Mining Pool

Mining pools are groups of mining equipment operators who combine their computational resources to maximize their hash power and improve their odds of receiving block rewards.

Mining pools are the result of the difficulty level of many proof of work blockchains increasing along with their prices. Price appreciation makes block rewards more valuable incentivizing more people to start mining cryptoassets leading to a higher difficulty level.

This acceleration of difficulty level led to many cryptoassets no longer being feasibly mined by individual operators. To solve this problem mining pools launched to bring individual operators together to try and close the gap with large well capitalized competitors. 

Rewards are split evenly between miners in the pool based on the hash power provided. Provide 1%, get 1% of rewards, provide 10% get 10%, etc…

Further Reading Mining Pools

Comparison of Bitcoin Mining Pools