Like Flexpool, Foxypool is an established cryptocurrency pool that decided to get into Chia pooling for reasons we will expand below. Unlike Flexpool they are focused entirely on storage based coins from what I can tell. Also uniquely they are already running a pool with their own custom code, as well as launching an on-chain ntf-based pool. They also have recently launched a Flax pool, which shows just how innovative they can be. This is fascinating to me, and gives them a unique perspective on the entire pool ecosystem.
The FoxyPool developer I spoke to is a fan of Chia and was solo farming 500TB on his own when the netspace growth started to get away from him. He saw the need personally for pools to come right away, as well as the angst in the community. So they started looking into it, saw the progress and knew that there was a market in competing with Hpool and Core-Pool using more rigorous rules to keep the stealing in check,
Thus their Chia-OG pool was born, their off-chain pooling protocol for farming with existing plots. This is similar to how Hpool and Core-Pool work except with a few significant twists. First, their software is mostly the chia-blockchain software with some slight modifications to the farmer only. Second, those modifications are mostly taken from the work the chia dev team was doing on the official pooling protocol at the time. They are using partial proofs, very low difficulty proofs, to prove farm size which is the same mechanism as the on chain protocol. This would mostly, or completely, solve the problem of fake farm sizes. And they are using a collateral system of one block reward to sort of prevent double farming, or at least mitigate the damage from it. They also let the farmer keep the 0.25XHC portion of the reward, like the on chain protocol. This seems like a good system to me, but as Foxypool says it can be frustrating for small farmers.
Because they were considering an on-chain pool before even launching the OG pool it was a no-brainer to continue with those plans. The process will be a lot smoother with instant payouts and done all through the official client – but like the other on chain pools you will need to replot. According to Foxypool this will swing the benefit back to the smaller farmers who will take longer to hit 1.75XCH on the OG pool, but have a lot less sunk cost in their original plots when switching to portable ones.
Like the other pools I have spoken to, they say the Chia team has been extremely hands off other than providing support, and that they are not trying to exert any control over the pools. They also say they haven’t had any legal challenges and don’t anticipate any. Because this is so region-specific I can’t know if they are correct, but I hope they are. And they are already running a handful of pools so it seems likely they have already passed that particular hurdle.
The biggest thing that I can take away from talking to Foxypool, the only folks that I know of so far with actual experience with both kinds of pool, is that the trustless model for the on chain pool is far superior. They will continue to run the OG pool as-is with the collateral system as long as there are farmers on their original plots and they expect a lot of their members will run in hybrid mode for a long time. But going forward they see the advantages offered by Chia Network’s protocol as insurmountable by the custom pools.
They seem competent and ready for the real launch on mainnet. I’m curious to see after a couple of weeks if they have data on how many of their OG members switch completely over to the new pool. They do think anyone interested should stop by their discord and asked me to share it.
Just a thought, but u ought to go read the foxy-pool-miner for flax/chia-og discord site, and see for yourself the complaints, and how they’re ignored and dissed by a few bots. No attempt is being made to address the problems
I can see why, they have about 1% of the space, these guys know what they’re doing, they have supported burst&bhd for years. This is where it ends.
Take the flax foxy-miner; You can run for 3 days only get paid for 10% of your TB, why is this? They just deny, but every single commenter is complaining. Funny because burst&bhd its instant, start the miner, go to the site and your full HDD is mining, but not with chia/flax clones;
Also their chia miner isn’t really working, and most flax miners are still choosing to do ‘solo’, right now this is the only flax pool in town, but given it only pays out 10%, your odd’s are then in favor of staying solo.
like I said go to the foxy-miner flax/chia discord and read the comments for yourself, talking to the owners and reporting their good storys I guess is probably how you grow a sucessful biz, … but its not how you get your feet grounded in reality
It’s still same-same 90% of ALL CHIA is on HPOOL, they’re getting all the XCh, and whales will never leave
…
The other PROBLEM, and I think this is why WHALES stay on HPOOL, is simply that it pays out MORE; foxy-miner publishes their payout per day per PB, and its much lower than I earn on HPOOL;
The problem is FUD rules all in HDD crypto;
SO HPOOL pay’s out the most, and consistent with no pyscho games, for instance both core&foxy-miner use the NICE-HASH model or payment, which is u never get paid, everytime u get near to a new threshold u are given a new, and insult to injury foxy-miner requires to to formally quit to get paid out post threshold, so then if u want to go back, u must start all over … seesh
hey I didnt see any of that when I was looking into my piece, and I did visit their discord and talk to some people. Can you send me some examples? [email protected]
Somewhat misleading
There are a few things, the chia miner works fine, once you get it setup, many seem to struggle with this.
I did, for some reason it didnt connect despite installing correctly, 3rd attempt it worked, no idea why.
After switching from Hpool to Foxy I am getting a higher share despite also taking offline due to a big dodgy disk (around 10% of my plots)
I saw reduced EC yesterday hence me finding an issue with the above disk, and whats important is clearly having good response time since that disc raised my response time significantly (always went over % seconds if that disc won a partial), and as such my EC dropped, disconnecting the drive it started to go back up even with lower effective plots being used.
So clearly sending the partials nice and quickly will affect the EC the pool sees.
My consistent payout on hpool was 0.024 per day the last week I was there, a few days on foxy sees around 0.026 including the reduced capacity so would probably be 0.028/9 comparable to what I was using plotwise on Hpool.
The other factor is sharing the 1.75XCH on Foxy will of course show lower returns than sharing 2xch on Hpool assuming no wins and perfect win rates etc on both. With Foxy you will get the odd 0.25 XCH as well directly to your wallet depending on your total netspace and luck.
I cant see how Hpool will ever beat foxy unless Hpool deal with their cheaters double mining, or you dont ensure you set Foxy up correctly.
I have been using Foxypool-OG for Flax and Chia.
They look like the same but they are not.
The expected return from the flax blockchain is never achieved, and I tend to receive a lower income than expected. Anyways, lately it started to be more accurate. On the other hand, since I’m on the flax pool I have only won 1 block, but earned around 4-5 xfx, so it still giveme a positive reward.
The chia-og pool works way better. I was on Hpool and I’m getting 20% more than in Hpool. Taking into consideration that foxy shares 7/8 of the reward and hpool 8/8, it shows how big is the cheating issue in hpool.
I can also say that the discord support is quite bad.
Great Blog Chris! Keep it up!