Over the last couple of months, my mind has been completely encompassed with the new cryptocurrency Chia.
Chia is a decentralized cryptocurrency that uses hard drives to validate blockchain transactions. The simplest setup uses a process called farming and consists of a farmer, harvester, and wallet installed on a computer to manage plots.
Learning cryptocurrency has been an adventure, but exciting at the same time. It’s mind boggling the idea of having the ability to trade value digitally just from what a community believes has value.
What are benefits of Chia Cryptocurrency?
The benefits of Chia over current cryptocurrencies (like Bitcoin or Ethereum) is the model that is used to farm the coin. Some of you other there may be familiar with the term mining which can mean different things, but typically it means the Proof-of-Work (PoW) model.
Chia uses underutilized, unused hard drive space
Another benefit of Chia crypto is that there are hard drives all over the globe that have unused space and will never be filled up. This space can be used by anyone to be a part of the network.
Power requirements for Chia are like 122x lower
On top of using hard drives with unused space, the power requirements of Chia for running a hard drive versus something like a GPU is night and day ( in other words, drastically different ) so it helps lower the cost of the blockchain and saves on energy to help the environment.
graph: chiapower.orgHow Does Chia Crypto Work?
The basics of Chia can be broken into these parts: full-node, farmer, harvester, and plotter. Each one of these roles plays a part in created or managing plots, the unit that stores digital space on a hard drive.
What is a Chia full node?
A full node is a device running the complete Chia blockchain. It houses all of the transactions that have taken place. Other devices running a full node sync with other peers and this is what creates decentralization.
Each full node is running on people’s computers anywhere on the planet and work together to secure transactions that happen. There is no central authority managing which transactions are allowed or approved before the transaction takes place.
What is a Chia farmer?
The Chia farmer is the management role. The farmer maintains the plots, harvesters, and the full node. This is also what secures the network.
What is Chia plotting?
The Chia plotting role is what writes the cryptographic data to the disk. This is a very exciting stage to watch and wait for, but it can definitely change levels of patience!
What is a Chia harvester?
The Chia harvester is responsible for checking the Chia plots to see if they match the challenge that comes over the blockchain network. Harvesters help the Chia farmer by being local to the storage, not having to run over the local network.
What is Chia plot filter?
A Chia plot filter is used to see if any plots pass the initial criteria of a challenge. If a plot passes a filter, it goes to the next stage of a proof.
What are Chia proofs?
A proof is what shows that your plot completes the challenge sent from the blockchain. If your farmer sends the proof the quickest, your plot will win the challenge and award Chia.
What is Chia difficulty?
Difficulty changes automatically when your farm grows. Since the farm will be sending proofs more often, it allows for fairness on the blockchain.
What is the Chia mempool?
This is the outstanding transactions that are waiting to be filled on the network.
The network difficulty automatically adjusts based on how many proofs are coming in.
Store the largest amount of data in the smallest amount of space with the lowest amount of money with the lowest power possible
Jonmichael Hands, Chia Head of Storage
In an interview with StorageReview, Jonmichael Hands mentions these farming goals: store the largest amount of data in the smallest amount of space with the lowest amount of money with the lowest power possible.
What is Chia pooling?
to be answered soon…
