How decentralized is Monero mining?

Question

How many Monero mining pools currently exist?

Are there any P2P pools?

What percentage of the hashrate does the largest pool control?

Is there a pie chart available that shows the the share of all major pools?

Is there a website that tracks real time hash rates of Monero pools?

Are there any formal procedures to quickly notify miners if the hash rate from one pool grows too large, asking them to change pools or begin solo mining?

Answer 1

1. There are at least 13 pools but likely more due to private and unkown pools
2. Not yet, but there has been some interest in the idea

   It does not exist for Monero but it would be a nice little project to create one. The main reason people don't seem to go for it is higher overhead. You have to run a full node, and you have to run what is essentially a second full node for the sharechain. With traditional stratum miners you just run a tiny mining program and have tiny bandwidth usage. The second reason, on Bitcoin in particular, is somewhat chicken-and-egg. Since not enough people use p2pool, it doesn't get blocks very often (takes days currently) and then miners using it get unhappy with the variance. I think p2pool is reasonably popular on some alts.

3. crypto-pool.fr is currently the largest known pool at 18.2% with "unknown" controlling 41.7%
4. Yes, an updates pie chart can be found here
5. Yes, same source as the previous question
6. If there is a formal procedure I am not aware of it. Reddit and Bitcointalk, IRC, Slack and other channels can be used to reach many Monero users quickly when needed.