I recently had a friend tell me about this new crypto currency called Chia. "Like the plant?" was my first question. His take was it is a new currency that was going to be worth a lot and all you needed was free space on your hard drive. I questioned it and did some digging and also made an attempt at framing Chia.

What is Chia?

Let's start here. Chia is a newer type of crypto currency that runs on the Chia Network. The coin (XCH) was released on May 3rd to buy and is currently valued at $1011.39 USD according to CoinMarketCap. I will not bore everyone with the technical stuff mostly cause I don't understand it. That stuff can be found in the whitepapers on the main website: https://www.chia.net/  

Chia's big thing is it does not use Proof of Work, or Proof of Stake, but uses Proof of Space and calls this method Farming. 

How does Farming work?

The Farming process is simple on the surface. First you need to create a Plot and then you store the Plot on a hard drive. If you are lucky and the network picks your Plot to help validate a block, and you get paid 2 XCH. Blocks are validated multiple times per minute. To put it in even simpler terms, you make a completed BINGO card, store it on your hard drive, and hope the network picks the right numbers so you win. Simple!

To create 1 Plot, requires about 256GB of free space and takes around 7-9 hours to make. This can be sped up by using NVME's, more RAM, or a more powerful CPU to an extent. Once a Plot is made it takes up about 110GB of space. Yeah, its a bit time consuming, but whatever. You need HDDs, SSD, and NVMEs for this process. Still cheaper than buying a GPU to mine Bitcoin or ETH. And once the Plot is made, you're done. You just need to keep it somewhere with the blockchain running and connected to the internet so it can have a chance to win and make you $1000.

The Downsides

1) The 256GB of free space is a little misleading. Yes the temporary file size is a maximum of 256GB, but in reality it use about 1TB of total space due to the constant deleting and rewriting of those temp files during the process. Terabytes Written (TBW) is now a concern if you want to make a lot of Plots. The more Plots you have, the better your chances of winning. And by more I mean a lot, a lot, more.

2) Anyone is able to farm in order to try and earn XCH. But much like how a small garden in your backyard won't make you rich, only using the free space on your computer's hard drive will not make you rich by farming for Chia. You will need space and lots of it. To give an example, I currently have 88 Plots taking up 8.7TiB of space on an external HDD. The total network space, at the time of writing, is 3.681EiB. My estimated time to win that the network calculated, 3 Months. I currently have won 0XCH. And the network is constantly expanding, meaning my time to win will only increase unless I keep making more plots every day. 

3) Chia is in the process of creating official pools, which is good news. It means a more steady, albeit lower, income. However, the Plots people are currently making will not be transferable to the pools, they will only remain valid on their own. This means once pools start you cannot transfer over the work, effort, and time you already put it. You do not need to delete the Plots, they are still valid, but you will need to create fresh ones specifically for pooling.

The Reality

Personally, I do not think Chia is worth the effort in current form. I spent $100 on a SSD to try this out for a bit because I was curious. But with a 3 month time to win that will forever be increasing, it's not worth it. Once my 12TB external HDD is filled with plots (about 100 Plots), I will not make more and will just play the waiting game.

Pooling is expected to come out in June-ish. I might revisit Chia when that starts and see if this is worth it, as a way to generate some side income. 

If you are interest in Chia and want to learn more about farming, I added the links to r/chia, r/chiabeginner, and the Wiki page on github below. All the information in this post is from personal experience as well as the Wiki, subreddit, and chia.net