There are many different blockchain consensus, and one of them, is called Proof Of Capacity. With proof of capacity, you allocate disk space, for the coin's "mining". This is not power hungry as proof of work. It is an alternative way to get cryptocurrency coins, by providing disk space for the coin. There are some coins that use this consensus, and we will see some of them in this article.
Storj
In the video, we can see how to set up a storage node, on the Storj blockchain network. Storj, was created to decentralize storage. There are many storage providers available but there is one common problem. In case of a company failure, nobody can keep the storage active and your data is gone forever. With decentralized storage, many people with personal computers, can become storage providers. The blockchain keeps copies of your data, on many different nodes, so if a node fails, your data is safe on a different node.
Storj, uses a technique called V3 network. With their technology, they try to minimize bandwidth use, achieve resilience in device failure or churn, and keep compatibility with AWS S3. Other features are: Enterprise grade security, object storage and not database storage, Byzantine fault tolerance and general attack resistance.
Find out more: Storj
Burstcoin
Burstcoin, has been derived from the Nxt cryptocurrency. It's consensus, is proof of capacity, so a miners reward, is proportional to the disk space allocated to the blockchain. The coin has a smart contract system since 2014, and has added some important features. With smart contracts, new applications can be created, as we can see in Ethereum and other known blockchains. It has added Tangle, a different way to propagate information across the network, that is super fast, used also by the Iota cryptocurrency. Another good feature of Burstcoin, is the Atomic Cross Chain trading, where two users, that have coins that belong to different blockchain, can transact, without the need of a trusted party.
The coin supports Lightning network, where payment channels, can be opened by the users, and all payments through those channels, do not have a transaction fee. After closing the channels, only the final differences are recorded on the blockchain.
Find out more: https://www.burst-coin.org/
BitcoinHD
BitcoinHD, is using a variation of the proof of capacity consensus, called Conditioned Proof of Capacity (CPoC). The CPoC mining model, uses the output of mining, as future input of mining, to make the entire BHD system grow automatically. This model has the advantage, that disk space grows at a slower pace compared to ASIC computational power, so the cost to become a miner, is still low.
The coin was launched on the 3rd of August in 2018. It combines, the advantages of Bitcoin and Burst, so there is a new coin, with new properties. The CPoC ecosystem model includes mining pool, miner, cryptocurrency holder, wallet, exchanges and hardware vendor. The miners, keep the most of the profits so they have an incentive to remain part of the CPoC ecosytem, and avoid any malicious act. BHD, is a new coin, but it's worth to check it out.
Find out more: https://www.btchd.org/
Filecoin
Filecoin is a decentralized storage network that can be used for storage like Storj. Miners earn the native token called “filecoin” by providing disk space for data storage and/or retrieval. The miners earn filecoin by storing data for clients, and computing cryptographic proofs to verify available storage across time. The probability of earning a coin and the amount of transaction fees, is proportional to the amount of storage provided to the network by the miner.
The miner nodes, store storage data and the needed blockchain data for the network to function. To increase security, and availability, miners have to lock up collateral, which they lose, if they fail to prove the storage of files. Each file has it's own cryptographic "fingerprint", to insure, that two files will the same name will not be written over.
Find out more: https://filecoin.io/
These are the most known Proof of Capacity coins. In future articles, we will find coins with different consensus, that populate the cryptocurrency space.
