BitTorrent creator, Bram Cohen, has been working on an environmentally friendly cryptocurrency which will be released next year.
Some of the world’s leading developers have been teaming up to create the world’s first environmentally friendly cryptocurrency, called Chia. While the Chia Network is yet to confirm whether they intend to launch their cryptocurrency via an initial coin offering (ICO), Chia will undoubtedly prove to be a revolutionary step forward for the cryptocurrency industry.
While Bitcoin’s ideal is to be entirely decentralized, that is not dependent on any governmental or financial institutions, there is strange sort of elitism amongst Bitcoin users which undermines its decentralized ideals. Mining Bitcoin is an incredibly expensive process which requires specialized and pricey equipment in addition to huge amounts of electricity resources. These requirements make mining only available to individuals who can afford it, or who have access to inexpensive resources. However, the process has undermined Bitcoin initial wealth distribution ideals.
The Chinese company, Bitmain currently holds the monopoly on mining equipment, especially when it comes to ASICS chips. However, even if a new miner can afford the equipment, their required processing power will prohibit many from entering the market.
According to a recent report, mining a single Bitcoin requires the same amount of electricity that the average American home uses in a week. Bram Cohen, co-founder of Chia Network stated that the costs involved in mining Bitcoin are so high that it is hardly worth it for the miner in most instances.
According to the cryptocurrency analyst, Alex de Vries, the 293,000 daily Bitcoin transactions account for 0.12% of the entire world’s electricity usage. Unfortunately, the cryptocurrency’s carbon emissions have grown alongside its popularity. In order to address this growing concern, the creator of BitTorrent, Bram Cohen, has designed a new cryptocurrency whose blockchain works in a radically different way.
According to Cohen, Chia miners would get rewarded for their efforts. In addition, the awards would be directly proportional to the amount of work put into every block created. Cohen compared the process to printing lottery tickets, and every time a new ticket is printed, miners win.
Industrial mining rigs have increasingly been dominating the Bitcoin system. However, this creates the problem that the market becomes so flooded that smaller entities have no chance of being noticed. According to De Vries, currently, the international mining sector create about $6.2 billion in annual revenue. This, according to Cohen is indicative of an unfair playing field.
Other teams have previously tried to address this concern. Most notably, the earlier Bitcoin Gold fork which happened earlier this year in October attempted to address the growing inequality in the Bitcoin mining industry. Bitcoin mining is a complex process which requires huge amounts of processing power to solve its algorithms and accommodate its hashing operations. To solve the growing problem, Chia network created a new token which operates in an entirely different way using proof of space.
According to Cohen, when it comes to Chia, they will use the term farming instead of mining, as it’s a more environmentally friendly process. This system requires significantly fewer energy resources.
Chia’s team is a veritable all-star team of programmer which include professor Krzysztof Pietrzak from the Institute of Science and Technology in Austria as well as the CEO of Lightning Labs, Elizabeth Stark.
Chia farming does not require ASICS or any other specialized hardware. Technically it can be done on a normal computer. Chia utilizes unused storage space on a device that is not even monitored by the internal file storage system. Seeing as the rewards are proportional, a farmer will receive rewards that are the equivalent of the amount of work they put in.
Chia is set to launch towards the end of 2018. Upon launching, Chia will incorporate Lightning Network Channels for faster transactions. The team also intends to bring about other tweak and changes that they believe will make the cryptocurrency the better and more environmentally friendly Bitcoin.
