Chia Pools FAQs (51% attack, portable plots...)

Hey guys!

I have just seen this tweet from Gene Hoffman, they have just posted the FAQ about pooling:

Good to hear about that new portable plot format. I think I’m gonna stop plotting until those are released.

Happy farming! :man_farmer:

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Wow, straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak :horse:

So, the recommendation is to start replacing your plots and re-plotting everything. Ugh. I guess that makes sense. The very second pooling is available, make all your plots pooled plots. Until then… there’s nothing to do but plot solo and try to keep up with netspace, which is a losing battle for even mini-whales like me.

Will I need to replot to use the official pooling protocol?

Yes. Anyone who wants to join a pool will need to create new portable plots. This new plot format allows you to switch between pools and self-pooling with a cooldown of 30 minutes between each switch. Our recommendation is to slowly replace your existing plots with portable plots one by one, so you still have a chance to win XCH while you convert to all portable plots.

Ominous, and a bit scary… I know we probably have topics about hpool here already, but I didn’t realize they had their own client code! :scream:

Why shouldn’t I join Hpool?

Hpool has created their own version of Chia client that has no source code released with it. There is no telling what kind of malicious activity that client can do. Chia Network Inc discourages everyone from joining any pool that requires custom clients.

3 Likes

I’m not scared at all, plots will need to be discarded anyways for official pools.

Running on isolated machine none of this is my problem. Chia developers do have a problem however and they should be scared and should explain their thinking. Hpool could with very special engineering take over their project. They won’t as of now because they’re profiting handsomely and have aligned incentives. Attack on chia protocol requires 36% of coordinated netspace, not 51%. Hpool is way over that threshold. FAQ doesn’t get that right out of ignorance, or intentionally, I don’t know which is worse.

Also hpool client is simply better working.

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I’m wondering if the portable plot file will look any different than the current plot files. Will they have a different extension or will the file name look different? Just wondering because if not, I will just make sure I have the old style plots in folders that I can be easily identifed later (to be replotted).

Of course I could just document the date/time I start plotting portable plots. Then any file with a creation date earlier than that is the old style.

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yes, that would be great to know… I guess once those portable plots are released plotting managers like plotman or swar will likely add a functionality to easy replot.

That would be really nice.