Prohashing Mining Pool Forums

Straight to the point - has ProHashing considered supporting group staking or noding? I know there are other services out there that allow you to do this, but I like and trust ProHashing's service - your focus on supporting and enabling people beyond just the mining.

Basically a way we could contribute to an investment pool, which ProHashing would manage, staking, noding, etc. as needed. I realize this would be a very different model, more risky than just a straight miner pool, but could be an interesting offering.

Perhaps, multiple investment pools, each with their own prospectus? You could have some lower-risk pools that focus on well established coins (thinking future Ethereum here). Then you could have some more risky ones, with alt-coin masternodes. Probably start off with just one pool, but could expand with the future.

People could buy directly in, or miners could send part of their earnings into it.

Just throwing out the question and idea. Like I said, I know other services are available to do this (YieldNodes, StrongBlock, etc.) but again, like ProHashing for multiple reasons.

TechElucidation wrote: ↑Fri Mar 18, 2022 4:51 pm Straight to the point - has ProHashing considered supporting group staking or noding? I know there are other services out there that allow you to do this, but I like and trust ProHashing's service - your focus on supporting and enabling people beyond just the mining.

Basically a way we could contribute to an investment pool, which ProHashing would manage, staking, noding, etc. as needed. I realize this would be a very different model, more risky than just a straight miner pool, but could be an interesting offering.

Perhaps, multiple investment pools, each with their own prospectus? You could have some lower-risk pools that focus on well established coins (thinking future Ethereum here). Then you could have some more risky ones, with alt-coin masternodes. Probably start off with just one pool, but could expand with the future.

People could buy directly in, or miners could send part of their earnings into it.

Just throwing out the question and idea. Like I said, I know other services are available to do this (YieldNodes, StrongBlock, etc.) but again, like ProHashing for multiple reasons.

It's something I started doing a very cursory investigation into. For this quarter, our goal is to focus on heightening the knowledge base of our staff and our customers, myself included, as we are in the process of training a handful of people as our numbers grow, myself included. This means, while we will continue to look into this, I can't promise anything at the moment, and it will definitely be at least a few months until we're freed up to even consider big changes like this right now. I do appreciate the suggestions, and we make note of the ones we either need to look into more or think are possible fits for PROHASHING for later when we have the staff/resources available, so keep them coming.

So the last few days, weeks, months…. Time flys…. Have been interesting. The state of NH has decided to kill mining by allowing power generators to double their rates for the next 6 months! It was bad before (19c/KWh) for mining, and going up to 30c+ is just the nail in the coffin for me.

But this has forced me to look more into other crypto projects, and doing staking and master noding. I don’t have 32 ETH handy to setup a node of my own, and even if I did, I don’t know I want the hassle of managing the node myself. Which brings me back to pooled staking.

I have seen a couple of different projects out there, some are questionable, others get overly complex, others seem like Ponzi schemes. However, I recently came across a different project called Wolfer Finance, which I kind of like the model of what he is doing.

About Wolfer Finance

In short – he sold 5000 NFTs for $500 each to raise $2,500,000. He is then going to take that money and setup a variety of staking and nodes positions. The payments he gets from these investments are then split between being paid back to the NFT holders (50%), re-invested (45%), and taken for management (5%). At some point in the future if they decide to liquidate, everything is shut down and divided between the 5000 NFT holders.

I kind of look at this like Bonds or CDs in the Fiat world: In order to raise capital a company sells bonds, the bond holders are paid interest, and when it matures the bond holders are paid back the original investment. The main differences are the interest is replaced with the revenue from staking, and there is no fixed “maturity” date.

One similarity is that just like a bond/cd, they can be sold by the holders. The pay outs always go to the person who owns the NFT at the time of the payout. The advantage of this is that it is even more anonymous, as the project never really needs to know who you are to pay out to you.

This fit very well into what I was looking for in many ways. It allows a diverse staking, managed by somebody else. Though it may be more complex than is really needed. Full details if your interested are on the website here : https://wolfer.finance/

A simple proposal

But not here to shill that project – but to come back to my suggestion. I think ProHashing could easily adopt a similar process for “pooled” staking. In short, sell ETH node partial stake NFTs and use the revenue to stake.

Basically, you could sell 350 NFTs for “ProHashing ETH Node #1”, each of them for 0.1 ETH. I like 0.1 ETH as it is a low entry level, allowing just about anybody to buy in pretty easily. That should raise about 35 ETH, and taking out various fees, and your management cut, you should probably enough to setup an ETH node.

You could provide the ETH address for that node to allow people to see what revenue it is generating (full transparency) and then on the 1st of the month you take whatever is in that wallet, take out 5% for your management/hosting fee, and then divide the rest by 350 and send a portion to every NFT holder address. Each NFT ‘collection’ could have a page on ProHashing.com with the address, linked to a blockchain scanner, and then a running summary like:

1st August 2022 : Generated 1.7 ETH => 0.085ETH management fee, 0.004614 ETH sent to each of the 350 NFT holders addresses

You are protected because you have the ETH to host the node, and nobody can “pull out” and take down the project/node for other. That investment is pretty much locked up until it is liquidated, at which time you could do the same distribution 5% for you, and the remaining split between the NFT holders.

The owners are also protected. If they no longer want to be part of the project they can resell their NFT on OpenSea to somebody else - just not back to ProHashing, though you may want to buy it from them to increase your own revenue, so long as you are paying market rates. Selling it on OpenSea should be higher than the 0.1 ETH they bought it for since it also comes with future earnings, depending on how long they hold it for.

The project above for the original minting cost $500 each, but already sell for 1 ETH since people see the value in the current investment, the potential future earnings, and with the re-investments, any future liquidation will be bigger than the original investment. So yeah, it is could easily be worth double the original cost with time!

A side note on the minting process – even if you over-shoot it is not a huge deal for investors. Any excess should remain in the wallet, and would then be paid back in the first month. So say you sold 500 NFTs, stake 32 ETH, and had 5 ETH in fees, the extra 13 ETH would sit in the wallet, and then be dispersed at the end of the first month. However you don’t want to go too far over (but also don’t want to end up short).

Personally, I think this would be an easy and effective model for a “pooled staking” option to get ProHashing starting. Hell, just do a pilot minting for one node, see if you can sell 350 NFTs, run a node for a couple of months, then liquidate (if you need to) with little or no risk to yourself.

With time as you tweak the model you can start offering other nodes, Avax, FTM, DAG, Flux, etc. with exactly the same model.

More complex

With basic “one node per NFT collections” above under your belt, you could step up to more complex investment opportunities. Basically, you could sell a set of NFTs to raise money for particular investment strategies or projects. These could even be time based, with a “maturity date”.

For example, you could create a “5 Year Emerging Markets” NFT collection, where you pick some of the more volatile crypto coins, and hope the value will go up over time. At the end of the time you liquidate and send each NFT holder their portion. This wouldn’t generate any monthly income, but hopefully the coins you picked have all gone up in that time.

You could even have the “Sarah Picks Strategy” and let her pick coins and projects from month to month, and see what she can do. The entire ProHashing team could each have a project, and see who can generate the best returns for their investors!

But seriously…

I really do think the ideas are feasible, especially the basic one at the start. Get your feet wet, and then develop more of the advanced ones as you see how it goes.

Like I said, I think it would be minimal risk for ProHashing, should be fairly manageable, and you already have the resources and expertise to host servers and nodes, so not wildly out of your reach.

… and still looking for a job for my step daughter, a business major, and she could help manage the minting and management of the pilot project...

Forgot to mention....

You may want to do more NFTs to buy the hardware for the hosting, or have larger fees if paying for the hosting through a third party... Just need to clear with people on what is going where and why. But you (or a recently graduated business major) can help you run all these number and options.

The one thing that may be a bit different is that if your doing tax documents for the revenues, then you may need to update your site to allow people to list their NFT addresses so you can help in preparing the documents if they like. If not you can still pay them, just they would be responsible for doing their own taxes and such.

TechElucidation wrote: ↑Sat Jul 02, 2022 12:32 am Forgot to mention....

You may want to do more NFTs to buy the hardware for the hosting, or have larger fees if paying for the hosting through a third party... Just need to clear with people on what is going where and why. But you (or a recently graduated business major) can help you run all these number and options.

The one thing that may be a bit different is that if your doing tax documents for the revenues, then you may need to update your site to allow people to list their NFT addresses so you can help in preparing the documents if they like. If not you can still pay them, just they would be responsible for doing their own taxes and such.

Hello! It's great to see you on our platforms! We've missed conversing with you!

We have been interested in trying to dip our toes into the staking waters, but one of our biggest concerns with trying to do something like what you propose is that PROHASHING is not currently a money transmitter. We are allowed to pay our contractors (the miners) what they've earned through mining in the currency of their choice, but we cannot exchange one coin for another type of coin, etc. A money transmitter license (while it varies from state to state), in Pennsylvania where PROHASHING is based, requires application fees plus a $1-2 million dollar surety bond. You've obviously done a lot of research on staking. Are you aware of any staking pool structures that don't require us to put up a $2 mil bond for a transmitter license?

This may be simplistic, but couldn't/wouldn't we still be considered to be "mining"? The ETH staked being the "hashrate" we contribute to the "pool"? And all the payouts would be locked in ETH?

UbjfP2ZOJa wrote: ↑Sat Jul 09, 2022 12:19 am This may be simplistic, but couldn't/wouldn't we still be considered to be "mining"? The ETH staked being the "hashrate" we contribute to the "pool"? And all the payouts would be locked in ETH?

On your side, yes. But on the PROHASHING side it gets more complicated, and instead of just paying our contractors for a service, we’d be considered money transmitters, which requires the expensive license. We’re still trying to figure out a version of the staking where that’s not the case.

UbjfP2ZOJa wrote: ↑Sat Jul 09, 2022 12:19 am This may be simplistic, but couldn't/wouldn't we still be considered to be "mining"? The ETH staked being the "hashrate" we contribute to the "pool"? And all the payouts would be locked in ETH?

This would only work in the case that people could stake the ETH they mined. A money transmitter is (strangely and recursively) defined as someone who "receives and transmits" money. We wouldn't be receiving money if we staked debts that were already owed to customers.

On the other hand, the amount staked would be low if we didn't receive any money, so the rewards would be minimal. And yet, we would have to be responsible for securing enormous amounts of money. One of the reasons we issue daily payouts is so that there's no reason to try to hack our systems, and we can never get into a Nicehash-type situation.

Hello again!

Sorry, this summer has gone all askew for me. Girlfriend asked me to install gutter guards, which wouldn't have been a problem, except we have no gutters (pretty normal here in NE apparently) - so you get what she was hinting at. Now the water heater is acting up, and considering the cost of heating oil (yes, my water heater uses heating oil) the cost to re-fill the oil tanks these days would be more than just buying a new hybrid/heat-pump water heater (so doing that this in two weekends).... yeah, who the heck thought up the dumb term "lazy days of summer".

Anyways....

I have not really looked into the licensing side of things. Surprised to hear how much it costs, but since governments are still trying to figure out the whole crypto thing, they either try to apply fiat principals or make some really strange laws. Will have to take a look at it, but have a couple of immediate thoughts.

1) This may not strictly be considered "mining", so perhaps incorporate a subsidiary to manage the investment vehicles in a different state, if there is a more favorable state for them. This may not be a bad idea regardless, just keeps prohashing for mining, and a separate entity for the investments (ProVesters.com is taken), and it allows you more freedom and flexibility.

2) Use the model to raise the funds needed. Here is my big-picture look at it -

Sell 10,000 NFTs at $200 each - this goes towards the forming of the new company. There is no immediate return or investment on these NFTs, so your not really putting the horse before the cart as far as licensing - there is no expected return on these NFTs directly from the money used to buy them. Instead, they they will represent shares of the "founders wallet".

So going back to my original suggestion, as you sell investment I suggested a structure like 50% goes to the NFT holders, 45% gets re-invested, and 5% goes to ProHashing for management. Re work that to put 5% into the "founders wallet" : 45% to NFT holders, 45% reinvested, 5% to founders, 5% to ProHashing.

NOTE - I am just spit-balling numbers here, don't take my numbers as anything more than just on-the-fly values I am throwing out. 5% may be too much for the founders wallet, and perhaps being a very different business model, 5% for management may be off as well - which may be another good reason to do a subsidiary for this.

To keep this in the spirt of utility of NFTs, you could use the founders wallet to hold 5% of all NFTs minted in future projects, those NFTs then pay into the founders wallet, and the founders wallet then pays out to the founders NFTs (with no management fee). That may help ProHashing with processing as well.

So the real value of the initial offering is that you basically get access to, and a cut of, all future projects. Over time, if ProHashing is successful, that will grow with time with different projects coming online and the founders are drawing a cut of everything you are doing.

Honestly, with a good write up, and sales pitch, I think you could easily sell that to people and raise the needed funds. It would represent a highly diversified investment strategy since it covers the many potentially different sub-projects that you could get into (noding, staking, etc.). I could see you being able to sell the idea to some investment firms and investors that would like to dip their toes into the crypt space with little involvement.

Honestly, every time I think about the overall concept I get pretty excited about the possibilities for it. I would love to write-up an initial concept whitepaper for this.

You can also combine both of these together. I do think keeping the "mining pool" and "investment pool" in different groups wouldn't be a bad idea, it protects each, and gives you more options. Then use the second option to fund it as I said.

I will head out now - perhaps stop by Discord to say 'hi' if anybody is around, and then will see what I can find out about these licenses.

Oh, and while writing my other post on selling off my rigs, I realize this suggestion parallels another project I am looking at called BlockSeedMunks (https://www.blockseedmunks.com/) - if you join their discord (https://discord.gg/UubMq7UBPA) do mention that I (TechElucidation#9042) sent you!

What they are doing is looking to raise money to build a vertical farm in Portugal. They are only trying to raise about $516K (with 3000 NFTs), and to be honest the return is only expected to be about $2500/month (so ~ $0.83/nft/month) in a years time. Not a project to get involved in if you want to get rich. However I really love the concept, and love the goal and team, so I am going to be buying a couple of the NFTs and giving them to some of my more ecologically minded friends to show how the crypto world and real world can intertwine and work together.

But yeah - using NFTs to start a company! It is not a far fetched idea.