Non-official pools experiences and opinions

Hey there,

as there are now at least three non-official pools that allow pooling with the “old” solo farming plots I’d like to discuss the pro and cons.

I’m on hpool since 25. May 2021 and was happy about my initial 0,04 XCH the first day. My plot count increases slowly but steady and my revenue today was about 0,027 XCH.
Hpool does claim that there mining fee is 0% and there withdrawal fee is 0.1%. This sounds not that bad to me.

If I read all that claimed stuff for core-pool and AzPool i don’t see any advantages over hpool.

What are your experiences and opinions on the non-official pools?

1 Like

I have been on Hpool since early this month. My first settlement was on 6/3/21. I have earned .46 XCH so far. I have been on both sides of this thing. I was a very strong opponent of it in the beginning. Just not trusting it. But after the Chia team failed to meet their end of May promise on the pooling protocol, I was left with no other choice. I wasn’t going to sit there and join the other people with over 1000 plots and no wins. I won 4 XCH early, so I figured I would take my winnings and move on before my luck turns the other way. The experience with Hpool has been good. Withdrawals take about a day and everything else runs smoothly. One thing that is a big improvement over the official Chia node is that I can farm all of my NAS systems from one Hpool client. I had to run 4 separate systems to do the same thing with the Chia software. I’m not looking forward to going back to that. With that said, when the official protocol comes out, I will be replotting and going to an official pool. Mainly for the .25 reward for winning a block, which you don’t get with Hpool (or any other unofficial pool that I know of).

If you do go with Hpool or any other unofficial pool, take precautions. My Hpool client is on its own system (a virtual machine). The only access it has is to see the plots. I do not send the XCH that I win to the wallet that created the plots (the keys that they may have). I have another wallet that is also on its own system and firewalled. When I begin to replot, I will create a new wallet and plot from those keys.

Be safe out there.

4 Likes

Some points on Hpool.

Withdrawal settlement takes considerably less time after the first couple of transactions. Mine have been approved within 3-4 hours recently.

Profitability is dwindling fast. When I joined the returns per PB was around 1.64 CHX!!! Now it’s a measly 0.29 XCH and this will only keep doing down to the point where you won’t even make $10 a day sitting on 10000 plots!

Re-plotting to some official pool is a complete waste of time IMHO. If you’ve already joined Hpool just stick with them.

Good luck!

Because Hpool may be a decent option for now, but when official pools come out Hpool just won’t compare. With official pools you will get a .25 XCH bonus if you are the one that wins the block for the pool and you will also move away from the cheating. Hpool is constantly fighting cheaters and other members like us are paying for it. Replotting is no big deal. Just setup the proper scripts to replace one plot at a time. So your Hpool contribution will just get smaller as your official pool contribution gets larger.

And there is also a very big possibility that Hpool will create an official pool to replace their current system. Because it will become obvious that it will be needed when they see the exodus of members when official pools come out. So it would be very beneficial for them to move to an official setup. You may not want to replot, but you might just have to.

2 Likes

I could write exact the same story as @WolfGT ,
except that I just switched to hpool yesterday.
I must say, a steady income feels better than gambling.

2 Likes

Valid points… fair play though I’m not convinced about the cheating aspect on HPool. I’ve yet to see evidence of these so called phantom plots getting rewards that would otherwise go to legitimate plots.

Perhaps I’m making a mistake cashing in my earned CHIA but I’m not blessed with enough money to get the storage. I’m hoping that by the time official pools are launched I will have about 300 TB to play with as a starting point.

We wait and see…

Hpool themselves announced that they where having issues with people cheating the system and had to even pause automated payouts while they worked on the issue. They do not claim to have fixed the issue entirely.

1 Like

Blue pool didn’t last long… they will have to replot should be a warning to others

blue pool is trash. I signed up, never got a verification email. I went to their telegram for help, they said use a different email. I used a different email, and still never got a verification email. went back to ask for help, and they basically told me there is nothing they would do. so… i joined corepool, and so far like it.

Out of interest, how do you actually get core pool to work? I have my drives connected to 4 different machines. How do you actually connect all 4 to the same core pool account? I noticed that their software doesn’t ask for the plot locations?

Why did you quote me and then start talking about Blue Pool? We weren’t talking about that pool. But thanks for the feedback about that pool.

i think i meant to respond to the guy below you… not sure how i responded to you

when you login to their dashboard, it will have you create tokens. you put the tokens in the gui.

I get the token bit… but when you put the code and then click the button, where does it give you the option to add your drives where the plots reside? Or do you have to have the CHIA client running on each machine you plan to use the chia core software?

have the chia client running as well. i don’t think i ever had to add plot directories in the core pool client. i think it gets them from the chia client.

right… I get you now. So really I have to run a separate node on each of my machines for this to work.

BTW, how many plots do you have and what sort of returns you getting? I mean what’s your TB and how long does it take you to get to 0.05 XCH? (Sorry for all the questions!) but I’m thinking of ditching Hpool as they’re apparently taking about 20% of the actual profits my plots should make?

right now I have 320 plots and get around .007 xch a day

they admit they have some cheaters, and said within 2 days will have it solved to where they will have them all kicked out. they seems to be on the up and up about things.

hmmm… to be fair I’m actually making about the same on Hpool (taking into account I have 4 times your plots) maybe I should just stay put or are you saying chia core also have cheater?!

core pool has cheaters. they run a script each day and ban double farmers. they say they will have the double farmer problem solved all together in the next 2 days or so