I know this has been asked before, but there doesn’t seem to be definitive easy-to-find advice. Perhaps a sticky post with the community consensus could reduce redundant questions. Here’s a post and here’s an article from August which both say “basically it doesn’t matter, unless you’re being robbed.” Is that still the consensus?
Say I’m considering a hypothetical Pool A and Pool B. Both seem trustworthy enough, but who knows.
Should I simply ignore the tiny difference in Est. Daily Profitability? Are there any factors to consider aside from these? How would you decide?
On the unquantifiable factor of trusting the devs: how much foul play is possible within the official pooling protocol?
If the pool’s security is poor and someone takes over its servers, what’s the worst case scenario? Could the hackers stop (or reduce) payouts and keep all (or some) future rewards?
If the devs are malicious, could they skim a 2% fee while claiming 1%? Would this be easy to catch, or would it require someone to analyze their long-term profitability?
How would I know if I’m being robbed, short of being a regular chiaforum reader? Say I leave my farmer to farm, and check back in three months’ time to make sure my pool hasn’t been cheating.
Pay attention to the forums and reddit to make your pool decision. Ongoing, continue to check reddit and the forums to ensure there are not problems with your choice.
There is extended discussion about most of what you have queried. The bottom line is that you have to research, pay attention and make your choice.
For security reasons I would use a pool that used a browser interface, not a client, if available. If you are using a client, make sure it is open source.
That’s true, all pools are the same, unless you’re being robbed. That doesn’t matter whether you’re going to join spacepool, findchia, or flexpool, for example, cuz all pools may have days with bad/good luck and all payouts would even out eventually.
That’s a high time commitment, though, and isn’t a good match for Chia’s goal of being easy enough for casual users to farm on their spare disk space.
I’m hoping that there are some guidelines that can help a casual user choose a pool in a single research session, rather than requiring a multi-day commitment. And I would then recommend that such guidelines be posted as a sticky to help new users arriving from Google.
(And for what it’s worth - the more accessible Chia is to small users, the better for Chia’s future.)
High time commitment? You don’t seem to mind spending our time… You have asked your question in two threads and gotten many responses.
There is not one best pool for everyone. Your choice depends on your wants and needs. You could have already looked around and made a choice.
You really do need to do some research if you think this is still a realistic Chia goal.
You started this thread with, “I know this has been asked before” and you were right.
Your magic site where some independent and unbiased third party does a critical evaluation of all the Chia pools and then figures out which one is best for you does not exist.
Use the information you have been given and make a choice …
If I were just trying to answer my own question, then yes, I’d have stopped at the OpenChia thread. My unstated assumption was that if Chia is more accessible to newcomers, then that makes things better.
You only have 24 hours in a day; use them on the things you care about. Clearly this isn’t one of them for you.
Though, for what it’s worth, this post was motivated by writing the OpenChia post: I was thinking, surely it’s inefficient for dozens of users to ask the same questions about dozens of pools? A sticky FAQ on the questions that I’ve asked would, in my imagination at least, save time for you who hang around these forums answering questions.
If no one likes that idea, then that’s fine and I’ll head on out.
As the topic is well discussed in many threads peeps use the search tool so as to avoid duplicating conversation as you are doing. Any further discussion on the topic can then be put in its most useful place.
Yeah I’m a real slouch … I’ll try REALLY hard to be as smart and helpful as you are!
