You’ve heard about Chia before – some say it’s the new gold mine, others label it just another shitcoin and move on.
Unlike certain sensationalists out there, I took the time to follow and study the project for a bit before I decided to write this review. Hopefully, it will help you to better understand whether Chia is for you.
This is going to be part of my Chia series where I will be testing different hardware, and assembling Chia farming and plotting rigs, so if you’re interested in that, make sure to follow me.
What is Chia? The Basics
Chia is a new coin that aims to solve some of the issues we have with most of the currently used cryptocurrencies. Namely, the main aim of Chia is to move away from both Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Concept models into a totally new territory.
Chia coin introduces a new concept – Proof of Space and Time (POST). It is meant to be way greener than POW, as well as more secure than POS. Unlike POW, POST is also meant to make mining more accessible for the average Joe since it requires storage space instead of raw hashing power. And by being less power-hungry, Chia mining should in theory be profitable even for those of us living in areas with expensive electricity.
POST vs. POW
The issue with proof of work is that it’s not eco-friendly at all. The amount of energy used worldwide by Bitcoin miners alone stands close to what a small country consumes. A lot of POW coins also struggle with centralization issues – we see more and more hashrate coming from huge mining farms with specialized equipment.
Proof of space, on the other hand, utilizes hard drive storage space. Unlike other projects like SIA and Storj, Chia does not offer decentralized storage. Instead, it’s basically CPU mining that requires a bit of CPU power and a lot of free storage to validate transactions on the network.
To prevent grinding attacks like on Burstcoins, Chia also implemented a proof-of-time concept. Plotting takes quite a lot of time and work, and that has been implemented on purpose to prevent people from abusing the system through constant plot overriding.
Chia Features
Chia was created by Bram Cohen of BitTorrent Fame. It is written in Chialisp, a lisp-like language. Just like Ethereum, it allows smart contracts. The Chia wallet already supports atomic swaps and multisig. Users can also build their own cryptocurrencies based on Chia called ‘Color Coins’. Users can…
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