Chia's new model catalyzes the shortage of hard disk storage devices

Author: Song Jiaji, Ren Heyi

Industry Comments

Recently, the industry chain has reported that the demand for large-capacity solid-state hard drives has skyrocketed and prices have risen, making them hard to come by. This phenomenon is related to the hard drive mining activities of the currently popular Chia project. This change in supply and demand is expected to reflect the secondary market.

In order to lower the threshold for mining and create a more decentralized network, the Chia project uses proof of space and time, and users can mine with the available hard disk capacity. According to the white paper, the Chia protocol hopes to create an energy-saving, secure, and more decentralized payment network. In order to change the situation of Bitcoin's centralized computing power, Chia uses proof of space and time (PoST), and users compete for the right to record accounts based on the unused storage space on the hard disk and receive the native token XCH as a reward. All ordinary users can participate without any special hardware, funds, or registration to join.

Chia realizes the economic incentive of the blockchain network through "farming rewards". "Farmers" use hard disks as "farmland" and earn income according to the "size of farmland". The main steps of Chia farming are: plotting (filling the storage space with data using a given algorithm, which can be regarded as locking the corresponding storage space for mining), harvesting (looking for the target random number in its own storage space to determine the accounting right), and time proof (making the block generated according to the specified cycle). In general, Chia constructs such a mining model: users store data on hard drives for a period of time, and the chance of winning the right to block accounting is proportional to the size of the storage space allocated to the user. This mechanism uses a similar method to winning a lottery. The larger the storage space used for mining, the greater the probability of obtaining accounting rights and income.

At present, the popularity of Chia mining is increasing, and the difficulty of mining is increasing rapidly. According to the Chia blockchain browser, the current storage capacity of the Chia network is about 393 PB, an increase of more than 300% in a month; the number of account addresses is 5424, which is also growing rapidly. The mining income per terabyte of storage is about 0.022XCH per day, and the difficulty of mining is increasing. At present, XCH is not open for trading, and there is no price for reference. As a new project, the popularity is expected to continue to rise.

Mining activities have caused a surge in demand for hard drives, and there will be a shortage of large-capacity hard drives in the short term. From Chia's mining mechanism, it can be seen that mining income is directly related to hard drive capacity. As hard drive mining heats up, mechanical hard drives above 8T have been out of stock in large quantities on JD.com and other shopping malls. The price of 8T hard drives on second-hand trading platforms is generally above 1,600 yuan, and the subsequent price will be determined by the XCH transaction price.