I started farming Chia before I understood what a pre-farm was. The understanding is widespread now that you carefully inspect the pre-farm terms or just avoid any coin with a pre-farm but few understood this then.
When I got in, XCH stood over $1200. I farmed for years and was a MOD and heavy participant in this community.
I watched every Chia Inc. announcement fail to materialize and watched as the value of XCH went continually downhill. I came to believe that in spite of all the grand announcements Chia Inc would never actually make the coin useful or valuable. At about $60/xch I shut my farm down and got out, losing just over $3000 as a result.
I never publicly roasted XCH even though I did feel that I had been scammed out of my time and money. I just left the project and the conversation.
This brings me to my question.
Why?
Why are you still here? What is it that gives you continued faith in this project?
I stick around because I can see a time when xch is a top 5 crypto project, when people come flocking back to projects with strong fundamentals. I also see a time when creators start to realise that their NFT projects would be far better suited to be launched on a chain that has has onchain royalties built in.
The ecosystem is small and growing. Full of really bright people!
I’ve been farming since the launch of mainnet. I started as a hobby and have only ever spent hobby money on equipment. I was never here to speculate or try to be a profitable or professional farmer. The price of XCH has never mattered.
I read the whitepaper before I started plotting. I always understood it’s purpose was giving loans and providing for operating costs if necessary.
Since the release of CATs and NFTs, I have recognized that XCH is not a product. It’s a tool. Why does the price of XCH matter if 1000 mojos holds an asset worth $500? Why does the price XCH matter if 1XCH holds assets worth $250B? Why does the price of XCH matter if the value of entire economies can be held in less than 1000 XCH?
XCH is the operating system on which to build value. I’m still here because every day, people are building more value.
The two answers I got were basically hope and faith … sounds like a religion, not a business.
Is the pre-farm still being used to pay the salaries at Chia Inc?
To my understanding, Chia Inc. employees and perhaps some pool owners are the ONLY people getting value out of all the XCH farmers.
IMOP, Chia farmers work as voluntary slaves with negative benefits.
I’m here, not as a farmer but as a developer, so I tend to look at all of this from a different angle.
Instead of investing hardware and power of my HDDs into this ecosystem, I invest hours developing software and products and solutions that use this blockchain as the underlying technology.
I am here because the technology is REALLY GOOD.
If you value decentralization and need things like peer to peer trading for your business to make sense, there is no other chain that offers both the flexibility and the security of Chia.
Of course, I could just go and develop things on Solana, those people seem to extract a lot of money from gamblers.
But that’s not what I want to work on.
I want to build real use cases for real people in the real world that solve real problems.
That’s why it’s exciting to work on advanced custody and revocable CATs and how to trade stocks on chain.
I’ve started as a farmer. I’ve farmed a few XCH in the early days with my measly 50TiB farm. No, I’ve not sold when XCH was at $1000 as I should have.
My farm is turned off, since electricity is expensive here in Germany.
But farming is only a means to an end.
It’s important to secure the network and people get rewarded for it, which is good.
But it’s not meant to make people rich.
What makes people rich is when this blockchain is filled with high value transactions.
And that’s what I want to work on.
That’s why I’m still here.
Farming lets you turn a bit of Internet / power / space into cash.
If you already have drives online anyways… you can stuff plots into the corners of them… then a pool sends you a dribble of coins. Which helps offset a bit of opex every month: and I’ll take what help I can get. If the project ever increases my costs: I’m gone.
Those farming on dedicated hardware are doing it wrong. Those who don’t sell every XCH they get paid are doing it even more wrong 
Hey Andy68, what is up my bro 
Glad to meet you back.
- We all gonna die pretty soon, make it serious this is no joke. Soo farming you chia or not, do Chia Corp. prefarm or not … doesnt really matter.
- I like to win in lottery. It hooks me up badly, sadly
- It COULD moon someday still, cos tech is not good but promissing.
- Monthly It costs me 20$ for electricity to run 1Pb farm.
- Just for fun and rock
I would have to question how good the technology is. I’ve seen nothing revolutionary from Chia Inc. since they introduced POST. All downhill from there.
Have fun playing with cats! That and your 50TiB appear to be a hobby.
Best answer so far! 
You’ve already invested the time, might as well continue partaking from the dribble!
Be Well!
I’d say Chia is my hobby, it’s fun to maintain the farmers. That said, I’m definitely turning them off if it gets below $6 / XCH. I encourage every farmer to research what their break-even is for electricity. No reason to run it at a loss.
$6 now? 
I had not even checked.
Hoorah for hobby farming!
Yes, the 50TB was a hobby.
But no, I’ve been a full time developer in the Chia ecosystem for the last 2 years, doesn’t sound like a hobby to me.
You’ll see the CATs and vaults secure billions of $$$ soon enough
What have you been developing?
Are you affiliated with a pool or some other offshoot?
Are you employed by Chia Inc?
Do you remember the partnership with the World Bank and the use of XCH to exchange carbon credits?
Chia Inc. has made many promises but has never delivered.
What has changed?
This was fully delivered.
I’m here because Chia and its community have consistently delivered good tech and I believe in the ethos and the people involved. I’m here to help do everything I can to make this a success.
I’ll return the question, why are you here if you’re no longer interested in the project?
Buy some carbon offsets here - dexie - Chia Offers (Chia DEX)
Hail to the chief!
I looked at dexie.space. I see I can buy carbon offsets from 5 projects in Columbia and that is it. I could find none of these projects at the Climate Action Data Trust. You are unable to sell these credits at dexie or anywhere else that I am aware of. This is a Chia Inc. created company is it not? How many credits have been traded there so far? I cannot seem to find any trading volume.
This is proof of concept, not implementation and has little or nothing to do with the World Bank.
As for the Climate Action Data Trust which is at least linked with the World Bank, they ran their last test using Chia in 2022. I see no development or integration there either.
More smoke and mirrors as far as I am concerned.
I got onboard because it was touted that Chia and POST used far less electricity than all other coins at the time. I hoped it would be widely adopted and become a useful world tool mainly because of this.
While farming I joined in mostly technical discussion in the first months but ended up spending more time chasing down facts about offers and ideas on the forum.
I am pretty good at chasing facts and laying them out. I wish the old board was still here for reference. I did my best not to troll, but to be a useful member of the community.
Because I am not a Troll I did not make a stink when I decided this was a lost and stupid project. I just left.
I dropped in now and then, since, and noticed when the site went down and then returned.
Why did I join back in? I was amazed that the community still existed and am trying to figure out what part of the brain keeps people clinging on to obvious fails like this one.
Fully delivered? There is ZERO partnership between Chia and the World Bank. There was some consultation and testing years ago which I believe largely ended in 2022.
If you think the Chia created dexie.space is “implementation” then you have not looked into the details. This is just an unregulated, private exchange where you can buy XCH carbon credits but nobody will buy them back from you.