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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?

#22
post #15

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. Regula…

These velocity of money models can't account for even a small fraction of cryptocurrency valuations. For example, if your model says Filecoin is worth $10 but it's currently trading for $160... clearly the buyers are not pre-purchasing storage.

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

#24
post #8

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.

Chia is not Proof of Work, FWIW. Their technical and business whitepapers are helpful resources for learning more about what they call "Proof of Space and Time".

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

#25

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.…

Proof-of-space is essentially stored Proof-of-work. You are pre-filling your drive with many cryptographic hash's. When a challenge comes in the software will do a quick check to see if any of your plots could possibly have a proof (a hash with sufficient zeros for that challenge). If any of your plots pass this filter then the plot is looked up on the HDD to check if it does indeed contain a proof. The difficulty, the number of zeros needed for a hash to be considered a proof, adjusts as the network grows to ensure a steady supply of coins. With proof-of-work you are printing lottery tickets every time a challenge comes in, then throwing them away and starting again, with Proof-of-space you are printing your tickets once and then storing them for years. There is extra layers, Chia is actually proof-of-space-and-time, so that you can't win by faking proof-of-space with proof-of-work.

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

#26
post #18
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Completely different things.

In Proof of Stake, the network (roughly!) allocates rewards for validating transactions based on the amount of coins you have, i.e., your stake in the network.

In Proof of Space, the network allocates rewards based on you proving that you are really storing the data you were supposed to store. If you fail to produce a proof for some data item the network expected you to have stored, you lose the reward.

More info:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_space

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_stake

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

#27
post #18
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They are different. Chia isn't Proof of Stake because how many XCH has no impact on your odds of winning more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_space

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_stake

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

#28
post #18
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No - it’s a bit more like preprinting big ranges of lottery tickets, that require giant look-up tables moreso than raw computation.

So it requires the dedication of some hard/rivalrous real resource, storage space, other than either strictly energy/CPU (PoW) or the protocol’s own tokens (PoStake).

See the Chia ‘Green Paper’ for more details.

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

#29
Why would Chia be the threat here? Filecoin(IPFS) is already a threat, it already has a capacity of 4.81 EiB of data, 4810 PetiBytes! (Is that how you spell it? In contrast to Petabytes)

And to store 1 GiB of data per year it only costs the user $0.00082 USD.

That shows harddrives are already being gobbled up by miners at an incredible rate. Has this made a noticeable rise in storage prices? Anyone know of any data that can show that?

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

#30
post #18
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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