Not all cryptocurrency mining pools work the same way. However, there are a number of common protocols that manage most of the popular mining pools. The most common method is to create a proportional mining pool. In this type of mining pool, miners who contribute to the pool's processing power take shares to the point where the pool manages to find a block. After this point; miners receive rewards proportional to the number of shares they hold. Pay-per-share pools work similarly: each miner gets as many shares as their contribution but these pools provide instant payments regardless of when the block is found. A miner contributing to this type of pool can exchange shares at any time to receive a proportional payout. Peer-to-peer mining pools aim to prevent the centralization of the pool structure. Therefore, pools using this mining method integrate a separate blockchain associated with the pool itself and are designed to prevent pool operators from cheating or the pool itself from failing due to a single central issue.