Without any delegators I will never get a chance to get a first block. So the pool perf will stay at 0%
Small pools still have a chance at being elected for a block, but it’s going to be low each epoch with only 200k. I can understand why pools with a small starting stake may take some time to prove their fitness, but this is the situation for all pools unless they have a large personal holding to commit, or as I said, they advertise their pool in order to attract delegates.
That is why IOHK and CF delegate HUGE bags to just a few friends.
What makes you assume it’s ‘friends’? Please point to the evidence that they are playing favorites?
I’m suspect of this claim based on my own experience. When the testnet first launched I committed to a pool that had only 200k invested just like you. This pool also had low fees (1%) and a good website. I created a thread about this pool on reddit as I figured people should be made aware of the small independent pool owners who seemed legit. I had no association with this pool - but just thought it was a good pick. The pool grew from a small amount to about 80M in the first few weeks. Many small pledges each day.
Only when the pool was nearing the 1% threshold did IOHK dump about 50M on the pool making it over saturated! I’m not sure why this happened… perhaps to test willingness of delegates to leave the pool… perhaps it was random. In any case, I have no reason to believe it’s because the pool operator was ‘friends’ with IOHK or CF. Furthermore, dumping bags on a successful pool and over saturating it does nothing for the pool operator (who is capped at saturation), and nothing for IOHK (they earn less rewards), so they certainly weren’t helping their ‘friend’ if this was the intention.
I would not care much, but it represents a huge amount of ADA at the end of the test net.
Yes. Pool operation is a competitive game by design. Did you expect this to be otherwise? The system benefits the most savvy pool operators who can run the pools at the lowest cost. This strikes the balance between network efficiency and sturdiness. It seems good for anyone holding ADA as a sturdy and inexpensive network is likely to be competitive against incumbents like ETH, Tezos, Alogrand, etc.
The entire community was shocked when they find out what IOHK and CF did. Me too.
Shocked about what? Perhaps I’m missing some major news. If you would please link to this shocking event.