PoolParty security and privacy

The macOS build is signed and notarized by Apple. The Windows build is not signed, and the download page says so in plain words, including what your machine will warn you and why. Being honest about the unsigned one is the reason the signed one means anything.

Encrypt, split, scatter. A file is encrypted on the machine that holds it, broken into pieces, and spread across nodes that each keep bytes they cannot read. Any two of three pieces rebuild it, so a machine going away does not cost you the file.

Every application that reaches your pool comes through its own door with its own consent. Granting one tool access is not granting them all, and each grant is revocable on its own.

Contribution is idle-only and plugged-in, the thermal limit cannot be waived, and it stops the instant you touch the keyboard. “Stop everything now” is always on screen. A consent gate is never pre-checked — not at install, not ever.

Every door that faces the network is rate-limited. Updates are signed, delivered over the same verified channel as the installs, and reversible — there is a rollback path and a hold, so a bad update is something you step back out of rather than something you live with.

Nothing about how you use the app is sent anywhere unless you turn diagnostics on for a specific problem. Off is the default and off is the resting state; it does not quietly switch itself back on.

Every node proves itself to the hub every five minutes, and one that stops answering is quarantined until it proves itself again. The live rung binds code identity with a software key, stated as such; the hardware rung — Secure Enclave on macOS, TPM on Windows — joins when the platform allows it, and the page will say so.

Re-running a sample of work and checking it against known-good answers, on top of structural verification. This is the gate that money waits on: without it, a machine can bill for work it invented.

End-to-end encryption from the person asking to an attested machine answering, with billing taken from attested counts. The sealed-storage principle, extended to inference — so a stranger's machine can do the work without reading the question.