Updated: We have our answers at this point,
Yesterday we posted news about the Mad Max plotter, and how Chia Network may end up merging it into the official chia-blockchain repo, This is extremely good news, and we could definitely use a faster plotter.
However. The Chia team (nor anyone else) has not, to my knowledge, performed the necessary due diligence on security and efficacy to determine if both the software is secure and the plots are appropriate for winning XCH.
There are a LOT of questions popping up on the r/chia subreddit about how to install for Windows, with a lot of non technical people unsure if what they are doing. If you are unsure about 3rd party software you will be running on your machine then don’t. I have no reason to suspect that madMAx43v3r‘s plotter has any malicious component, nor do I have any reasons to suspect the plots it creates are not perfectly viable. In fact I don’t have any evidence either way. That is the issue.
I am sure someone will do a review of this software, and when that happens I will post about it. But until then, just be careful when running random software off the internet. I won’t be linking it here, but it is easy to find.