Here are my thoughts on joining a pool, and eager to hear what you have to say about it…
Some pool operator are a bit too eager to attract early adapters, giving out non-finalized Chia version 1.1.7xx. Better to wait for the stable version which would be the release version 1.2.
Now, who should join a pool and who should solo:
People with less than 1K plots, your chance of winning is slim. By joining a pool, you get the balanced pays mostly coming from the bigger players in the field.
People with more than 1K plots, in the long-run, joining a pool and staying solo would be pretty much equal. If you want to see some sort of pay on daily bases, you would join a join. If you are the type who says let it run and forget it for a while, solo is your path.
Even with 1.2 version of Chia app, better wait and keep a close eye on the general Chia pool stats pages, see who has a lower threshold payout plan, who wins more frequently… etc. These things will not be clear in the early weeks of pool lauch (stable pools not lauched yet!!!).
Caution here:
If there is a bit difference between Chia 1.1.7xx and the final Chia 1.2, most likely you need to do things according to the version 1.2. Need to replot portable plots made on 1.1.7xx is very much possible. Then you have these pool operators and yourself to blame.
My philosophy is to load up 2-3 extra drives that are waiting for pool plots anyways and test them out on the pools. Does 2 things, one I get to figure out how to use the new process, and two it gives the pools a chance to do some more stress testing. Since I’m plotting with Mad max and Ramdrive it won’t be a huge loss if I have to replot…worse case scenario.
My only problem with the saying that over 1K plots should wait and play the long run is this:
I’m currently on 1000 plots and can plot another ~500.
My estimated time to win is 2 months.
I haven’t won so far.
I started farming Flax & Spare in which my estimated time to win is 2-4 days (growing by the day, started with 1-2 days). The thing is that I’m farming for 8 days now with no winnings. In Chia times we’re taking about 8 months with no winning.
I still don’t have confident in the network nor in my setup, seems like joining a pool should give me more instant feedback on how am I doing.
My avg. vdf duration is 1.75 seconds and monitored constantly, I’m getting a lot of plots passing filter but non of them wins. I hope by the end of the week the picture will change but for now it’s quite frustrating.
The only thing I can suspect right now is internet connection but I couldn’t find how to monitor and make sure all ports and stuff are configured correctly.
Joining a pool seems to be a wise decision in your situation indeed.
I’m in a similar situation but farming 4000 plots. 0 chia wins for 37 days now but am winning flax daily (estimated time to win around 16-20 hours for the last days and an actual win rate of one block per 19 hours). I only had one streak of “unluck” that occured in the beginning of my flax journey when I loaded my CPU 100% with mad max plotter while farming.
For chia my average time to win since I started has been ~18 days with an estimated time to win of about the same. So I guess everything evens out over time assuming that your setup actually works . In my case mad max 100% cpu loading might be the cause of my recent streak of “unluck” with chia during the last month. However, when you are approaching 2-3x estimated time to win, it’s hard not to start worrying that something is off with your rig. Hence joining a pool would be more for peace of mind rather than actually earning more profits.
For me the most important reason to join pool, is to be sure your setup works.
I would only consider solo mining with an estimate time to win below 1 week. Otherwise you might go months before you find out something is not working correctly.
Let’s say I will win today and know my setup is working properly. With 2 months estimated win - who promise me that something in my setup or in the network will be broken and I won’t know about it for many months?
I guess a simple tool in order to check your setup would fix that but I can’t see it happens any time soon.
