottom line

The community asked miners to leave large pools to protect Monero from concentrated control—not because large pools necessarily acted dishonestly. Your choice of pool helps determine who directs your mining power, making that choice part of the network’s security.