DrPlotter: Your Go-To for Maximum ROI Chia Farming

DrPlotter is an advanced, energy-efficient GPU plotter, solver, and harvester designed for the Chia Blockchain, with break-through rewards and efficiency optimized for consumer-grade hardware.

Up to +442% Rewards: Two compression modes offer a balance between optimal efficiency and optimal cost per eTB for maximum ROI.
Enhanced Security: Relies solely on public farmer keys, letting you safeguard your private keys.
Effortless Remote GPU Use: Enjoy a streamlined process for submitting proofs and the flexibility to use your GPU remotely with ease.
Supporting the Chia Ecosystem: By seamlessly integrating with the official Chia Farmers, DrPlotter plays a part in keeping the Chia network strong and decentralized.

Offering Eco3x for enhanced energy efficiency and Pro4x for maximum plot size reduction you can achieve higher ROI than any other solution.

1: The 512 plot filter will be active until June 2024. During this period, the capacities supported by the 256 filter will be doubled. 2: At a plot filter of 256 only the 4090 has less W/eTB than standard plots on pro4x. 3: SSD not required. While you can use an SSD as an intermediary drive under most cases it will not improve plot time. 4090 @ 250W with PCIE 4.0 x 16 can plot in 5:30.

The Eco3x Advantage

Eco3x compression offers an energy-efficient solution for managing chia farms, especially with the upcoming chia plot filter of 256. The table below illustrates Eco3x's efficiency compared to traditional uncompressed plots. Eco3x significantly reduces hard drive space and energy consumption, leading to considerable savings in both hardware investment and operational costs. This makes it a highly effective option for Chia users, even those facing high energy expenses, to achieve exceptional ROI.

1: Using 0.6W per installed TB 2: The "Hardware Cost per ePiB" represents the actual costs of purchasing the necessary hardware for disks and GPUs. This is based on an estimated $16 per installed TB and $800 for a used 3090 GPU

The Pro4x Advantage

Pro4x compression significantly reduces hard drive needs for your plots to less than a quarter compared to uncompressed plots, marking a major leap in cost and space savings. By matching your hard drive capacity with your GPU's power, Pro4x achieves unmatched ROI. The table shows that with 4090 GPUs at full capacity on the 256 plot filter, you can efficiently run a 880 eTiB farm at just 35% the cost of a setup using regular plots. Notably, Pro4x enables over 1 ePiB of plots in a consumer PC case using only 14 hard drives, compared to the 56 drives a large server setup would need, enhancing space utilization, cost-effectiveness, and management simplicity.

<img src="images/pro4x-advantage.png" /> 1: Using 0.6W per installed TB 2: The "Hardware Cost per ePiB" represents the actual costs of purchasing the necessary hardware for disks and GPUs. This is based on an estimated $16 per installed TB and $1800 for a new 4090 GPU

Strategic Efficiency: Eco3x and Pro4x vs. NoSSD's C15

In the competitive landscape of chia farming, striking the right balance between energy consumption and cost per reward is key. Chia farming involves substantial initial setup costs but low ongoing expenses. The Eco3x and Pro4x solutions, developed with these economic dynamics in mind, optimize for a slight increase in energy use to significantly reduce the cost per reward across various setups and market conditions, offering a financial advantage.

The performance of these solutions is contrasted with NoSSD's leading C15 plot format under a fixed $10,000 budget. Analysis shows that both Eco3x and Pro4x not only improve chia earnings but do so with an acceptable increase in energy consumption. Specifically, Eco3x delivers an extra 0.07 xch for 4.79 kWh more than C15, while Pro4x adds 0.10 xch for an additional 11.21 kWh.

1: Hardware Cost includes expenses for disks and GPUs, calculated at $16 per installed TB and $1600 for a 4090 GPU. GPU costs are adjusted to utilization—e.g., at 38% utilization, only 38% of the GPU cost is counted. This approach ensures costs are proportionally represented for a fair comparison within a $10,000 investment. 2: For NoSSD a 3.5% fee from NoSSD is deducted from rewards.

By evaluating the potential xch price against energy costs, it's clear that Eco3x and Pro4x are compelling for those seeking profitability over minimal energy use. For example, if your electricity costs are $0.14 per kWh with XCH priced at $30:

Eco3x extra earnings - extra energy costs = 0.07 * $31 - 4.79 * $0.14  = +$1.49 vs NoSSD.
Pro4x extra earnings - extra energy costs = 0.10 * $31 - 11.21 * $0.14 = +$1.53 vs NoSSD.

These figures highlight Pro4x as a strong contender, offering a 50% higher daily return than NoSSD's C15 ($4.57 profit per day vs $3.04 profit per day), despite a higher energy consumption.

Get the Most Out of Your GPU with Eco3x and Pro4x

Eco3x and Pro4x plots let you use your hard drive space and GPU power to the fullest. By allocating Eco3x and Pro4x across your HDDs based on how much space you have, you make sure your GPU is always busy, with no downtime.

For example:

you have 335 TiB of storage space and a 3090 GPU, at the current plot filter of 512.

How to Do It:

Use 235 TiB for Eco3x plots. This keeps 50% of your 3090 GPU busy.
Fill the remaining 100 TiB with Pro4x plots. This uses up the other 50% of your GPU.

The Outcome: This mix lets you use all of your storage space wisely, filling it with Eco3x and Pro4x plots. You end up with a total plot size of about 1.1 ePiB (3x the size of your Eco3x space and 4x your Pro4x space). Your GPU is always active, making sure you're using your resources efficiently.

How it works

DrPlotter is the plotting tool that creates Eco3x and Pro4x plots. Given your farmer and pool public keys, it produces "DrPlots" using write-once technology directly to your HDD, typically in 5-7 minutes per plot. No SSD required.

DrChia Harvester, in line with the Chia harvesting protocol, seamlessly integrates with your existing farmer setup. It reads existing chia supported plots and your new DrPlots. DrPlot entries requiring proof solving are sent to the DrServer. Once solved, these proofs are relayed back to the DrChia harvester and then passed onto your Chia farmer.

DrSolver leverages your GPU power to solve proofs for your compressed DrPlot entries.

DrServer is the central hub on your local network that connects all your harvesters and DrSolver's together. It efficiently manages and distributes all the tasks needed across all your harvesters and DrSolvers, to ensure a smooth running system for relaying proofs back to your farmer.

For a more complete overview, see the video How it works.

Using DrPlotter

Make sure you meet the minimum requirements
Download and install the software
Start plotting with the DrPlotter tool.
Run your DrSolvers
Setup and run your DrChia harvester with your existing chia farmer.
Verify your DrPlots are submitting proofs

Minimum Requirements

DrPlotter Minimum Requirements:

24GB nvidia 3090 / A5000 / 4090 per instance.
128GB DDR4 RAM per instance.
motherboard with a PCIE 4.0 x 16 slot
64 bit processor (onboard GPU a bonus)
Ubuntu / Debian based system

DrSolver Minimum Requirements:

64MB RAM per instance.
24GB nvidia 3090 per instance.
Ubuntu / Debian based system

DrChia Harvester Minimum Requirements:

~4GB RAM for every 1PiB of raw disk space.
Ubuntu / Debian based system

DrServer Minimum Requirements:

~16MB RAM
Ubuntu / Debian based system

Installation

Make sure you meet the minimum requirements above. Then, download the latest .deb package from the releases page.

In the command line, run dpkg on your downloaded file, for example:

sudo dpkg -i drplotter_1.0.0_amd64.deb

This will install drplotter, drsolver, drserver, and drchia for the harvester in the /usr/bin/ directory.

If at any point you want to remove drplotter, to uninstall run:

sudo dpkg -r drplotter

Plotting

[!NOTE] DrPlotter only supports the recommended NFT plots with pooling. This is to ensure you can verify your system is running as expected against proofs submitted to pools. You can still choose to solo pool, but it must be a plot NFT and not the OG format.

To make plots, run:

drplotter plot -f <your_farmer_key> -c <your_pool_contract_address> -d /your/hdd/directory/ --compression <eco3+ or pro4+>

This will fill the directory with plots. While plotting, you'll see progress and when plots complete, you'll see output like this:

Location: 
  Path: /media/nick/E14TB_14/drplots/
  Usage: 1.76 TB used of 12.73 TB total (13%)
  Est. Completion: 467 plots by 2024-01-26 09:25 (2 days, 8 hours)

Plotting File: drplot-pro4p-2024-01-24-00-35-372b8c5b9948587dcf4e6b66565cd382.drplot

  Progress          Time    ETA
  -----------------------------
  100% ##########  06:51      -

  Size       : 22.32 GiB

Drplotter

Install / Use

README