Chia Network: Sustainability Meets Blockchain
Electricity Consumption Vs Global Bitcoin Mining Electricity Consumption Less Than Bitcoin Mining More Than Bitcoin Mining
S o u r c e : h t t p s : / / p o w e r c o m p a r e . c o.uk/bit coin/
CHIA NETWORK
SUSTAINABILITY MEETS BLOCKCHAIN W r i t t e n by: S t e f a n S a t hia na t hen W e bs i t e : c hia .net work
Bitcoin may have reached its peak network capability without needing a big change. As more transactions occur on the Bitcoin network, users are starting to shell out more money for transaction fees. As transaction fees continue to increase, the advantage of using Bitcoin for its original purpose as a peer-to-peer electronic cash is quickly diminishing. In addition, Bitcoin is not the best product when thinking in terms of being eco friendly. Bitcoin mining currently is estimated to use 30.14TWh a year, which exceeds the use of 19 European countries. The majority of mining occurs in China, due to cheap electricity. This cheap electricity comes at a cost; to create this cheap electricity China burns coal, which in turn adds an excess of CO2 into the atmosphere. On the other hand, Visa operates two US data centres which supposedly runs on 2% of the power needed to run
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Bitcoin. Yet Visa, can conduct around 200m transactions a day, while the Bitcoin network struggles to handle fewer than 350,000. Since the proof of work (PoW) system requires a great deal of work on the miners side to verify transactions and add them to the blockchain, it becomes an inefficient way to verify transactions when compared to more efficient systems such as proof of stake (PoS) or proof of space(PoSpace). The major downside of PoS systems is that it helps the richer get richer while the poor remain poor. Accordingly, PoSpace may be one of the few project that contribute a part of the solution to the three issues that all cryptocurrencies try to solve at a fundamental level security, speed, and scalability. Chia network is a project that is developing PoSpace that may be the new underlying technology of every major cryptocurrency in the distant future.
