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What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

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Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#11

Post by Igelau »

Field Notes, Terran Expedition 6, Chief Archivist Blaxarll:

"Terran life took a sudden dramatic shift after the fall of Hominid dominance. The turning point appears to have occured when the sacrificial demands of Blockchain worship spiraled out of control after fuel-based offerings were supplanted by info storage based offerings. This, in and of itself, was not terribly harmful, but the model was used by the Cult of Aquaricoin. The so-called Water Miners enshrined a marketplace for non-fungible indulgences depicting popular figures. This was backed by a Proof of Potable Water algorithmic catechism, and swiftly resulted in total extinction for the species.

It is this researcher's opinion that we are fortunate the Terran Hominids had only just discovered space travel, for they very well could have extinguished the resources of our own homeworlds for such religious decadence."

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#12

Post by surround »

It took me a while to actually understand how proof-of-work mining works because seemingly every article one the subject gives too abstract of an explanation. Turns out it's not that complex if you understand what a cryptographic hash is. Just take a block (a list of recent transactions) and take a SHA-256 hash if it over and over with slight variations until you get a hash that starts with enough consecutive zeroes.

I'm having the same issue with understanding proof-of-space. Could someone give a technical explanation for those of us that understand basic cryptography (but aren't professional cryptographists)?

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#14

Post by wmf »

surround wrote: post #12

It took me a while to actually understand how proof-of-work mining works because seemingly every article one the subject gives too abstract of an explanation. Turns out it's not that complex if you understand what a cryptographic hash is. Just take a block (a list of recent transactions) and take a SHA-256 hash if it over and over with slight variations until you get a hash that starts with enough consecutive zeroes.…

There are multiple flavors of proof of space and they seem to be based on quite complex math to the extent that a simple explanation may not be possible.

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#15

Post by beambot »

theshadowknows wrote: post #4

I asked this recently but the topic died before I got many answers. Basically, I’m not a cryptocurrency denier. I just don’t understand it. Do people want cryptocurrency because they want to spend it on stuff? Or do they want cryptocurrency because they want to sell it for other currencies? In other words, at what point will a cryptocurrency stand on its own as something that’s worth a pair of shoes? Instead of being…

Here's an alternative mental model... Let's talk about Filecoin (related to Chia) for file storage. Assume for the moment that all 2 billion tokens are in circulation. At any given time, there is a market of people looking to store files and people willing to store those files for a fee. You're transacting (roughly) in Gb-years at today's level of technology -- i.e. willingness to store 1Gb of data for 1 year. Regular market forces apply. You could also pre-purchase credits for later use... either to get higher priority for your data when you want to use your tokens, or as an investment in said ability. And the prices you'll pay will automatically flex based on improvements in technology since the global supply of tokens is fixed.

You could then reasonably think of Filecoin as a futures contract on generic file storage capacity. Ethereum is a futures contract on computational horsepower. Bitcoin is something else(?) - perhaps a futures contract on a general long-term abstract form of value storage. In short: Some of these tokens act as futures contracts for decentralized compute capabilities. The most-common current use case happens to be heavily related to finance (DeFi); applications for censorless content networks are also in development; and the applications are really quite general purpose.

Anything today that requires a ledger is a reasonable problem to tackle too, where eliminating centralization could be beneficial. E.g. ENS instead of ICANN for domain names, tokenized stock certificates instead of relying on opaque organizations owned by major banks (e.g. the DTC and problems around naked shorting).

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#16

Post by wmf »

theshadowknows wrote: post #4

I asked this recently but the topic died before I got many answers. Basically, I’m not a cryptocurrency denier. I just don’t understand it. Do people want cryptocurrency because they want to spend it on stuff? Or do they want cryptocurrency because they want to sell it for other currencies? In other words, at what point will a cryptocurrency stand on its own as something that’s worth a pair of shoes? Instead of being…

It's more like the promise that you could spend $10,000, wait five years, then retire. Bitcoin's historical >10,000x returns have triggered massive amounts of envy, greed, and FOMO.

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#17

Post by gruez »

Hjfrf wrote: post #8
i_have_an_idea wrote: post #2

I hold no Chia or crypto at all, however, from what I am seeing around me, Chia is going to be really, really big.

We can always hope that trading Chia is made illegal, along with proof of work algorithm based currencies in general. Governments so-far failing to regulate existential threats to themselves is honestly odd.

>Governments so-far failing to regulate existential threats to themselves is honestly odd.

Is it the job of the government to hang onto power at all costs?

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#18

Post by maks25 »

wmf wrote: post #14
surround wrote: post #12

It took me a while to actually understand how proof-of-work mining works because seemingly every article one the subject gives too abstract of an explanation. Turns out it's not that complex if you understand what a cryptographic hash is. Just take a block (a list of recent transactions) and take a SHA-256 hash if it over and over with slight variations until you get a hash that starts with enough consecutive zeroes.…

There are multiple flavors of proof of space and they seem to be based on quite complex math to the extent that a simple explanation may not be possible.

I don’t think I have ever heard of proof of space, is it the same as proof of stake?

Re: What is Chia cryptocurrency and why is it bad news for hard drives?

#19

Post by rektide »

Igelau wrote: post #11

Field Notes, Terran Expedition 6, Chief Archivist Blaxarll: "Terran life took a sudden dramatic shift after the fall of Hominid dominance. The turning point appears to have occured when the sacrificial demands of Blockchain worship spiraled out of control after fuel-based offerings were supplanted by info storage based offerings. This, in and of itself, was not terribly harmful, but the model was used by the Cult of…

this is one of the best things i have ever read thank you
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