Farming and plotting

Plotting

A plot is a file, typically around 100 GB, produced once by a plotter and then farmed for years. Creating it means building seven hash tables and sorting them, which takes a while and a lot of temporary space; that work is the “proof of work” Chia moves out of the way so that the ongoing cost of farming is close to zero. Plots are tied to a plot NFT or to your own keys, which is what decides who gets paid when the plot wins.

Farming

A farmer runs a full node plus a harvester for each machine with plots. Every signage point the harvester looks up the challenge in each plot and, if a proof of good enough quality exists, the farmer builds a block and broadcasts it. The full node validates blocks from everyone else and keeps the copy of the chain that this explorer reads through a node or Coinset.

Rewards

Each block creates two reward coins: a farmer reward of 1/8 and a pool reward of 7/8 (currently 0.125 and 0.875 XCH, after the 2024 halving; the total halves again in 2027 and 2030 and stays at 0.125 XCH from 2033). The block page lists the reward claims a transaction block incorporates, and the pools page attributes the pool reward to the pool it was paid to.

Pools

With a small farm you may go months without winning. A pool smooths that out: your plot NFT points at the pool, the pool receives the 0.875 XCH pool reward whenever any member wins, and pays members by their share of partial proofs submitted. Because pooling is part of the protocol you keep your keys and switch pools by spending your plot NFT, which is a normal transaction you can find in the mempool like any other.

What you can see here

• Netspace: the total plotted space the network estimates from recent difficulty.
• Pool share: who farmed the last day of blocks.
• Node map: where full nodes handed out by the introducers are located.