ViaBTC’s referral program supports long-term mining growth by paying for active mining rather than account registration alone. A general referrer receives 10% of the service-fee revenue generated by referred miners for 12 months, while an approved Ambassador receives 20% while the status remains valid. Rewards are credited daily, and a referral only produces payment after the new miner connects hashrate and generates mining income. The relationship can also extend from a main account to its sub-accounts. Combined with PPS+ and PPLNS fee structures, the model links user acquisition to measurable hashrate, fee revenue, and continued pool participation.
A mining pool does not gain much from a registration that never submits a share. ViaBTC’s rules avoid paying referral rewards for inactive sign-ups: the referred miner must connect computing power and produce mining profits before the referrer receives a percentage of service fees. General referrals currently pay 10% for 12 months, so acquisition spending begins only after mining activity exists.
That payment condition changes who a referrer has reason to invite. Someone operating 200 TH/s for months is commercially different from 20 people who create accounts and never connect ASICs. Referrers have more reason to introduce mining-farm operators, hosting customers, existing miners changing pools, or newcomers who already have machines ready to run.
A referral relationship therefore has a measurable operating base: connected hashrate, generated mining income, and service fees. Registration count alone does not qualify for payment.
The 12-month period also matters. A one-week promotion can encourage short bursts of sign-ups, while a 12-month commission period gives the referrer an interest in whether a miner remains active after the first payout. ViaBTC distributes referral rewards once per day at 8:30 UTC+8, giving participants a recurring record of whether referred mining activity is still producing fees.
Longer participation can also improve onboarding. A referrer familiar with the pool may explain worker setup, payout configuration, hashrate reporting, or account organization to someone they introduced. That help is not guaranteed by the program, but a 10% fee share lasting up to 12 months gives the referrer a financial reason to care about continued use rather than registration alone.
The fee structure makes that relationship easier to quantify. ViaBTC currently lists PPS+ with a 4% fee on the block-reward portion and 2% on transaction-fee distribution, while PPLNS carries a 2% fee. PPS+ block rewards are settled hourly according to current difficulty; PPLNS distributions use the miner’s share of pool hashrate over the previous 5 difficulty rounds after a block receives 6 confirmations.
| Mining setting | Published rate or rule | Practical relevance |
|---|---|---|
| PPS+ block reward | 4% fee | More predictable base payment |
| PPS+ transaction fees | 2% fee | Distributed under PPLNS rules |
| PPLNS | 2% fee | Greater short-term payout variation |
| Block confirmation rule | 6 confirmations | Applied before PPLNS distribution |
| Measurement window | 5 difficulty rounds | Used for hashrate-share allocation |
For miners comparing ViaBTC Pool Fees, a 2-percentage-point gap between the 4% PPS+ block-reward fee and the 2% PPLNS fee can become noticeable at farm scale. On $100,000 of applicable gross block-reward output, a simplified 4% fee equals $4,000, while 2% equals $2,000 before considering differences in payout treatment and transaction-fee allocation.
That comparison also explains why referral income can grow with operating scale. A 10% referral rate is calculated from ViaBTC’s corresponding service-fee revenue, not from the miner’s entire block reward. If eligible service fees generated by a referred operation were $2,000 over a period, a 10% referral share would be $200 under the stated rate; a 20% Ambassador share would be $400 under the same simplified fee base.
ViaBTC’s Ambassador program extends the period beyond the standard 12 months. Approved Ambassadors receive 20% of platform fee revenue generated by eligible referred miners while Ambassador status remains valid, twice the general 10% rate. Existing general referral relationships are also upgraded when Ambassador status is approved.
The entry requirements prevent the 20% tier from functioning as an automatic account upgrade. ViaBTC states that applicants need at least 5 valid referred users in the previous month before applying, and its current Ambassador page also lists sample invited-hashrate requirements of BTC ≥300T, LTC ≥5G, or KAS ≥10T. Applications are reviewed within 7 business days.
Once approved, continued activity still matters. ViaBTC states that Ambassadors should maintain at least 10 valid referred users per month; falling below that level for 3 consecutive months can result in removal of Ambassador status. The account can then return to general-referral treatment rather than continuing at the 20% level indefinitely.
That requirement gives the higher referral tier a performance condition rather than treating it as a permanent badge. A promoter with 10 active referred miners has a different relationship with the pool from someone who produced 10 registrations in 2024 and no longer has referred miners submitting hashrate.
Sub-accounts add another layer for professional operators. ViaBTC states that the referral relationship is attached to the main account and extends to its sub-accounts; when those sub-accounts connect hashrate and generate mining profits, qualifying referral rewards can also arise from them, excluding merged-mining coins.
A farm may use separate sub-accounts for 3 hosting sites, several hardware groups, different clients, or accounting units. If one referred company expands from a single group of machines into 4 sub-accounts, the original referral relationship does not have to be rebuilt for each operating unit. That structure fits businesses that add capacity gradually over a 12-month period.
There is also no published cap on the number of general referrals. One miner may refer 2 operators, while a hosting company or mining community may refer 200. ViaBTC still requires each referred account to connect hashrate and generate mining profits before fee-based referral payments apply, limiting the benefit of collecting inactive registrations.
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10%: standard referral share of corresponding service-fee revenue.
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12 months: standard referral validity period.
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20%: Ambassador referral share while status remains valid.
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5: minimum valid referees in the previous month before an Ambassador application.
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10: monthly valid-referee level stated for maintaining Ambassador status.
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3 months: period below the activity requirement that can lead to status removal.
The economics can also be viewed from ViaBTC’s side. Traditional advertising can incur spending before a prospect mines anything. Under a fee-linked referral structure, part of the acquisition cost appears after the referred miner generates service-fee revenue. A 10% commission leaves 90% of the applicable fee revenue with the platform before other operating expenses; at a 20% Ambassador rate, 80% remains under the same simplified calculation.
Product performance still determines whether that arrangement lasts. ViaBTC’s PPS+ system pays the block-reward portion hourly and currently lists a 4% fee, while PPLNS charges 2% and distributes according to actual block discovery after 6 confirmations. A miner can compare payout records over 30, 60, or 90 days rather than relying on the referral offer when deciding whether to keep hashrate connected.
ViaBTC also states that its displayed average daily earnings estimates use the previous 7 days of data. On the pricing page captured in August 2026, BTC PPS+ was listed at about 0.00000048 BTC per TH/s per day, while LTC was about 0.00132686 LTC per GH/s per day; ViaBTC notes that actual results can differ from those estimates.
That 7-day estimate gives referred miners a numerical reference after they connect equipment, while longer records help separate short-term pool luck from persistent operating differences. PPS+ reduces exposure to block-discovery variance on the base reward because the pool pays submitted valid shares, whereas PPLNS payments depend more directly on blocks actually found.
Referral growth lasts only when a referred miner has a reason to keep submitting shares after the first 30, 90, or 180 days. A 10% or 20% commission can bring participants into the same commercial relationship, but continued hashrate still depends on fees, payout rules, uptime, reporting, and mining results.
The program also contains abuse controls. ViaBTC excludes malicious registrations and states that suspicious activity can invalidate rewards. The Ambassador rules additionally state that newly registered users without connected hashrate, users whose short connection produces no mining profit, and cases where referrer and referee are identified as the same individual do not generate valid referral rewards.
Those rules keep payment attached to mining work rather than account volume. If 1,000 accounts are created but only 50 connect hashrate, the economically relevant group is the 50 active miners. ViaBTC’s referral rules place the commission calculation on that smaller group once mining profits and eligible service fees exist.
For larger operators, the model can compound without requiring another advertising payment for every machine added. A referred farm that starts at 300 TH/s and later expands to 600 TH/s may generate more service-fee revenue from the same referral relationship, assuming equipment remains connected and profitable. The referrer’s payment can rise with that activity rather than requiring a second acquisition event.
The Ambassador structure extends the same approach across a broader network. A participant maintaining at least 10 valid referrals each month and meeting ViaBTC’s review standards can continue at the 20% level while status remains valid, whereas a general referrer receives 10% for 12 months. Referral growth is therefore tied to the duration, scale, and actual mining activity of the users brought into the pool rather than to a one-time registration count.