5 ms·

> or example, a home NAS system that may currently only be using a small portion of it's capacity. People can then slowly fill that space overtime and potential

> or example, a home NAS system that may currently only be using a small portion of it's capacity. People can then slowly fill that space overtime and potentially make some money from their unused space. using my spare disks like this does not make sense when it apparently burns them out very quickly. i doubt i would recoup even the cost of a new drive

twalla 5y ago
Plotting, or generating proofs, is what destroys SSDs, afterwards the plots are stored on disk and aren't read/write intensive. Think of it as printing bingo cards (plotting) and then sticking them in a file cabinet (farming). Your printer consumes ink and electricity, but keeping all your printed off bingo cards only costs you the space the file cabinet takes up and maybe the lights you turn on to look for winning cards when they get called.
- thedrbrian 5y ago
  So it’s just internet bingo? Does the network do anything useful with all the HDD space it takes up like decentralised storage ?
  - wmf 5y ago
    It prevents transactions from being double-spent, like all cryptocurrency. Whether that's useful is up to you.
ahnick 5y ago
This is only really true when plotting to consumer grade SSDs, which are limited in the number of writes that they can support. NAS systems usually contain mechanical HDDs and can handle the write load of Chia without issue.
- qeternity 5y ago
  I think this was missed in this whole issue. I'm not arguing for or against Chia, but basically in order to bootstrap a mining operation faster, miners were generating the initial files on a much faster SSD and then transferring to HDD. The initial bootstrap ("plotting") is very write intensive, and thus destroys the SSD. HDD do not have the same sensitivity to write heavy workloads. So if one simply plotted very slowly on an HDD with the spare space they had, it would not likely impact the expected lifespan, and they could earn a few pennies for their efforts. However the issue with all of these crypto efforts is that systems naturally trend towards centralization for reasons of efficiency. The best systems have some balance between the two. It's simply not worth it for most people to plot 100gb of free space on their laptop for Chia and earn a few cents per month. So it only makes sense for miners to do at scale.
  - ahnick 5y ago
    Yeah plotting on a laptop with a 100GB free is not worth it (especially since they typically have consumer ssds in them), but there is a lot of spare storage space on servers/external drives owned by individuals or companies globally speaking. This global storage distribution that already exists and the fact that no specialized hardware (ASICs) are needed is why Chia has been able to become more decentralized than any other cryptocurrency currently. It will be interesting to see how things centralize or decentralize going forward. When I think of the lottery I'm always amazed by the number of people that play it even with the extraordinarily low odds of winning that exist. I think there will be some equilibrium that's found for the global number of operating nodes that will be a function on the odds of finding a proof and Chia's price.
    - qeternity 5y ago
      > but there is a lot of spare storage space on servers/external drives owned by individuals or companies globally speaking. Companies have spare storage…but it sure as shit ain’t worth it to them. This is the hubris of most crypto projects: they have no real economic grasp of the problems they jump into. Amazon isn’t going to fuck around with Chia for what amounts to literal dust on their balance sheet. Businesses aren’t going to jeopardize their core competency for a couple of bucks. And the average Joe doesn’t actually have external storage space. Spotify, iCloud, Dropbox, etc. It’s all professional miners. Chia is not decentralized. > When I think of the lottery I'm always amazed by the number of people that play it even with the extraordinarily low odds of winning that exist. The payoff for the lottery is HUGE. So even though the EV is negative, people still do it. The payoff for Chia is comparatively small. People won’t (and don’t) care.
- nathanvanfleet 5y ago
  That's not how hard drives work
skybrian 5y ago
Yes, it's probably too late. Or so I've heard. Chia is like Bingo. Generating the Bingo cards can put a lot of wear on an SSD, but once you have the bingo cards to fill up whatever space you have, you can play for nearly free. I haven't done the calculation myself, but I've read that it's no longer worthwhile to generate new cards. If so, that means most of the damage has already been done. It's a sunk cost. But the people who are already in the game can keep playing indefinitely. If prices are too low to even do that, they could back up to tape and go offline for a while.
- chiph 5y ago
  I agree. I had 20TB extra space on my NAS, so I spent $100 on an entry-level SSD to do plotting. 200 plots later, it's well-used, but not close to dead. I'll probably put my FFIV game files on it to get faster load times. In the meantime, my operating cost is running the NAS (which was going to be powered up anyway), and some CPU power to handle the farming (not even noticeable on a Ryzen 3900X).
wmf 5y ago
Chia plotting/farming at hobbyist scale shouldn't wear out anything.
- weare138 5y ago
  But you're not going to make any money either. According to Chia Calculator 100TiB would generate a whopping $6.17 a day. Just like mining any other crypto it's already out of reach for hobbyists. https://chiacalculator.com/ https://chiacalculator.com/
  - esyir 5y ago
    Hm. Would be a way to subsidize the price of my NAS expansion though. Only 10TB left makes me want an upgrade to 56 TB more, that's not cheap. Allocating 40TB to chia over a year would cover a good 2.5 * 365 = ~1000 a year. That's a nice subsidy to my NAS setup if all it requires is that I burn out a 1TB SSD.
    - e_proxus 5y ago
      Your calculations are probably correct, but the whole cryptocurrency fad strikes me as completely ridiculous. It’s like a farm burning some of their crops to generate a bit of hot air for wind power. Like, you can do it and it gives you that small amount of power but you’re literally destroying the resource and probably cause a lot of waste in the system as a whole.

twalla 5y ago

Plotting, or generating proofs, is what destroys SSDs, afterwards the plots are stored on disk and aren't read/write intensive. Think of it as printing bingo cards (plotting) and then sticking them in a file cabinet (farming). Your printer consumes ink and electricity, but keeping all your printed off bingo cards only costs you the space the file cabinet takes up and maybe the lights you turn on to look for winning cards when they get called.

thedrbrian 5y ago
So it’s just internet bingo? Does the network do anything useful with all the HDD space it takes up like decentralised storage ?
- wmf 5y ago
  It prevents transactions from being double-spent, like all cryptocurrency. Whether that's useful is up to you.

ahnick 5y ago

This is only really true when plotting to consumer grade SSDs, which are limited in the number of writes that they can support. NAS systems usually contain mechanical HDDs and can handle the write load of Chia without issue.

qeternity 5y ago
I think this was missed in this whole issue. I'm not arguing for or against Chia, but basically in order to bootstrap a mining operation faster, miners were generating the initial files on a much faster SSD and then transferring to HDD. The initial bootstrap ("plotting") is very write intensive, and thus destroys the SSD. HDD do not have the same sensitivity to write heavy workloads. So if one simply plotted very slowly on an HDD with the spare space they had, it would not likely impact the expected lifespan, and they could earn a few pennies for their efforts. However the issue with all of these crypto efforts is that systems naturally trend towards centralization for reasons of efficiency. The best systems have some balance between the two. It's simply not worth it for most people to plot 100gb of free space on their laptop for Chia and earn a few cents per month. So it only makes sense for miners to do at scale.
- ahnick 5y ago
  Yeah plotting on a laptop with a 100GB free is not worth it (especially since they typically have consumer ssds in them), but there is a lot of spare storage space on servers/external drives owned by individuals or companies globally speaking. This global storage distribution that already exists and the fact that no specialized hardware (ASICs) are needed is why Chia has been able to become more decentralized than any other cryptocurrency currently. It will be interesting to see how things centralize or decentralize going forward. When I think of the lottery I'm always amazed by the number of people that play it even with the extraordinarily low odds of winning that exist. I think there will be some equilibrium that's found for the global number of operating nodes that will be a function on the odds of finding a proof and Chia's price.
  - qeternity 5y ago
    > but there is a lot of spare storage space on servers/external drives owned by individuals or companies globally speaking. Companies have spare storage…but it sure as shit ain’t worth it to them. This is the hubris of most crypto projects: they have no real economic grasp of the problems they jump into. Amazon isn’t going to fuck around with Chia for what amounts to literal dust on their balance sheet. Businesses aren’t going to jeopardize their core competency for a couple of bucks. And the average Joe doesn’t actually have external storage space. Spotify, iCloud, Dropbox, etc. It’s all professional miners. Chia is not decentralized. > When I think of the lottery I'm always amazed by the number of people that play it even with the extraordinarily low odds of winning that exist. The payoff for the lottery is HUGE. So even though the EV is negative, people still do it. The payoff for Chia is comparatively small. People won’t (and don’t) care.
nathanvanfleet 5y ago
That's not how hard drives work

skybrian 5y ago

Yes, it's probably too late. Or so I've heard. Chia is like Bingo. Generating the Bingo cards can put a lot of wear on an SSD, but once you have the bingo cards to fill up whatever space you have, you can play for nearly free. I haven't done the calculation myself, but I've read that it's no longer worthwhile to generate new cards. If so, that means most of the damage has already been done. It's a sunk cost. But the people who are already in the game can keep playing indefinitely. If prices are too low to even do that, they could back up to tape and go offline for a while.

chiph 5y ago
I agree. I had 20TB extra space on my NAS, so I spent $100 on an entry-level SSD to do plotting. 200 plots later, it's well-used, but not close to dead. I'll probably put my FFIV game files on it to get faster load times. In the meantime, my operating cost is running the NAS (which was going to be powered up anyway), and some CPU power to handle the farming (not even noticeable on a Ryzen 3900X).

wmf 5y ago

Chia plotting/farming at hobbyist scale shouldn't wear out anything.

weare138 5y ago
But you're not going to make any money either. According to Chia Calculator 100TiB would generate a whopping $6.17 a day. Just like mining any other crypto it's already out of reach for hobbyists. https://chiacalculator.com/ https://chiacalculator.com/
- esyir 5y ago
  Hm. Would be a way to subsidize the price of my NAS expansion though. Only 10TB left makes me want an upgrade to 56 TB more, that's not cheap. Allocating 40TB to chia over a year would cover a good 2.5 * 365 = ~1000 a year. That's a nice subsidy to my NAS setup if all it requires is that I burn out a 1TB SSD.
  - e_proxus 5y ago
    Your calculations are probably correct, but the whole cryptocurrency fad strikes me as completely ridiculous. It’s like a farm burning some of their crops to generate a bit of hot air for wind power. Like, you can do it and it gives you that small amount of power but you’re literally destroying the resource and probably cause a lot of waste in the system as a whole.