Consistently acquire Chia(XCH) with Chia Farming Pools

3 min readMay 15, 2021

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What is a Chia farming pool?

A Chia pool is a joint group of farmers who combine their computational resources over the chia network to strengthen their probability of winning a block or otherwise successfully farming Chia (XCH). A pool will give you a more consistent reward in comparison to having to “hit the lottery” by solo farming.

Should I join a pool?

This is a question often asked and based on our research we’d say it really depends on your total farm size. If you are a small farmer (100tb or less) pools should be the route you take. If you are a bigger farmer pools can still be beneficial for you as you would get more consistent rewards. As the Chia Network continues to grow it’s going to become increasingly more difficult farm Chia as a solo farmer. Lets take a look at an example of how a chia pool might benefit you:

The chances you have to solve a Chia coin block are typically equal to your portion of the total netspace. Currently, Chia’s netspace is right around 3.86 EiB. That means if you dedicate a complete 10TB of storage to Chia plots, your odds of winning are 0.000257%. These are terrible odds but the catch is that there are roughly 4,608 Chia blocks created on a daily basis (a rate of 32 blocks per 10 minutes, or 18.75 seconds per block), and any one of them could match your plot.

Doing some math or the easier way by using sites like Chia calculators can help you determine your estimated time to win. If you fill a 10TB HDD with Chia plots it will store 91 standard Chia plots (101.4 GiB = 108.87742GB). Given the current netspace 91 blocks on a single 10TB HDD should win a block roughly every 3 months (once every 84.3 days).

Now if you were to take your 10 TB HDD and join a pool of 19 other farmers who also have 10 TB HDD’s your total pool would be equivalent to 200TB which is 1820 standard Chia plots(101.4 GiB = 108.87742GB). Given the current netspace you could expect your pool to win a block roughly once every 5 days. However your reward will be split based on what percentage of the pool you own. Obviously in this example everyone owns 5% of the pool so everyone would receive 5% of the rewards. So on average every 5 days you’d accumulate .10 XCH.

Pools won’t be a perfect split like shown above, likely if you are joining a pool with 10TB of space you will have a much smaller percentage of the split however the bigger the pool the more consistently you win. With the continued expansion of the Netspace, pools will make the most sense for the majority of farmers.

Do I have to Re-Plot my existing pools?

Technically no you don’t have to re-plot when the pool protocol comes out however your current plots will not be pool eligible and will only be eligible for solo farming. Once the pool protocol update is released all new plots will be eligible for pools as well as solo. So whatever you currently have plotted will still be able to farm you XCH but only solo.

What pool should I join?

There are many official pools that are starting to pop up and at this time it’s hard to determine which will be the best. The pool’s host typically take a small fee from every successful block won. It’s unknown yet what these pools will charge so definitely take that into account when deciding what pool is best for you.

So are Pools worth it?

Yes. No doubt pools are going to make chia farming worth it for 99% of farmers. Unfortunately the pool protocol was just delayed so your pool plotting will have to wait but nonetheless pools should be the route you take.