We have sent out a newsletter today, outlining the current status on pool development and more:
http://eepurl.com/hAZj4D
Your news letter tells us that you are one of the many who have been granted permission to use Chia pool testnet.
You have still not provided a proper website, your corporate information, physical address, miner agreement, privacy policy, or any other information required to establish trust.
Again, I would recommend peeps be very wary of joining your pool until you have done your due diligence.
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Thank you, you’ve made your point several times over now. I don’t think you need to repeat yourself anymore.
Until you provide your corporate information, physical address, miner agreement, privacy policy, etc I will continue to raise my concerns.
The more you try to bury my concerns the more you convince my that you are a scam, not just a bad start-up.
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Awesome, thank you. We take your concerns seriously.
Concerns about new pool start-ups and Chia Pool Testnet
We now have at least two new Chia pool start-ups in the Chia Forums.
Neither has corporate information, a known physical address, a miner agreement, a privacy policy, a near complete website, or any other information needed to establish trust.
Both push the fact that they are members of Chia Pool Testnet as their basis for trust.
Being granted permission to participate in the testnet is specifically NOT an endorsement by Chia.
I am very concerned that we have peeps pushing their new pools when they refuse to provide essential information and do not have the web infrastructure (website info, tech support, agreements, etc.) to get started, let alone maintain a pool.
These new pools may be real … but they may be complete scams. We have no information on them except that they are members of Chia Pool Testnet.
I would recommend that you join a pool as if you were putting your hard earned cash into a stock.
You would never buy a stock without knowing company details and fundamentals.
You should never get into a pool that refuses to give you any details about its organization.
I wish that Chia would Vet and provide the relevant information on all they allow to join testnet.
What do you think?
The “Chia Pool Testnet” is not like a secret members only club or anything. The Chia network has one or multiple testnets always active and pool operators are carrying out their tests there, that’s all there is to it. I don’t think any pool is claiming there’s any endorsement from Chia.net…
I know the community is wary of scams and shady pools but most of us are setting up pools based on the official pooled mining design, which will solve the current issues with hpool and others.
Ultimately, the only way you’ll see if a pool is legitimate is seeing people receive their deserved payouts regularly. No amount of anything else can trump that. Any pool who tries to scam people will die pretty quickly once proper pooled mining is ready.
I do not enjoy being your pain in the butt. You are polite and agreeable, and I would like to believe that you are on the up and up. Unfortunately, your polite replies do not contain basics like even a miner agreement.
Please do your due diligence before hoping to establish trust.
Everything takes time, things aren’t built in a minute.
Always good to do your DD, but can’t expect miracles.
After discussion in another thread and further research I will stop warning against 21Chia.
Out of the new pool start-ups, only 21chia is waiting for the official launch and tells you anything about their team or financing. Kudos to 21Chia. I hope they get their website completed soon.
I have learned that joining any pool that is launched after, and is using, Chia official pool protocol is reasonably safe.
I will be joining a pool after official pool is launched. I will probably wait at least a couple of weeks and make my judgment as to where to pool at that time.
Good judgement and luck to all! 
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just wondering can you tell me which chiapool have provided your corporate information, physical address, miner agreement, privacy policy, etc. I would like to know too.?
I believe 21Chia has or will have everything in place by launch.
My largest concern is start-ups trying to gather clients before official pooling is even released.
Elsewhere, I am arguing for a non Chia start-up that is very thin, but there I feel the risk of fraud is low. You have to judge your risks carefully before pooling and make your own decision.
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We’re currently running a survey to find out what farmers want most, feel free to participate: 21Chia Pool Survey
Fraud happens even with the largest ETH pools who have been around years much less tiny Chia startups that have no history.
Its farmer beware. And honestly if you choose your pool just to shave off that 1% fee that most others charge without any other research your getting what you likely deserve. Greed is good but too much will make you sick.
On any pool including us do your research do your own math and if your numbers don’t match the actual rewards you should be able to ask and find out why.
Also honestly pools that are legal companies in nations where there is a strong legal system are likely more trustworthy than pools that aren’t.
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Website updated.
We’re making good progress with the pool. The latest changes, which allow pool switching, are being tested now on testnet. Our pool has been successfully producing payouts and we’ve tested different reward distribution methods. We are developing dashboards and user-facing interfaces now, with the idea that pooled mining could launch before the end of June.
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Please note our mainnet pool is now open! head over to https://21chia.com to join
We have updated the instructions to join the testnet pool, in case you want to try it.
Development has moved to testnet9. You can join our test pool there (updated instructions in the post above). If you do, please only make a few k25 plots, there’s no need for more.
Can you please send me some XCH to so I can test on testnet9? Thanks
txch1fm4g5g6uhmaznfz37ylnjg72f22lynth6f62kahl78w4ywtlfwlqfxjfvf
Now that we’re finally in stage 2 of the official pooled mining launch, we’re just one step away from launching on mainnet, which could happen as soon as this week!
It is now quite likely that the smart contract that governs official pooled mining won’t require more fixes, so you may start plotting with some degree of confidence (75% likely according to the Chia devs), at your own risk, so that you’re ready to have some netspace already plotted in time for launch.
Speaking of plotting, we recommend that you use the MadMax plotter (get the pool-puzzles branch for pool plots -they’ll eventually merge it with their main branch). It is faster and easier to use than default one, since it’s already parallelized and can output plots one by one. It can also take advantage of RAM disks (128GB min) and it doesn’t wear down SSDs as much.
Stay tuned for more from us this week.
Happy farming!
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Doesn’t MadMax still have an issue where portable plots are extremely unlucky or not producing partial?
I am still waiting for this PR to be merged.