Alex Yang, a Singapore-based entrepreneur, founded HPool, a POC mining pool which emerged as the top POC mining pool in just four years. Alex recently discussed how the POC mining pool is shaking up the blockchain industry at a press conference. He stated that after carefully comparing and studying the various verification methods of the consensus algorithm, he found that both the POW and POS are not working, and only POC can trigger the most primitive spirit of BTC. By making equity investment, Wanxiang blockchain labs helped Alex to create a near-monopoly project in the POC field – which he named HPool. The POC mining pool was later upgraded by Alex and his team.
The role of the mining pool is to allow miners to concentrate their computing power and share the computing power income so they can obtain a more stable income per unit of time. This has great significance to build consensus in a decentralized network. Large miners can calculate a stable return, and small miners need not worry about not being able to obtain income on time in the competition with large miners, thus forming a virtuous circle. In other words, the role of the mining pool is to disperse scattered computing power, integrate it so that small computing power can get smooth income. It can be considered as a task distribution and revenue smoothing system for block generation.
User orientation has always been the principle of the crypto company since it was founded. In addition to the basic mining pool services it provides to users, it also has a user service system which includes online status monitoring, offline push notifications, joint pledge mining, etc. These can lower the barriers for ordinary users to participate. The complete user service made HPool popular in the market since it was established.
For a long time, HPool has been in the top few POC mining pools. In 2017, legendary programmer Bram Cohen had retired from BitTorrent’s great success, planning his next big move: Decentralized hard disk mining blockchain project: Chia. Three years later, his Chia has a close intersection with Alex’s HPool. From 2018 to 2020, HPool has been in a tepid state. An investment from Fenbushi capital, a well-known name in the industry, has further consolidated HPool’s leading position in the POC sector. Even though the market doesn’t have much enthusiasm for POC at this time, Alex’s enthusiasm remains the same. This comes from his belief in POC consensus algorithms and the technical logic behind them.
In April 2021, the price of Bitcoin reached $63,000. The market cap surpassed Amazon, Tesla, and Facebook, only after Apple and Google among those giants of enterprise. The value of Chia, a project that Bram Cohen has run for three years, has increased as well. Through the investment and support of CoinBase. The world’s only listed digital asset exchange, Chia quickly started a whirlwind among miners. From mining pools to individual miners, they all actively participated in this hard disk mining experiment. The reason behind this is very simple as well. In the beginning, Chia’s cost could be covered by its return in one week. This star project of POC has naturally drawn attention of Alex. He began to promote Chia in HPool’s mining pool. Due to the years of accumulated technical experience and the leading position in this industry, HPool has been chosen by most miners naturally as the link of their mining pool.
However, users reported in some forums that HPool was secretly deducting computing power, resulting in a decline in their earnings. At that time, HPool was the only mining pool with large computing power on the market. When Alex and the team discovered this problem, they studied the technical vulnerabilities and data broadcast therefore identified the problem. During this period, the HPool team began to work extremely hard to dispel rumors. They used simple words explaining to every miner and user the technical principles and computing power issues in major forums, media, and websites.
On the other hand, the popularity of Chia made the mining rigs difficult to buy. Some suppliers began to sell the mining rigs under the name of HPool, hoping to get more profits from it. Later, when the price of Chia dropped, they then pretended to be the official to publish radical articles, trying to lead their conflict of interest with the users to the official. This caused many miners who bought mining rigs to go to HPool, asking for an explanation and solutions. HPool has to explain to customers one by one. At the beginning of this incident, Bram, founder of Chia, chose to stand with the miners to criticize HPool, ask users do not use HPool because of the problem of stealing computing power.
Facing the crisis, Alex shared the latest technical knowledge with the miners, meanwhile dealt with the remaining problems of the mining rigs business. At the same time, he actively contacted Chia officials and provided all necessary materials, showing the fairness of HPool by the transparency. With Alex’s continuing efforts and the improvement of Chia’s mining ecology, the crisis was finally resolved. Miners found that HPool can get the highest profit compared to new mining pools, so most of the miners finally chose HPool. HPool withstood the test of the market. Since then, HPool has been firmly occupying the first position in the global ranking of POC and Chia mining pools.
In the near future, more mining pools will participate in the competition and share HPool’s market. But for Alex, clarification of various misunderstandings remains the top priority. Secondly, POC mining pools can bloom. Each mining pool has its own characteristics, there is no product that could satisfy everybody. Sufficient service providers of mining pools can bring positive competition to the industry therefore meet the different needs of various users better.
Disclaimer: The views, suggestions, and opinions expressed here are the sole responsibility of the experts. No Emerald Journal journalist was involved in the writing and production of this article.