Plotting for someone else: What needs to be done?

Chia Plotting
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From my understanding, when you generate plots by default, they’re somehow tied to your private or public key that you have set in your Chia keys/wallet. It seems you can override this behavior by supplying chia create plots --farmer_public_key XXX --pool_public_key XXX with the person you’re generating plots for. Is that true or false?

I currently have plots made for myself (I presume. I ran chia plots create without supplying farmer or pool public key.) Are these plots somehow tied to my Chia private key or wallet? Are they only farmable by me?

I am currently farming those plots but I noticed the Farmer application itself has a “Rewards Address”. How does this play with everything? For example, if I gave a friend my plots and they ran it on their own Chia Farmer, but changed the “Rewards Address” to point to their public address, would they be able to use my plots to farm Chia (assuming I deleted the plots from my computer locally) or would they not even be able to use the plots?

I ask this because I’m generating plots for my brother and before I start generating the plots (which could take over a month,) I want to be able to farm those plots.

The issue: I’m afraid that if I just generate them without supplying farmer & pool public keys, he won’t be able to farm them. My second fear is that if I were to supply the farmer & pool public keys, that I somehow won’t be able to farm them in the meantime due to a mismatching of the plot-generated keys and my Chia private and public keys stored in chia keys / chia wallet. If that were the case, would those plots would be unfarmable until he took the hard drives to his computer at home and started farming them there?

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That’s true. Plotting is in a sense the simplest chia-related activity. Farming, wallets, etc, all need to communicate with a full node. Plotting can be done on a computer running only the plotting job, with no network connection. Everything the plotter needs in order to do its job can be passed in via the command-line flags. So to plot for someone else, you would run the exact same CLI your ran for yourself, but with the addition of their farmer and pool keys passed in using the appropriate arguments.

I currently have plots made for myself (I presume. I ran chia plots create without supplying farmer or pool public key.) Are these plots somehow tied to my Chia private key or wallet? Are they only farmable by me?

Yes. The chia program is smart enough to use your keys by default. It’s the exact same as if you had done the plotting by passing your own farmer and pool key on the command-line. They are only farmable by you.

I am currently farming those plots but I noticed the Farmer application itself has a “Rewards Address”. How does this play with everything? For example, if I gave a friend my plots and they ran it on their own Chia Farmer, but changed the “Rewards Address” to point to their public address, would they be able to use my plots to farm Chia (assuming I deleted the plots from my computer locally) or would they not even be able to use the plots?

No, they wouldn’t be able to use your plots. But you could farm your plots for them. They’d generate an address, and you’d plug that address in as the rewards address.

I’m afraid that if I just generate them without supplying farmer & pool public keys, he won’t be able to farm them.

He won’t. The only for both of you to farm the same plots (at different times) is to share your private key. That’s generally … discouraged. That said, if it’s family, you might consider it. You’d want to think carefully about how to do it.

My second fear is that if I were to supply the farmer & pool public keys, that I somehow won’t be able to farm them in the meantime due to a mismatching of the plot-generated keys and my Chia private and public keys stored in chia keys / chia wallet. If that were the case, would those plots would be unfarmable until he took the hard drives to his computer at home and started farming them there?

That’s right. You can plot for him, but you can’t farm plots while you wait for the drive to fill up.

If your main concern is the plots just not being farmed, you could do something like this, but it’s kind of complicated:

You could run a harvester for his farmer. So as soon as the plots are created, they’d be harvested. But if they win any blocks, he’d get the reward. You’ll want to read the official docs on running a remote harvester. Then you’ll also have to deal with the right ports, though you might decide to set up a private network with something like tailscale to make that simpler.

At least then the plots would be farmed while you’re waiting for the drive to be filled, and for him to come pick it up.

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You’re the best, thank you so much for all this info!

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Oh MAN! This is the one of the best and simplest questions along with complete and understandable answers I was looking for in the jungle of “heeeelllp!” titled topics and “why would anyone…” useless answers.

Than you kind Asker and also great thanks to Answerer!