Shares, difficulty and effort explained
The three numbers behind every mining dashboard: what a share proves, what share difficulty tunes, and what effort tells you about luck.
Shares: proof you worked
A share is a small, verifiable piece of mining work your rig submits to the pool. On Pearl every share is a real computation the pool verifies before counting it. Shares are how the pool measures each miner's contribution, and they are what your reward is calculated from.
Share difficulty: the pool tuning your pace
The pool tunes a per-rig share difficulty so every rig, small or large, submits shares at a steady, sensible pace. Higher share difficulty means fewer but heavier shares; lower means more but lighter ones. Either way the total work is the same, so share difficulty does not change your earnings, only the rhythm of your submissions.
Effort: the luck meter
Effort compares the work spent on finding a block against what the network difficulty says it should take. 100% means the block took exactly the expected work; under 100% means it came early (lucky); over 100% means it came late (unlucky). Single blocks swing widely, and over many blocks effort averages toward 100%. It is a fairness meter, not a performance dial you can turn.
Orphans: the race you sometimes lose
Occasionally two blocks are found at nearly the same moment and the network keeps only one. The losing block is orphaned and pays nothing. This happens on every blockchain to every pool; it is part of the same variance that effort measures.