Bitcoin / Ethereum / Litecoin and everything else mining pool Prohashing has recently announced that they would be joining the crowded field of Chia Pools, so I wanted talk to them to see why and what they were expecting to bring to the Chia pool ecosystem. And it was pretty interesting. I think they have a really good offering and I think their 3% fee is a lot more reasonable than it will appear to start.
Prohashing has been around for 8 years now, and when I asked them why they wanted to get into Chia they told me that they had mining operations covering ASICs, GPUs, and CPUs and “wanted to cover all of the hardware.” So naturally that meant getting into Chia HDD farming. Right now they offer Proof of Work miners the opportunity to get paid out in all sorts of coin options, including Proof of Stake coins that would normally need to be traded for. And they are bringing that option to Chia farmers.
This is a pretty unique offering in the Chia ecosystem right now, and reminds me of NiceHash paying out in bitcoin (without the baggage). I tried to look at how all that is calculated, but in a nutshell it is complicated. Here is the documentation on their payout structure. It hasn’t been updated to include Chia yet, but I suspect it will be similar to the many other algorithms they are mining.
Prohashing is a legal, US-based regulated mining pool and feels that this gives them better credibility in the space than anonymous pool operators, and I tend to agree. I think knowing the team and having a real company is important during any financial transaction and this certainly counts. They are promising a level of transparency, trust and customer service that is “difficult to find”. I hope that is true, but its not without competition on that front in the Chia community.
I asked if they had gotten demand from their PoW mining community to start a Chia pool, and they said they had. Much like FlexPool, it seems that there is a lot of interest from the rank and file cryptocurrency community members, even if the media still struggles to see what is going on with Chia.
I think its great that organizations like Prohashing are getting involved in the Chia community, and I think their multi-coin payout offering is a really big draw. Its something that the Chia-only pools would have a lot of logistical issues matching so I dont think that will be an advantage that goes away any time soon.
