PEGA Pool Miners Get Pegged
In a world where fortune seems to favor the bold, it appears that love can be just as blinding in the world of Bitcoin mining as in ill-fated romances. Today, in an expected twist straight out of a second-rate romantic comedy, PEGA pool, the self-proclaimed "Green" champion, announced the abrupt end of its mining operations. And why? Because, dear reader, apparently their miners loved them a bit too fervently.
For those who are not blessed with the knowledge of the arcane arts of mining, PEGA operated as an FPPS pool. That's right, the mysterious "Full Pay Per Share" pool, a system that, like your cousin Jerry's claims of inventing the internet, seems to function through some impenetrable, black-box formula known only to its creators. Though, to be fair, the PPLNS system isn't much clearer; it just pays miners a variable amount based on—well, frankly, who knows? Certainly not the miners.
Just weeks after PEGA danced into the spotlight by generously handing out an entire Bitcoin to an attendee at Mining Disrupt, they pulled the rug out from under their adoring fans. Perhaps their stardom rose too swiftly, or perhaps the whispers of impending doom became too deafening.
In a statement straight out of a tech support handbook, the PEGA Pool Operators declared: "Due to our rapid growth off the back of the MD conference, we began an ambitious upgrade to our system. However, during this upgrade, we encountered challenges. While our system has backup measures, the combination of these challenges and our expansion efforts made it tough to keep everything running smoothly."
Well, thank you for that enlightening bit of clarity. One can almost see the metaphorical wrenches and errant lines of code wreaking havoc.
However, it seems not everyone was swayed by this digital sob story. @fedelang, a luminary on Stacker News, brought out his inner cynic with a blistering critique: "PEGA today joined a long list of mining pools that defaulted on miners. PEGA’s business model was FPPS with a 0% fee all wrapped up in a ... ['look at me, I'm saving the planet'] narrative. ... Free lunches in the bitcoin mining space don't exist." Ouch. Someone get PEGA some aloe for that burn.
Marty Bent, the infamous podcaster, Mining Influencer, and former X (née Twitter) Bluecheck, chimed in with his own cryptic wisdom. "Just use your braiins. BRAIIINS!" he proclaimed. Though his capacity to use his "BRAIIINS" seems in doubt due to his dalliance with bluecheckery.
And not to be left out, Kristian Csepcsar, an Executive at Braiins, managed to toe the line between sympathy and schadenfreude with his comment, "We're saddened to see all those miners get pegged." Ah, Kristian, ever the diplomat.
As the sun sets on this fine day of August 14, 2023, let us all pause for a moment of silence. For while love may be blind, it seems the lust for profit sees all too clearly. PEGA, it was a whirlwind affair, but as with all fleeting romances, the end came all too soon. Let’s all raise a glass in their honor, and then promptly turn our attention to the next bright and shiny thing in the ever-chaotic world of Proof of Work Mining. Cheers!
Note from the editor:
Many have wondered how Pega Pool was able to pursue expensive sponsorship packages like they did at Bitcoin Magazine's Miami Conference, as well as Mining Disrupt, despite not having a product or customer base. The Bugle did some digging and found that the company is funded by parent company, Feetify, which was wildly successful in 2021 when they sold feet picture NFT's on the Ethereum blockchain. Feetify appears to want to try and recreate that success on Bitcoin via ordinals.
