Chia Coin Cryptocurrency Review: New Bitcoin?

Despite the fact that the Chia Network blockchain and its XCH token have been in development for several years, the project has only recently become recognized to a wide spectrum of users.

The price of the coin surged to about $2,000 per token shortly after the network’s introduction in the spring of 2021, but then fell, and the price of the coin is now around $100. In this review, we’ll explain what Chia is and why it’s still possible for this project to reach the top of the market.

What is Chia Network?

Chia Network is a new generation blockchain based on the “Proof of Space and Time” consensus algorithm that uses free disk space for network operation. Chia offers a new take on blockchain as it implements “the first new Nakamoto consensus algorithm since bitcoin was introduced in 2008.”

Who is the creator of the Chia cryptocurrency?

The company was founded on August 1, 2017 in Delaware, United States of America. Bram Cohen, the creator of BitTorrent, was the company’s founder. The company has been creating and promoting its own Chia Network blockchain since its creation.

The company has already been valued at $500 million, and it intends to move through with plans for a public sale of its stock. To do this, it must fully comply with all the requirements of the Securities and Exchange Commission – S.E.C.

Chia intends to encourage the growth of decentralized finance. Users can leverage DeFi, DeX, cross-border payments, and new wallets to speed up the development of new apps that need safe, distributed, programmable money.

How does the Chia blockchain work?

Before the advent of the Chia blockchain, all networks were divided according to the type of mining into:

• blockchains with proof of work – Proof of Work;
• blockchains with proof of ownership – Proof of Stake.

Miners had to solve the problem using their equipment in the first case of PoW, and once they did, the block was closed, added to the blockchain, and the miner received a reward.

The miners are the validators of the nodes in the second alternative, PoS, for which they require network tokens, which are provided by – nomination, and the users are the token owners. The validator receives a payment after adding a block and splits it among the nominators who submitted – staked – their tokens.

Both methods have drawbacks: in PoW, there is a high consumption of electricity due to the increasing complexity of calculations, and in PoS, there is a lack of network decentralization due to significant amounts of coins held by funds, developers, and early investors.

The Chia Network aims to address both of these issues; mining does not necessitate the use of either productive equipment or a significant number of tokens.

How to Mine Chia?

To become a Chia miner, you must have a computer and a lot of space on your hard drive. At the same time, the power of the computer itself is important only at the beginning, when you “plot” or “seed” the hard drive.

A step-by-step guide to getting ready to mine:

• Install the Chia program on your computer (how to install the Chia Blockchain can be found on the project GitHub);
• Form a raft is a place on your hard drive that takes up 108 GB and which will store the entire Chia blockchain;
• Synchronize the entire Chia blockchain that you already have with the blockchain of other chia miners.
• After that, you can start mining.

Chia Coin is more energy efficient and greener than other cryptocurrencies

Chia Coin isn’t like Bitcoin or Ethereum, which are proof-of-work and use the power of GPUs to mine. Instead, it uses a proof-of-space and time model and is mined on hard drives and solid state drives.

It takes a lot less energy and is better for the environment to mine Chia Coin on disks than to mine other cryptocurrencies. It takes about 200 watts to run the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060, while the top-end RTX 3090 takes 350 watts. It takes up to 30 W for a hard drive to start, but an SSD drive takes a lot less.

Chia Coin is a good choice for miners because it doesn’t use a lot of electricity. After buying the equipment, their main expense is paying for electricity, so Chia Coin is a good choice.

Wallets for Chia(XCH)

There are various wallets that support the Chia network, but I prefer the official wallet developed by the project’s developers, “Light Wallet Beta,” which can be obtained from the project’s official website’s download section.

The wallet currently supports the following operating systems:

• Windows;
• macOS on an Intel processor;
• macOS on M1 processor;
• Ubuntu/Debian
• Ubuntu/Debian ARM;
• CentOS/Redhat.
• Chia Token (XCH) Price and Prospects

In May 2021, the price reached $1,934, before declining for six months and trading under $100 in December, a loss of an astonishing 95 percent, although the capitalization, which reached $450 million in May, decreased by just 35 percent.

While the project appears to be highly promising, it is vital to keep in mind that the majority of functionality, most notably smart contracts, has not been fully implemented, which means that many applications may be established in the Chia ecosystem in the future. And perhaps this coin will eventually become the new Bitcoin.