Ergo will have a hardening protocol upgrade on block #417,792. This upgrade introduces breaking changes where Non-Outsourceability will be switched off. After this hardfork, the new PoW (called Autolykos v2.0) will support traditional mining pools.

The following instructions will be valid since block #417,792. More details here and here. Previous instructions, which is valid until block #417,791, can be found here.

Ergo mining is based on Autolykos v.2, a Proof-of-Work algorithm designed to be ASIC resistant. Miners have to perform memory-hard computations~(at least 2.5 GB memory is needed, but the current most efficient implementation utilizes around 4 GB of vRAM) that makes Ergo friendly for GPU mining. Unlike Autolykos v.1, Autolykos v.2 does not require access to private keys, thereby allowing mining pool formation. As soon as a correct solution is found, the miner broadcasts the block along with the solution and is able to collect the block reward after a delay of 720 blocks using the secret of his mining address. The rest of the network verifies the solution which can be done very efficiently, requiring less than a kilobyte of memory.