As long as two hard disks, how can ordinary people participate in CHIA Network mining?

According to the official news of CHIA Network, CHIA Blockchain version 1.0 has been released, and the main Network has been officially launched at 10 PM on March 19, Beijing time.

A project founded in 2017 by BitTorrent writer Bram Cohen to create a programmable currency platform, Chia uses "farming" as opposed to mining, which is a way of acquiring blocks using existing free hard disk space spread across nodes around the world. It is understood that CHIA Network has received approximately $16 million in venture capital since its inception in 2017.

The old Bitcoin killer

Like most projects, CHIA has been known as the "Bitcoin Killer" since its inception, and its Proof of Space + Proof of Time consensus mechanism was once seen as an alternative to Bitcoin PoW. Because the former does not need to consume a large amount of electricity resources for mining.

In the Chia network, mining has been replaced by "farming," in which miners verify their blockchain against hard disk storage space.

In 2017, Chia received a $3.395 million seed round led by AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant and funded by A16Z, Greylock, Danwar Capital, Metastable Capital, DCM Ventures and others.

In 2018, Chia opened a new round of $5 million funding, led by Slow Ventures, with Collab Crypto, IDEO, and Naval Ravikant as partners. Jill Carlson, managing director of Slow Ventures, said that the venture capital industry has lost confidence in the Layer 1 blockchain project, but that Slow Ventures is still looking forward to Chia's mainnet.

The launch of the main network means that ordinary users can participate in its mining.

Mining tutorial

A solid state hard drive (SSD) larger than 332 GB and a mechanical hard drive (HDD) larger than 101 GB are required for this mining. SSD is used to store the cache files, and HDD is used to store the final plot  File.

For the test, Routine BlockBeats prepared a 500GB SSD and a 4T Seagate HDD.

1. Download and install the software and create the wallet address

Software Download Address:https://github.com/Chia-Network/chia-blockchain/releases/tag/1.0.0

After the software is installed, click "Create A NEW PRIVATE KEY" to CREATE A wallet and record 24 mnemonic words. The wallet address is also the mining address.

  2. Plot disk (P disk)

Click on "Plots" and "Add A PLOT" in turn.

Since the minimum cache file (about 332 GB) is larger than the final generated file (about 101.4GB), multiple P disk operations are recommended for users with SSD capacity smaller than HDD capacity.

Rhythm BlockBeats actual test, complete a P disk takes more than 7 hours. Therefore, if you want to carry out more professional Chia mining, it is recommended to purchase SSD with large capacity and use the method of writing multiple Plot files at the same time to store cache files.

P plate process

3. Click "Farm" to view the mining status

According to the data on the page, it would take 10 months to dig a block with only the minimum required participation (101 GB only). Therefore, ordinary users can access the mine pool for mining. At the same time, Rhythm BlockBeats will continue to fill up the 4T hard drive and test the block speed. The results will be updated in this article.

Token Allocation & NBSP;  

According to the official website information, there is still confusion in the allocation of CHIA network token XCH, and the Chinese page and the English page show differences.

XCH token allocation mechanism, picture source: CHIA official website

In the English version, for example, XCH offers 64 rewards every 10 minutes for the first 3 years, halved once every 3 years. After 12 years, 13 years after mainnet launch (the fourth halve), the Chia network rewards will remain at 4 every 10 minutes.

挖矿体验不如人意  

After two days of testing, the Chia mining experience was less than satisfactory. After many tests, the P disk process can not be suspended, so it is necessary to ensure that the system is always stable for a few hours. At the same time, as the cache file is larger than the final plot file, for ordinary users, the SSD capacity in their hands is almost smaller than the HDD capacity, so they cannot run multiple file P disks at the same time, resulting in a lot of time wasted.

According to the data provided by the mine pool, the difficulty of CHIA is about 132.78PB, and the computing power is about 132.66PB, which is equivalent to about 44,000 4T hard disks. Ordinary users participating in CHIA mining may consider access to the mine pool.

The data of the mine pool shows that the daily output of each PB hard disk is 57.68Xch. If a 4TB hard disk is calculated at 550 yuan, it is equivalent to the daily output of 57.68Xch for a 140,000 yuan hard disk. Since XCH does not have a price at the moment, participation in mining needs to be more cautious.

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