Pooling, rewards, farming

Chia Pools
1

Just trying to understand something - make up my mind, and hear other opinions.

Since I joined pool, I constantly have less rewards, then blocks farmed, and that number is ever increasing. Right now I am paid out by the pool 8 xch less (32) than the blocks I’ve mined (20).

If I go to pool support forum, everything always comes down to luck, which of course can’t be ruled out.

By all means I don’t think that pool is stealing or anything like that, just trying to make up my mind to go solo or not (1PB).

The problem is, last time I moved to solo, I did not win anything for 15 days.
I do understand that I missed out on 15 days of rewards (0.2 approx x15=3) but even if I was on the pool for those 15 days I would still have 5 xch less in total, and If I won a block or two, difference would be even bigger.

One assumption is that dust storms created the difference, as I was usually winning block during dust storms and machines seamed to be unaffected. I understand that even if my setup is powerful enough to deal with the dust storm, I can be affected through other nodes etc, but I did farm several blocks during every dust storm if that is important in any way.

Second assumption is that pool attracts more challenges than I would be able to do solo, and as a result I do win more on the pool than I would be able in solo farming.

Really just looking for an explanation so I can lay this to rest and continue with pool farming, that is my preferred option by far.

However, I am still a bit confused. I understand the luck and probability but also when you come to a forum like this and see a lot of people having problems with the farms, and me having less xch than what I mined, one can’t help but think where my xch ended up.

What are your thoughts, other than the luck explanation, as I really heard every luck explanation I possibly could in the last couple of weeks.
Not saying/cannot say that is not the case, just looking for other opinions/explanations, if there are any.

Thank you kindly.

2

Speaking from personal experience. I started plotting/replotting nft plots and joined pool from day one when official protocol launched (early July). By end of November, I reached about 600TB size. I calculated all the blocks won VS what pool paid me (they had 0% fee most of that time), and realized I earned merely 60% of what I’d made if I was solo.

I was fed up with it and switched solo and continued winning blocks at the same rate. Current size is 820+ TiB and the solo operation works well. There were a few dry spells like going up to 2x ETW, got a bit nervous, but eventually blonks showed up.

I do not blame the pool and do not suspect them withholding any profits. Quite the opposite: the pool helped me quickly identify stales and I successfully used it as a diagnostic tool to optimize the rig.

I have a completely baseless theory that some pool participants have non-optimized rigs and don’t know it. Yes, they may submit lots of partials that makes their reported netspace look legit, but there is some gap in the pooling protocol that makes an uneven distribution. If a farmer has a 2PiB netspace in the pool and not winning blocks for a month, then something must be amiss, and effectively they are siphoning profit from other participants. Again, this theory has no evidence, just a guess based on empiric data that I saw on my farm and some others.

2 Likes
3

We just hit after nealy 3months with an average of 24days. Before we had some hits in very close distance. So I wouldn’t overinterpret your experience.

I think the big advantage of Pool farming is the little risk u have when u are not farming. If u can make sure u are allways farming then why not farm solo?

4

There’s basically a 50% chance you find more chia soloing than with a pool over a long term average.

5

why?

(20 characters)

6

Because a pool provides an average of all its members and obviously some are above and some are below if they went solo.

7

22 blocks found - 32 Xch paid out …

8

You are aware that, in a pool you only get paid 0.25 XCH and 1.75XCH goes to the pool (and redistributed under all farmers minus the pool fee)?

9

Yes, and that the payout should be somewhat close to what you would mine anyway, solo mining, over a long period of time, rather than short, but my difference has only been increasing since the beginning.

Yeah I could run into a dry patch for like 2 months or more at any moment, which honestly I would like so I can lay it to rest and just keep farming through the pool and not think about this, but that hasn’t happened yet so here we are.

10

No, not really. You should over longer term get pool payouts in the order of 1.75/2 of the rewards you would have gotten farming solo.
So with 20 blocks ‘won’ the payouts from the pool should be compared with 1.75 / 2 *40 =35 XCH (minus fees witheld). The 20 wins would reward your farmer reward address with 20 * 0.25, so 5 XCH straight into your wallet.
Totalling to 40XCH (minus fees).

So if you’ve got payouts worth 32XCH with 20 wins you are 3 XCH short, not 8.
Still a pity for now, but in time this should be corrected by the continuing payouts from the pool even when your luck runs out;-)

11

We have a misunderstanding, or I explained it wrong … I got only 28 from the pool, other 5.5 is directly to the wallet, I was adding both figures already.

Screen Shot 2022-01-29 at 21.50.06
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Soon enoguh I will have same amount of blocks mined, and xch that I got from the pool :slight_smile:
This can’t be right.

12

Well, I certainly understand now this does not feel right.
But does it also mean something is wrong…
From the pool’s perspective they only see the number of partials your farm sends, which number should represent (within boundaries) your plotted space pretty well. Same for all other pool members.
Space pool uses this PPLNS method to calculate each members share in the 1.75XCH rewards won in the pool. This percentage fluctuates a bit because even the partials hit rate is a statistical number. It’s the rightmost square in Space Pools dashboard, but missing in your screenprint.
Space Pool also presents, averaging all farmers, a # XCH payout per 10TiB, currently 0.0024 per day .
So when the 900TiB Space Pool estimates on the number of partials you send are about right you should expect 90 * 0.0024 = 0.2160 XCH payout per 24H or ~1.1 XCH per five days, or 6.5 XCH per month.
In reality the 900TiB figure fluctuates quit a bit over time (at least for me) so it’s better to look at the Pool tab of the GUI for the number of Points Found in Last 24H.
Divided by 1000, times the payout per 24H from Space Pool is something you should expect as payouts.
If this makes any sense with what you’re experiencing as payouts nothing is ‘wrong’ on the pool’s payouts.
Then you’re ratio of producing partials vs full proofs is just so much better than normal, at least for now.
It’s your fellow pool members that should thank you, which I do gladly, Thank you sir!

13

I feel your pain. I had the same “feeling”.
My experience is that, when participating in a pool I get more blocks than average as opposed to running solo. I did the test to run solo for a while and was getting blocks less often.

14

Only thing that comes to my mind if you still feel something’s wrong is someone else is getting part of the payouts you should expect, but for this the math of Points Found in Last 24H, divided by 10 times the average payout per 24H from Space Pool has to be off in the first place.
When someone gets a hold of your mnemonics he/she can manipulate (part of) the payouts from a pool by manipulating your Plot NFT on the blockchain. If they do this very cleverly you would only find out over time when your payouts fall short.
I did some experimenting with this ‘stealing’ from my own pool from a second node and it’s possible.

I do have two nodes with the same key, am I somehow stealing from myself? :slight_smile:
Theyre not on the same local network, two different places.

15

Shouldn’t be the case, pool see all three harvesters (2 nodes and a harvester).
Don’t think anybody is stealing anything, I do get what I should get from the pool (per TB calc), problem is I found much more blocks than I was supposed to for some reason.

16

Maybe buy some lottery tickets?

I’m on the other side of the spectrum, getting quit a bit less than supposed to…
Everything working as it should, checked and double checked but it keeps nagging ‘whats wrong with my setup’.
Knowing it’s possible to have it the other way around is somehow reassuring;-)

17

hey folks, interesting discussion.

I have noticed the same with many big farms. I have checked plenty of the leaderboard farms and noticed that with most of them. Sometimes quite drastic.

For my small farm (~100 tib) it is not the case yet. I have found 1 Block so far but payed out 2.5 xch.
It might be what was said before with unoptimized rigs. Who knows. For me, If I would see this amount of profit loss, I would go solo. Especially if I win Blocks more or less consistently with a big farm. I have seen many farms drop out of the leaderboard at around 20 Pib for space pool. My best guess is that these are switching over to solo farming. Probably it makes sense to switch to solo from roughly 1 pib?
Maybe it would also make sense to have most plots solo farming and have some pool plots in between to debug with the pool (see if disks are offline or even the entira rig)

As my farm is so small, It does not make sense. I find a block in a couple of months. The pool gives me the posibility do debug easily.

18

I am on Space Poll. 1.2PB. I was 0.4+ XCH daily before. Now I am getting 0.3 some. Didn’t pay muhc attention on this until now.

Replotting will help? Thanks.

19

That seems to low.
My rewards did not drop that much i dont think.

But yes, replotting should recover the loss and possibly some gain.

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20

Yes you’ll make 40%+ more.

1 Like