Chia FAQs

Abstract : Chia was created by Bram Cohen, the best network protocol engineer and inventor of BitTorrent. Chialisp is Chia's new smart transaction programming language, which is powerful, easy to audit and safe. Currently available smart transactions include: atomic swap, authorized payee, recoverable wallet, multi-signature wallet and price limit wallet.

Chia Database

Chia mining tutorial http://www.wabi.com/news/31337.html

Chia FAQs http://www.wabi.com/news/31338.html

Chia command line parameters http://www.wabi.com/news/31341.html

Chia plot file size and specifications http://www.wabi.com/news/31342.html

Chia halving schedule http://www.wabi.com/news/31343.html

Chia multi-machine cluster tutorial http://www.wabi.com/news/31344.html

What is Chia?

Chia was incorporated in August 2017 to develop an improved blockchain and smart transaction platform. We are building the Chia network to improve the global financial and payment system. Chia will be the first enterprise-level digital currency. Chia uses the first new Nakamoto consensus algorithm since Bitcoin. It is called "Proof of Space and Time" and was created by Bram Cohen, the inventor of BitTorrent, the best network protocol engineer currently. Chialisp is Chia's new smart transaction programming language, which is powerful, easy to audit and secure. The smart transactions currently available for reference are: atomic swaps, authorized payees, recoverable wallets, multi-signature wallets and price-limit wallets.

Where can I get answers to my questions about running Chia?

You should start by reading the repository FAQ, checking out the wealth of information on the repository wiki, and joining us in the #testnet or #beginner channels on Keybase. We've also created a nice summary of the basics for Chia.

What is the proof of space and time?

Proof of Space is a cryptographic technique where a prover demonstrates that they have allocated unused hard drive space as storage. In order to be used as a consensus method, Proof of Space must be coupled with Proof of Time. PoT ensures consistency between block times, improving the overall security of the blockchain.

How do Proof of Space and Proof of Time work?

Proof of Space can be thought of as a way to prove that you have reserved some unused storage space on your hard drive. Users of the Chia blockchain "seed" unused space on their hard drives by installing software that stores encrypted collections of numbers on disk as "plots." These users are called "farmers." When the blockchain broadcasts a challenge for the next block, farmers can scan their plots to see if they have the closest hash to the challenge. The probability of a farmer winning a block is the percentage of space the farmer owns over the entire network.

Proof of time requires a small amount of time to elapse between blocks. Proof of time is implemented via a Verifiable Delay Function, which takes a certain amount of time to compute, but verifies very quickly. The key idea of ​​VDFs is that they need to be computed sequentially, and since having many parallel machines does not yield any benefit, power waste is minimized. There will likely be relatively few VDF servers ("Timelords"), and since the fastest servers will always finish first, only one fast and fair Timelord is needed on the network to complete a block and move the chain forward.

What is Chialisp?

Chia has a newly developed innovative blockchain programming language, Chialisp, which is powerful, easy to audit, and secure. Chialisp is a superior on-chain smart transaction development environment that will unlock the security, transparency, and ease of use promised by cryptocurrency.

Where can I learn more about Chialisp?

Please read our blog post introducing Chialisp https://www.chia.net/2019/11/27/chialisp.en.html . Documentation can be found at Chialisp.com or kuangjiwan.com.

Why is Chia better?

Chia has a new innovative Nakamoto consensus algorithm that removes the energy requirements of proof of work from the system. Compared to other cryptocurrencies, Chia's security will be significantly improved due to its more decentralized blockchain. Chialisp is Chia's new smart transaction programming language, which is powerful, easy to audit, and secure, and will unlock the security, transparency, and ease of use promised by cryptocurrencies. Chia also uses more modern cryptographic tools to achieve richer smart transaction capabilities. Chia is taking a new and superior approach to funding, building, and supporting the blockchain through an ultimately public, for-profit, open source development company that holds a pre-farm. Chia will use its pre-farm (strategic reserve) to mitigate the volatility of the coin to mitigate bubbles and crashes and drive the adoption of chia.

Where can I learn more technical details about your consensus algorithm?

We have academic papers and presentations detailing our new consensus algorithm and blockchain software. In 2019, we revealed our green paper outlining the construction of proofs of space and time and explaining many of Chia’s design choices.

We have updated our consensus algorithm, you can review and commment our working document.

There is also a 2019 talk by Mariano Sorgente from MIT on how to implement Nakamoto Consensus with Proof of Space and VDFs.

Bram Cohen gave a talk on Proofs of Space at Stanford in February 2018. Our advisors Dan Boneh, Benedikt Bünz, and Ben Fisch published a survey of VDFs, the underlying technology for Proofs of Time. Lipa Long published an explanation of the class of things our Proofs of Time are based on. Bram gave a talk on Beyond Hellman's Time-Memory Trad-Offs with Applications to Proofs of Space at BPASE'18 in January 2018, based on Hamza Abusalah's academic paper and these slides. Ben Fisch gave a talk on Verifiable Delay Functions at BPASE 2018 in January 2018. Bram gave a talk at the Blockchain Conference in Berkeley in March 2018 (starts at about 20:00), with slides attached. Bram gave a talk on Eliminating Waste with Proofs of Space and Time at BPASE 2017 in January 2017 (slides).

Bram gave a talk at the SF Bitcoin Devs Seminar on Scaling Bitcoin's Data Structures, complete with slides and Merkle Set code. Bram gave a talk at the SF Bitcoin Devs Seminar on Eliminating Waste from Cryptocurrency.

What is the development strategy of Chia Network?

We believe that the blockchain industry is still developer-led. We intend to be the dominant chain for deploying new applications and services, as well as being the only serious and secure choice for applications such as sovereign-backed stablecoins. The Chia Network business will be the first profitable company to manage an upfront farm, and we intend to be the first publicly traded "ETF-like" cryptocurrency. We believe - just as Redhat and MySQL AB were necessary to drive enterprise adoption of linux and mysql, we will be the source of support and training as sovereigns, financial institutions, and enterprises look to use cryptocurrencies in everyday commerce. Finally, we believe we will be able to leverage the storage ecosystem to drive enterprise and end-user adoption, as hard drive manufacturers and storage server sellers are likely to bundle space farming into their products.

Our business white papers are the definitive documents of our strategy and approach.

What is the difference between traditional mining and farming?

Traditional mining requires expensive, single-use hardware that consumes a lot of electricity. We are alleviating this with a fair, green and better blockchain that uses farming to take advantage of existing, empty hard drive space on nodes distributed around the world. Farming is decentralized because anyone who has our software installed and owns a plot of land has a chance to win the next block. Mining requires expensive, custom, single-use hardware and access to electricity at wholesale or higher prices, making it affordable only for purposeful businesses. Farming is decentralized because it relies on empty hard drive space, and anyone with a phone, laptop or corporate network often has extra space that is not currently being used. Unlike mining, once you’re done with storage, you can repurpose it, for example, to store your family photos.

Why should I grow chia?

You can farm Chia on your phone, laptop, or idle storage space on your company network, and in return you have the opportunity to earn Chia rewards for helping to secure the blockchain. Our software will allow you to allocate a certain amount of unused disk space to create a plot. Since the only resource-intensive step is the initial plotting, your drive will be plotting in the background once you download the Chia Node software. Once the plotting is complete, your computer will begin farming on your behalf, and the software will do all the work for you and track your rewards. Ongoing farming uses very little network bandwidth and almost no resources other than storage. By making the farming process available to anyone with idle disk space, we are moving towards our goal of building a truly decentralized blockchain that will also serve as a cross-subsidy to storage and cloud businesses.

Farming will be the only way to obtain Chia/XCH until it is listed on cryptocurrency exchanges.

What is the Chia Strategic Reserve?

Chia will pre-mine 21 million Chia at network launch, helping to stabilize and grow the Chia economy through Chia's novel business plan of lending Chia.

Our business white paper provides detailed information.

Why do we pre-mine?

Chia has a novel business model that will both reduce volatility and increase adoption. By lending Chia and managing the interest rates on these loans, along with other tools like purchasing our shares with Chia, we hope to reduce the quarterly volatility of the coin. To drive adoption, we intend to lend Chia to Global 5000 companies, who will use Chia to pay their international suppliers quickly, cheaply, and more securely. We also intend to use a strategic reserve to help with development and adoption. We plan to do things like invest in promising startups in the Chia ecosystem, potentially increase farming rewards for a limited time to incentivize more farming, and fund companies to pay 105% of the value of their international dues in Chia instead of currency.

Is Chia doing an ICO?

No, Chia is not planning to do an ICO. Instead, our goal is to list the company's equity on a U.S. stock exchange. This way, shareholders can share risks and rewards with management, there is transparency and disclosure, and we can use well-understood corporate controls to make binding statements about how Chia Network intends to use strategic reserves. The Chia digital currency is intended to be a useful payment tool, not an investment opportunity. Chia intends to complete a fully compliant SEC registered equity IPO and will be listed when the market is ripe after the mainnet launch.

Can I buy chia today?

No, after the mainnet is launched, for a few weeks (about six weeks), the network will only issue farming rewards and trading will not be allowed during this period. This is to ensure the stability of the mainnet for a certain period of time after the mainnet is launched, and the farming rewards will give priority to our farmers. In addition, the release candidate software will be able to generate plots before the mainnet is launched, and can be farmed on the mainnet immediately after the mainnet is launched (plots files support both testnet and mainnet). After the mainnet starts trading, Chia may be available on most global exchanges.

How do I buy Chia?

After mainnet trading begins, Chia will be available to buy, sell, and trade from other Chia holders on most global exchanges.

When will Chia launch its mainnet?

We will launch as soon as possible after mainnet testing is complete, currently planned for March 17, 2021. Software development is notoriously unpredictable, and the Chia blockchain and Chialisp are the first versions of some of the new discoveries in cryptography and computer science. Please follow us on our website, Keybase, Github, Trello, and our mailing list as we open source code and for updates about our release plans. The latest release times are usually first available in the Repository FAQ https://github.com/Chia-Network/chia-blockchain/wiki/FAQ

What is Chia's production reduction strategy?

In the early days of the launch, Chia will provide a farming reward of 64 chia every 10 minutes. During the first 12 years, the farming reward will be halved at the end of the 3rd year. From the 13th year to indefinitely, the reward will remain constant at 4 chia every 10 minutes, resulting in a continuously decreasing inflation rate. Chia's inflation rate fell below 0.50% 22 years after the mainnet launch.

How much code is currently completed?

We are almost done with version 1.0.

The Chia blockchain is composed of several different repositories.

Resource Library Content

chia-blockchain Consensus code, networking, and reference Chialisp implementation.

chia-blockchain-gui An Electron/React GUI for renderers, nodes and wallets.

clvm The Chialisp virtual machine in Python.

clvm-rs Safety and performance of the Chialisp VM in Rust.

Chiapos creates graphs and verifies proof of space.

chiavdf Proofs of Time/VDFs and Time Lords.

bls-signatures IETF standard BLS-12-381 signature scheme.

clvm_tools Tools for Chialisp and CLVM.

Is the current international monetary system not good enough?

No, there are issues with government and bank interactions around the world, for example in volatile areas like Burma, Venezuela, Argentina or Lebanon. International payments are slow, expensive and unsafe to use and work. International SWIFT wires often take 1-5 days. Correspondent bank fees are often as high as 3%, and many countries have restricted correspondent banks since 9/11 and the banking changes of 2008. International wire fraud losses are very high, and we have better solutions to mitigate these issues.

Does Chia use the Bitcoin code?

No, Chia was written completely from scratch.

Isn’t Bitcoin good enough?

When Bitcoin was developed, it was not foreseen that specialized hardware could greatly outperform the computers that everyone has. What was supposed to be a decentralized network is now controlled by a handful of miners with access to chip factories and cheap electricity (or worse). The miners who currently control the Bitcoin network believe they have an absolute competitive advantage in the status quo, and even though they should change the current status quo, they fail because of their own interests. Chia has been researching new digital currency ecosystems for ten years and believes that we can make cryptocurrency more decentralized, more secure, and easier to use.

Will the value of Chia fluctuate like other cryptocurrencies?

We believe that Chia will be less volatile than other cryptocurrencies due to our (planned) public company status, which will allow financial institutions to hedge and leverage the coin and equity. Initially, we expect the valuation of the Chia network will be primarily based on the valuation of the Chia that the company will hold on its balance sheet. Chia price movements on digital exchanges will likely be reflected in price movements of our shares on stock exchanges. There will be more ways to gain exposure to the success of Chia than with traditional blockchain projects. This will also allow vanilla options and derivatives on our shares to act as synthetic derivatives similar to the price of Chia. In addition, our ability to use Chia's strategic reserves may reduce some of the volatility of Chia in the market.

Why do you hold these competitions?

We believe that more eyes on our code can only make it better. For example, our VDF competition results produced a VDF implementation that ran 80% faster than our original implementation.

How is Chia's advancement in applied cryptography reflected?

Chia has created three new core inventions and has driven interest and adoption of a fourth. First, Chia has created the first BLS signature library for production use. Second, Chia will be the first production use of Verifiable Delay Functions, or VDFs. Third, Chia has created proofs of space and time for the Nakamoto consensus.

Finally, Chia will be the first production use of classes of unknown class, spawning significant new research into their suitability for use in cryptography.

Can ordinary people use Chia as a payment tool?

We hope that over time Chia will be supported by point of sale systems and consumer payment apps around the world. For example, if you pay for your coffee at Tully's in the UK using the GrabPay app in Thailand, it should be seamless without you having to know it was paid in Chia.

For example, if you live in an area that doesn't have services like Venmo or Cash App, using Chia is much less hassle than performing a slow and expensive wire transfer. Using traditional banking to send and convert cash across borders is cumbersome, slow, and expensive, and while alternative remittance services may be faster, they're not cheap. Western Union charges up to 10%+ in transfer fees.

The technology will be completely open source and accessible, and anyone can build a new wallet without our permission or assistance. However, we intend to help wallets, exchanges and merchant processing partners with support and integration services, joint marketing and lending liquidity.

Why are you called Chia?

We are Green Money! Our founder, Bram Cohen, started the company knowing he wanted to reduce blockchain’s reliance on energy through a “green” alternative. The concept of farming seemed like the best metaphor for filling unused disk space and monitoring its victorious sprouts. This led us to search for a grain that had the properties we wanted to embody with our new network. The team wanted a name that was short and punchy. Everyone thought it was funny that it was also a grain that was associated with whimsical memos. And so the Chia Network was born.