Chia is impossible to mine as a home user without pooling

The question is is is safe to give your key?

I come from the data hoarding community (r/DataHoarder) and we absolutely love 18TB drives. As a chia plotter, I’m happy with a chia, but as a data hoarder, I’m very upset that it is substantially more expensive to archive the data that I care about.

I’ll be first to redirect some of my plotting power to a “new” pool - one where i don’t need to give them my private keys I think the “protocol” update comes out on 17th - i guess that will be a release with the supporting chain functionality. I do hope it is not just a spec and there are people working on implementations now, and a usable one is not far behind

Mining pools seems to be the answer for the future

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How can he lie if I see his wallet every time we meet? and I see the ETH he has and the profitibility as it progresses. Maybe electricity costs are very high where you live… It’s 0.13$ per kWh where I live

Hopefully

Okay I am a new farmer here and I will add my 2 cents worth:

Of course most of us get attracted to new projects with the promise of reward, I mean why else would we spend real dollars in hopes of returns in “fairy-dust,” for all we know the Age of Cryptophoria just might be positioned for a massive collapse and nobody ever wants to touch crypto post vaccination era. (Chances of crypto-crash astronomically higher than my winning two simultaneous blocks in 24 hours with my 9 plots).

Why we start to invest? Well tech is cool and anything new tech is cool and we think we’re entering early so we we want to see the project develop and become active participants and so on…

Why the anxiety? We get too focused on ROI and forget to have any fun… You’re in it, play it like an RPG grind, have fun with it, plots in themselves are digital assets, what if few years down the line verified plots start selling like hot cakes? Follow this chain of thought : Chia rush = hdd rush = hdd shortage = hdd inaccessible BUT plot = HDD activity = value preserved in terms of ssd expenditure (semi-conductors are short in supply and you have spent semiconductors to plot - plot in itself is of inherent value which we will realise in near future).

The mistake we make: haste and lack of patience. Hey, I get it chances are diminishing by the minute. But are we taking all metrics into consideration? I think we are leaving a host of disqualification factors aside. So what if the big money has plotted racks upon racks of hhds in data centres? Isn’t the query generated at random? Isn’t the response a close variant of the lookup? How about one of my 9 plots having 15% close match vs a data centre with 0.1% match? How about downtime and network failures? How about my 9 plots being live with 1% close match with a data centre with multiple 99% close matches facing network errors and downtime? How about other variables that exist? I for one refuse to believe the probability counter and push on with my limited disk capacity of handful of terabytes and 3 plot per day generation capacity. Won’t my few plots being live over the decade have a better chance to reap other eventualities over those who give up sooner? So I suggest let’s all be patient for now and see the future together. Of course I’d want your plots gone but I like to generate Karma too, so please, stay. Yes HOME MINERS, I am talking to you, we don’t want to give the bully an easy win. Bitcoin didn’t get to where it is today in a matter of months, it took good part of a decade! And we’re expecting this to be the next big thing - not with a quitter’s attitude I don’t think!

The big guy is not always bad… He’s doing us a favour by quickly burning through the already scarce semiconductors and thereby incrementally increasing the value of the plots. I give you a scenario : SSDs, NVMEs not available anywhere for 6 months(like gfx cards) - go make a plot or… B U Y A P L O T!

I ll paint another picture. You’re sitting in a boat with your fishing pole or two… and there are speed boats with massive nets trying to sweep the lake…what is your strategy for victory here? Did you come out to take all the fish or just the few that will make it a fun trip? Sure the boats are upsetting but isn’t the idea that you just sit there till the fish bites…

There is the easiest solution for those who don’t see the fun of it - sell your HDDs buy Chia and keep it in lock and key for 10 years…

No offence intended to anyone. To those who love the grind, Grind On!

P. S. I don’t intend to join any pools, I will take my chances solo and keep the winnings.

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I don’t agree !

If it was JUST about comparable probability of winning, that would be fine.

But it is not - my premise is that problems in the mining operation and software means that knowledge of “wasted” mining does not emerge for days, weeks or even months. A large solo miner will KNOW if they have a problem in DAYS, a small miner may not know for MONTHS

It is NOT a level playing field without a viable pool, even one that charges reasonable fees

Project is still beta(ish), field is level since problems are much bigger for bigger miners, their cost to arrive at stable future is much higher than ours, we just have to stick around. Plain and simple strategy for solo miner - just stick around…for me 10 percent bad code = 1 bad plot. For a data center it could be multiple harddrive and hours of troubleshooting… The whales will create the waves, we just have to ride them…(sorry about the excessive use of metaphors)

It took bitcoin almost 2 years till the 1st pool was a thing…

Are you trying to convince us to not farm chia till aws and google start farming it…shure, you should lead us by example

You are not addressing my comment - we don’t know if the software is working properly as it is far more complex and there are far more SILENT failure modes than earlier Bitcoin mining. If it was JUST probabilities then fine, sit down, chill out - but it is not !

This is not just a plug in and forget operation - this is not the same world as the first 2 years of Bitcoin, it is far less transparent … A product was released with a shitload of “pre-mining” and problematic software - and a wall of prior equipment form previous similar HD mining projects - your comparison is not equivalent

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What other choice is there then? To tell you the truth I have never had any faith in any crypto ever, and I am still not convinced. Again with a metaphor - if tomorrow all of the world’s crypto were cashed out and or traded in for tangible assets, would there be sufficient fiat currency to do it? Have we not been part of a rigged game from the beginning? The world of crypto is far from transparent, so is the stock exchange, and so is the printing press known as federal reserve, so is the manner in which banks create waves in real estate markets every decade… What is really transparent? And what is not rigged? What choice do we actually, really have? Ideally I say let’s shut down Chia project altogether, but I know that’s not happening and I was too young to have purchased any Google stock when it was just starting out, and I like many others who missed out on many of the things want to participate, rigged or not, better if rigged I say, I am here to get burnt… But what other choice is there really? Take chances on what is here in proportion of bet what you can afford to loose… I don’t know if that addresses what you are asking…I do agree the idea of a software generating random static code does seem fundamentally flawed but, they are running with it, so much so that there is already 4mn tbs of it (I wont be surprised if tomorrow we learn that 2/3 of the code is erroneous-but-there in could lie the lottery, the good code, the luck). And the only way to find out is stick around…

P. S. They all claim that we re trying to develop a truly decentralised instrument of barter, but leaving aside the big money hoarders, what happens to the coin on exchanges? What happens when the likes of corporations go out and buy a chunk of it or even endorse it… The purpose gets defeated, and the coin starts to behave like a regulated commodity… It has all been a game and I suggest we simply play it in the spirit of a game… Nothing more…there will be winners and there will be losers, our goal should be to play in the spirit of fun and celebrate if we win and not make it a big deal if we loose, and the best way to do it is to invest what we can have fun loosing… something like that…

P. P. S. Why is nobody rewarding protecting the earth, or conserving it? Why is all the reward geared around parasitic level of consumption, to the extent that, artificial scarcity is leveraged to build values? If they want to do truly green they should start awarding crypto for planting trees, recycling, using less and less of non renewable energy… Why is nobody rewarding that? The flaw goes far deeper than the code!

Good job ianj, you’ve made me talk myself out of the program - I quit! Now I am thinking I am devoting needless resources, time and electricity to further the cause of something artificial at a cost, even if small, to the environment - I am not that guy, thanks a lot ianj!

I am not arguing against the project - i am arguing that going into production with a wall of rewards waiting and no pooling for “normies” to gain rewards was NOT a good idea and the best way i can think of to stop “miner” adoption and hamper decentralization. I don’t think it was intentional, just poor prioritization and no doubt they were surprised at how quickly the project was adopted.

Having seen this before, i wasn’t - going live in the middle of a moon cycle offer “cheap money” was bound to elicit this response. I didn’t know about the project until mid April - my failing of course

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You re still early bro… It’s not that old… But for me it is, I’ll not part take in wilful burning of semiconductors during a period of shortage - i’ll revisit when the supply has improved and the process matured…

I use 3 HP IoDrive II - each has 30,000 TBW (yes that many zeroes) - it may take me some time

Nothing is unintentional - they say they have prefarmed Chia to fundraise in future - isn’t that like insider trading…we don’t know how much Chia… We don’t know their target offload price… Seems to me like they have gotten themselves a head start, put beach towels past the finish line, are sitting on them sipping coconut water, and watching the world dog it out when they can write themselves any amount of cheque whenever they please and however many times they please…am I misinformed here or have they admitted to the prefarmed to fund-raise detail?

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There are few crypto projects that have not enacted some form of pre-farming, pre-mining or fund raising …

We do know how much they pre-farmed: 21 Million. It’s in the whitepaper (https://www.chia.net/assets/Chia-Business-Whitepaper-2021-02-09-v1.0.pdf)

They say they don’t intend to sell the pre-farm or “strategic reserve”. It’s not a legal document so take it for what its worth. It’s a matter of faith and trust in the end.

I wonder…how much trust do I want to put in the hands of people with 21 million prefarmed coins who could not have been bothered to share 0.05XCH with the founding beta members…Infinitely increasing farming difficulty aside, more I read more this project starts to stink… There has to be massive rot and decay nearby…

BTW 21mn coins are valued today $2,310,000,000 (@ $1100/XCH) assuming someone was stupid enough to pay them the amount today in exchange for fairy dust…I mean this is what I find mind boggling, how do you create billions upon billions out of thin air? The crowd has funded a relatively large chunk towards the project at $20/ tb people have funded $80mn in real money towards spinning drives alone and I would say employed more than 10 times as much in ssds, nvmes, and processing equipment and electricity. How is it that the code maker is already in possession of 2.3bn worth of coin? Mind boggling the math simply just as random as the code…

And here is the flaw in the process - they got to farm 21mn coins against what size main net? 1PB 2PB - 8TB? So when you strike 2XCH against a mainnet of 4EB shouldn’t your XCH be worth in the ratio of competitors defeated? How is their XCH worth the same as mine earned in future…the idea is flawed, they should be petitioned to destroy their reserve and farm one under the same circumstance as the rest of us…it’s like they picked out the entire farm and left the rest of us to play hunger games amidst bare barks and leaves and rotting fruit… I don’t want to use the S word here…can someone please help out and say it for me…

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Not sure if I’m falling on a troll here…Why so salty?
No one is forcing you to continue investing / farming / trading on Chia if you see the setup shady or unfair.

This is a valuable point - I wouldn’t invest much of my money on Chia (that’s why I’m farming) due to the potential risks related to the coin (which exist in one way or another in most crypto coins). However, on the positive note, the team has been very professional so far, and the plan is solid, so an exit scam wouldn’t be likely nor sensible scenario.

When you invent something new, let it be a startup or a crypto coin, you get to hold even 100 % of the reserve/capital. If the idea is good, people are willing to buy small portions for high sums. Of course, the creators aren’t on the same line as other people - they are being rewarded for their innovation and work. The idea of the team to have to give their funds away so that you could get a bigger piece of the pie is just ridiculous since that would literally kill the whole project (or is the team supposed to work for free?) leaving everyone with nothing.

If you read about startups, you might learn that each Series funding round dilutes the previous owners’ positions. However, the key here is that it is better to own a small portion of something valuable than a big portion of something worthless. Suits very well for Chia too, IMO.

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