Two very simple steps:

Go to your miner's interface. For the POOL URL enter mine.ocean.xyz:3334. Some miners may require prefixing this by stratum+tcp:// while others may ask for the port number (3334) separately.

For the Worker or Username enter a Bitcoin address. If you'd like to assign it a public worker name for the stats, append a period followed by whatever name you'd like as such: bitcoinaddress.publicworkername Use anything for the password (eg, “x” is fine).
Note: You can use the same address for multiple miners. Appending additional information to the bitcoin address will allow you to see stats for each miner in the dashboard as well as receive alerts. Miners that do not specify a worker name will see “default” as the name.

In many ways!

First, we are a non-custodial pool. Miners are paid directly by the Bitcoin network. Here is a block found by the pool in 2011 (under the name Eligius). The generation transaction contains over 900 outputs - this is the Bitcoin network paying miners directly. OCEAN uses the same transparent method. All OCEAN does is coordinate the correct split.

Second, we publish our block templates before solving them. This transparency differs from other pools which do not permit their hashers to know what the block will look like until after/when/if it's irreversibly solved. It's vital for miners to know the details of the block they are working on beforehand so that they can withdraw their hashrate before contributing work toward a block they do not wish to see added to the blockchain.
Third, our reward system is a Transparent Index of Distinct Extended Shares - TIDES - this gives miners the ability to verify that they are getting the exact reward that they should be as and when blocks are found. Any dishonesty by the pool would be immediately provable even before blocks are solved, thus minimizing the need for trust even further. Unlike PPLNS or FPPS, TIDES does not merely approximate reward distributions, so miners are paid the full and exact pro rata portion of their contributed hashrate. More on TIDES below.

OCEAN constructs blocks so that miners are paid in the generation transaction whenever possible. This means the Bitcoin network is paying miners directly with OCEAN transparently ensuring the rewards are split correctly.

This is a restriction within Bitcoin itself. Freshly mined bitcoins cannot be spent for 100 blocks so as to avoid the disruption that would be caused by spent bitcoins suddenly disappearing should there be a reorganization of the blockchain (aka stale blocks).

No account is necessary - simply put your Bitcoin address as a worker name in your miner interface. Check out this video for more information.

Our reward scheme is called Transparent Index of Distinct Extended Shares (TIDES). As blocks are being mined, they generate the reward by a weighted percentage of effort to the most recently found proofs. The proof period funds are distributed across has been chosen such that each proof should be paid on average 8 times. Instead of a set amount of bitcoins per proof, the block reward is divided by percent, so transaction fees are included. Because of this design, each payout to you is fully auditable. Previous implementations of similar systems such as PPLNS would distort the payouts owed to miners by using “shifts” and much smaller proof windows, resulting in miners getting significantly less accurate payments for their contributed hashrate.

TIDES is the most accurate payout scheme available in Bitcoin today and unlike other schemes like FPPS it does not require the pool to serve as a custodial intermediary for payment processing.

Currently, the threshold is 0.01048576 BTC or 1,048,576 sats

Rewards below this threshold will accumulate until it is exceeded, then the payout will occur automatically.

If you stop mining altogether or change to a new mining address before meeting the threshold, the pool will attempt to make a discretionary payout anyway should it be practical to do so. We reserve the right to change this in the future as appropriate. We expect to add Lightning payouts in 2024 and thereby eliminate the payout threshold.

At launch, OCEAN is offering a radically more transparent and disintermediated option for traditional pooled mining than anything currently available, but the pool itself is still solely responsible for construction of block templates.

In 2024, we will incorporate a marketplace where miners can sell their unrewarded proof of work (PoW) directly to buyers over Lightning for immediately spendable bitcoins. This saves money for the miner in the form of onchain fees (so much so that they may sell at a discount) and permits third-parties to buy bitcoins in exchange for aggregating the unrewarded PoW into fewer UTXOs. The savings made by more efficiently using Bitcoin's blockchain translate into savings for the miner and profit for the liquidity provider.
Phase 2 will also permit miners to construct their own block templates. This radically increases the scope of a miner who uses OCEAN such that they become a solo miner who simply enjoys a more consistent income.

You can ask questions in the community chat on this website.