What Is the Chia Network?

We have seen many different cryptocurrencies created over the years. Not all of these coins have any major value associated with them whatsoever. One starts to wonder why people continue to create new currencies with several thousand of them in existence already. Nevertheless, BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen currently aims to create Chia, a network designed to compete with Bitcoin.

Chia Network has its own Cryptocurrency

It is not the first time we’ve heard rumors about Bram Cohen issuing his own cryptocurrency. The infamous inventor of BitTorrent has hinted at doing something like this for several years now. However, it has taken a while for more details to become public about his new project. It will reportedly be known as the Chia Network, and there will be a native cryptocurrency associated with it. It seems the currency itself will simply be known as Chia, which makes a lot of sense.

Cohen’s stated objective for his new cryptocurrency and ecosystem is to compete with Bitcoin. That being said, there are some big differences between both projects. For one, Bitcoin has garnered somewhat of a bad reputation due to the amount of electricity having been “wasted” to mine and process transactions. To that end, Chia uses proof of time and proof of storage rather than proof of work as we know it today. This differentiation will be rather interesting to keep an eye on, to say the least.

No one should be surprised to see this particular type of cryptocurrency being developed by the same person who invented the BitTorrent protocol. Similar to Chia, BitTorrent also relies on decentralization, unused hard drive space, and having users all over the world contribute to the protocol. Cohen is not going into this alone, as he is joined by Tradehill COO Ryan Singer. Moreover, the project already has some funding in place to get things started. There will be some form of an early sale – AKA an ICO – in Q2 of 2018, but no official date has been provided at this point in time.

It is not the first digital currency we have seen created focusing on unused hard drive storage space. Sia and Storj are two entrenched coins taking similar approaches to Chia. There is plenty of unused space on hard drives all over the world, and harnessing this potential will yield some interesting results, to say the least.

Whether or not Chia can become a “better Bitcoin”, as Cohen puts it, is something else entirely. It is true Bitcoin has a certain degree of centralization associated with it. Chia aims to fully remove this stigma by making itself completely decentralized instead.  Verifying this project’s native blockchain will be done through the utilization of unused hard drive space as well. It also appears there will be full network nodes for Chia moving forward.

All things considered, there may be a bright future ahead for the Chia Network. Whether or not this currency can become any sort of threat to Bitcoin remains a big question. The approaches of both currencies are vastly different from one another, and it would be better to see Cohen contribute to Bitcoin if he really intended to improve upon it.  People will not necessarily switch over to Chia just for its file storage solution whatsoever. We can only hope there is a lot more to Cohen’s project than is known today.