Biggest Ethereum mining pool in China, Sparkpool, has announced that it would be shutting down due to regulatory concerns over mining and pollution.
Here is the announcement from Sparkpool’s website. Ethereum hashrate is expected to take a huge dip once Sparkpool servers go offline.
As an effort to be maximumly compliant with regulatory requirements, SparkPool had stopped providing services to new users from mainland China on September 24, 2021 (UTC+8). A complete shutdown for all SparkPool services and operations for the existing users, at home or abroad, has been planned for September 30, 2021 (UTC+8) at 20:00 under the premise of ensuring the safety of our users’ assets. Please plan accordingly. Further detail about the shutdown will be sent out through announcements, emails, and in-site messages. Thank you for your understanding, and we are extremely grateful to all our users for their long-term support to SparkPool.
There is no word if the unpaid balances earned by miners will ever be paid out.