Today we will look in detail at how to start mining Chia cryptocurrency on SSD and HDD drives under the Windows operating system. Let's create a wallet and generate Rafts, which we will place on hard drives.
You've probably already heard about the new virtual coin Chia Network (XCH), which claims to be the “Bitcoin killer”. Chia is one of the newest cryptocurrencies that debuted this year. The project was founded by Bram Cohen (who also invented BitTorrent), and its main goal is to become the most energy-efficient digital asset. Let's look at what the next rival of Satoshi Nakamoto's coin is.
Chia cryptocurrency mining
The Chia mining rig uses the resource of SSDs and HDDs to process cryptography, rather than the processing power of graphics adapters or integrated circuit devices, like more common blockchain currencies such as BTC and ETH. Oh, so mining the Chia coin is a banal plotting, experienced miners will say, so what’s revolutionary here?
Well, firstly, the requirements for mining Chia are much higher than those of previously launched cryptocurrencies with a similar method of generating new blocks. And secondly, no other similar project has caused so much hype. Over the past few weeks, Chia's popularity has grown at such a rapid pace that it has caused a shortage of hard drives and SSDs in China, which could soon be repeated in the US and around the world. The reason for this is a very well-executed marketing campaign.
Main points in favor of the new blockchain project:
- If cryptocurrencies that have no fundamental value, such as Dogecoin, rise in price fueled by hype (Dogecoin has no coin limit and can inflate indefinitely), then it seems likely that Chia's price will rise as its popularity grows. The issue of the new digital asset is strictly limited and amounts to 21 million coins , just like Bitcoin.
- Chia uses a new algorithm (Proof of Time or PoST) which essentially proves that you have unallocated space on your HDD/SSD that can be used to create rafts. This is a big improvement, in terms of efficiency, over the proof-of-work algorithm. When writing the source code for this cryptocurrency, the equally unique programming language Chialisp was used.
Whether Chia will be able to displace Bitcoin, or at least take its rightful place among altcoins, is still anyone’s guess. But let's move directly to the main topic of our review and look at how to start mining the Chia coin.
At the time of writing the review, it had already entered the auction, so we will be able to calculate a very real and not hypothetical profit. The mining profitability calculator for Chia can be opened by following the link https://chiacalculator.com/.
XCH mining can be compared to farming. The miner downloads specialized software from the official project website https://www.chia.net/ru/ and conducts a “seed campaign” on his information storage devices.
Each sown sector is called a plot, which translated from English means “plot of land,” and its owner is called a “farmer.” To generate a new block, the system broadcasts a set of codes to farmers and each of them checks their area in search of a suitable hash amount. The more “seeded fields” you have, the higher the chances of closing the block. But at the same time, your hardware must be sufficiently productive, otherwise the process of sowing rafts will take a long time and you will constantly be ahead of farmers with more efficient “agricultural equipment.”
When using Proof of Time, you need to ensure that the period of broadcasting calls between blocks is as short as possible. After all, proof of time is implemented in practice using the Verifiable Delay Function or VDF. Cryptographic calculations take a certain period, but are verified instantly.
The key idea of Verifiable Delay Function is the need to carry out sequential computational operations on many parallel nodes, each of which is equivalent. At the same time, energy costs are reduced to a minimum. The fastest and most powerful network nodes will be called Timelords. The developers assume that there will not be very many such VDF servers, which will eliminate the appearance of controversial blocks. The fastest Time Lord will always finish first, closing the block and moving the chain forward, and competition between “Time Lords” will help maintain the decentralization of the network.
That is, unlike Bitcoin, which was initially mined on almost any dual-core CPU, the hardware requirements for Chia mining are initially quite high , and with the growing popularity of green coins, they will become even more serious. So, what do you need to assemble a farm?
Chia mining equipment
According to the developers, any user with a desktop computer, laptop, mobile phone or account on a corporate network can take part in XCH farming. You just need to install the necessary software and have enough free space to create at least one raft, and then you can find the hash amount to close the next block and get a reward. Purely theoretically, this is quite possible, but it happens very rarely.
Ready assembly for Chia mining
To receive a guaranteed income from Chia mining, you need:
- Quad-core processor with a clock frequency of 1.5 GHz;
- 2 GB RAM;
- Minimum 1TB hard drive.
It would seem that everything is very simple and inexpensive, but you are unlikely to earn anything from such an assembly. Here is one of the budget build options for Chia farming, presented on the Miningclubinfo forum:
- GIGABYTE B550 AORUS MASTER motherboard ;
- Processor AMD Ryzen 9 5900X ;
- Hard drive SEAGATE Ironwolf Pro ST16000NE000, 16 TB, HDD, SATA III, 3.5 ;
- Hard drive WD Purple WD82PURZ, 8 TB, HDD, SATA III, 3.5 ;
- SSD drive SAMSUNG 980 MZ-V8V1T0BW 1 TB, M.2 2280, PCI-E x4, NVMe ;
- Memory module PATRIOT Viper Steel PVS464G300C6K DDR4 - 2x 32GB 3000, DIMM, Ret 2 sticks of 32GB, frequency 3000MHz.
With this set of components you can start working. Although the total volume of hard drives is, of course, small and with a 1 TB SSD capacity, 32 GB of memory will be used ineffectively. This miner will soon have an urgent need for additional areas for “seeding”. Let's take a closer look at the iron selection process.
Selecting an SSD and HDD drive
In an XCH mining rig (this is the trading ticker for the Chia cryptocurrency), the most important element is the disk drive. Hard drives with a capacity of less than 1 TB should not even be considered . It is not recommended to purchase devices with a spindle speed lower than 7200 rpm. We need capacious and fast HDDs with a SATA3 interface. They are used directly to create rafts, each of which will be a standard size of 101.4Gib. The disks will be formatted with the NTFS, APFS, exFAT, ext4 file system. But the FAT system is not suitable for plotting.
SSD drives are used to create temporary files, from which they are then seeded. They have faster read/write speeds, which greatly improves your chances of being the first to find the next block. You can buy both SSDs with a SATA3 interface of any size (2.5 inches or M.2), and NVMe SSDs connected to M.2. But keep in mind that different M.2 connectors on the motherboard support different types of SSDs (both SATA and NVMe). Read the motherboard specification carefully so as not to throw money away .
There are also more expensive server drives on sale, with increased wear resistance, but for now we will not seriously consider them. It is unknown what the fate of this crypto project will be, so the costs of creating a farm are greatly overestimated. Also, pay attention to the recording method. It is best to take ordinary disks that work according to the CMR scenario. But drives using SMR are slower and less reliable .
The best choice is size 3.5. Disks for laptops of size 2.5 have worse mechanics, which means they have a shorter lifespan. You can still buy a 1Tb WD Purple HDD for 4,450 rubles. Larger capacity drives are already slowly being sold out.
As for the auxiliary SATA SSD drive, we advise gamers to leave models with QLC . The ideal option would be storage devices with MLC flash memory, but in order to save money, it is quite possible to use SSDs with TLC memory. An equally important component is the controller. Firstly, it must support a DRAM buffer, and secondly, it must withstand multiple data rewrites without failures. We can recommend SATA controllers Samsung, Silicon Motion (not XT), Marvell 88SS1074 .
If you decide to buy NVMe, then keep in mind that in this type of drive the controller gets quite hot and requires additional cooling. Otherwise, follow the same requirements as for SATA SSD. To maximize the life of your SSDs, it is strongly recommended that you do not fill them to more than 85% of their total capacity. Please keep this in mind when purchasing. And don’t forget to buy another additional small SSD on which the operating system will be installed. This is a mandatory requirement, otherwise mining will not start.
CPU
The Chia farm does not require an expensive gaming CPU. A stone operating at a frequency of 3 GHz and cooled by a regular boxed cooler is sufficient.
It must have at least 4 cores, preferably 6 (or maximum 8), and integrated graphics. Of course, you can connect a video card, but then you will take up a PCI-e slot, which could be useful in the future for connecting another hard drive. For example, Intel Core i5-9400F BOX
RAM
Install more memory, minimum 2 GB. But 16 GB is better, and serious farmers immediately install 32 GB. Two 16 GB DDR4 sticks with a frequency of 3200 MHz will be enough.
Motherboard
The most important thing when choosing a motherboard is support for SATA3 and USB 3.0. It should have as many ports as possible for connecting an HDD. Old boards from the secondary market will not work, buy modern ones. For example, MSI Z390-A Pro .
How computer resources are used when seeding a Chia raft
Monitoring resources when sowing Chia
Usage of computer resources when seeding Chia
Mostly the processor, RAM, and hard drive of the temporary directory are used. At different stages of creating a raft, different system resources are used to varying degrees.
Installing the official program
So, you decided to start mining the Chia token, assembled a farm and installed the OS. What's next? Now you need to download a complete copy of the blockchain. Go to the official website https://www.chia.net/ and click the green button “ Install Chia Blockchain ”.
Direct link to download the client for Windows: https://download.chia.net/latest/Setup-Win64.exe
You will see the project page on the Github service, where you can download a complete node compatible with your operating system. We must give credit to Chia’s team, they are extremely efficient. The coin appeared quite recently, and software has already been released for almost all popular axes.
Full nodes available for:
- Windows (64bit);
- macOS;
- Ubuntu/Debian;
- CentOS/Red Hat/Fedora;
- Raspberry Pi 4;
- Docker;
- FreeBSD Install;
- Ubuntu Binary Install;
- OpenBSD Install.
For advanced users, there is special software for running a Chia node in a virtual environment, for example, on an Amazon cloud server.
To do this, we have prepared detailed instructions: How to mine Chia cryptocurrency on the Amazon AWS cloud computing platform?
Since Chia's code signing certificate is new, the software will be classified as "unsecure". You will have to force save the download, and when you run the installer, you will need to select "Additional information" and " Run anyway ".
A little history
When I wrote that article, it turned out that it was the first on the Russian-language Internet about how to properly mine chia. Dozens of people wrote to me in the comments asking me to write more about how to mine chia. And I wrote a more detailed article about this on April 20: Chia Mining Step-by-Step Guide. And my second article about chia turned out to be the very first in RuNet. Both of these articles were in first place for a long time in Yandex and Google for the query “chia mining.” Now Yandex and Google have already kicked them out of the top (.
At the same time, I created the Chia FAQ telegram channel, then renamed it CHIA DREAM. 300 people registered in this channel in half a day, and on the third day there were already 1,700 subscribers.
Next, I rented a small server for chia mining for 21,000 per month and, after testing it, I already rented 4 large servers worth 219,000 rubles. I wrote in detail about server configurations in the article: How I rented 4 servers for 219 thousand rubles. for chia mining (on credit!).
A week ago I wrote in the channel that I wanted to create a mining company and created a separate closed telegram channel “Artel of Chia Miners” for those who want to invest. 40 people joined this channel, who together wanted to invest 7 million rubles in creating the company. Not bad, isn't it?
Now it's all history!
Setting up plotting
Plotting is divided into two stages: creating sections, or, to put it differently, plotting, and processing sections. The first step creates all your proof of free space by building seven cryptographic hash tables and storing them in a temporary directory.
Then this data is sorted and packaged in a temporary directory and after that the data set is moved to its final destination on the HDD.
Selecting the size of the raft (section)
First you need to choose a size. The optimal option is k32, it will take 108.8 GB, and to create it you will need 256.6 GB of temporary space on the SSD. Specify the number of rafts based on the size of one area and the volume of storage tanks.
You can configure your hardware for maximum performance using the “Advanced Settings” section. To reduce the load on RAM, you can add more “bins”, that is, split the temporary file into a larger number of fragments. But keep in mind that the more baskets, the greater the load on the SSD. Therefore, if you have 32 GB of RAM, it is better to reduce the number of baskets, on the contrary, by reducing the number of I/O requests for temporary files.
The number of processor threads depends on the number of simultaneously created rafts. 1 stream is needed for 1 area. It is better not to touch the “Disable bit field” item. Reverse bitfield sorting is faster and can save up to 12% of total writes, although it requires more RAM. “Queue name” can also be omitted. But when errors appear in the plotting log, the name of the queue will help you figure out exactly when the failure occurred.
Once everything is configured, click “ Create site ” and the raft creation process will start. It can last from 4 to 12 hours, depending on the parameters of your equipment.
Parallel seeding
To get the maximum number of TB per day, you can plot several graphs in parallel. The main thing is to correctly calculate the capabilities of your farm, based on the size of the plots, space for temporary files, the number of processor threads and the amount of RAM.
How to install Chia wallet
After downloading, an .exe file will appear that you need to run. Installing and launching the program takes a long time because the Chia wallet is initially synchronized and all system transactions are read. At this stage, you can immediately switch the language to one you understand.
Once the installation of this program is completed, a Chia wallet address will be created automatically. It can be seen on the “Wallets” or “Wallet” tab.
It can already be used to receive transactions in the system; there is no need to create a Chia wallet separately.
Please note that in the same tab there is a mnemonic phrase of 24 words. It must be written down somewhere, which will allow you to restore your Chia wallet after a hardware failure. Next time, it will be enough to launch the program on any device, go to the same tab, and enter the old mnemonic phrase there. Immediately after this, everything will be restored and every token you earned will be in place.
Popular mistakes
- Let's talk about the pitfalls that inexperienced users most often stumble upon.
- Don't forget to set the power supply to maximum performance. If the computer goes into hibernation, the process will have to start again. The same goes for power outages.
- The path to the storage and temporary folder cannot be written in Cyrillic, the program only understands the Latin font.
- Be sure to create a separate directory on the disk, you can’t just write Disk C, the program won’t understand you
- Always run the Chia node as administrator.
If a failure occurs, first try restarting the plotting, and if that doesn’t help, delete the program folder in Windows/Users and then start the process again.
We have listed the simplest mistakes made by novice miners; let’s move on to more complex cases.
RuntimeError: Unknown exception error occurs for various reasons. It can be:
- Russian letters to indicate the path to the directory.
- Placing a folder for temporary files on the same disk with the operating system.
- Incorrect distribution of iron resources.
An error often occurs due to insufficient memory on the plotting disk. Carefully calculate the allowed number of rafts, otherwise you may see the message RuntimeError: bad allocation . On a 1TB SSD, you can create a maximum of 3 sections at a time.
If you did not listen to our recommendations and still checked the “Disable bitfield field” checkbox, then it is quite possible that the error Caught plotting error: Bitfield plotting not supported by CPU . Uncheck this box and everything will be fine.
It is recommended to check finished sections for integrity using PowerShell. Open the program and specify: C:\Users\ “Username” \AppData\Local\chia-blockchain\app-1.1.2\resources\app.asar.unpacked\daemon\
And then rewrite the path, indicating the drive and name of the folder in which the generated rafts are located. If there are no errors, everything is in order, the “broken” area needs to be reseeded, otherwise it will not produce a harvest.
If there is no synchronization, try deleting all available connections in the program interface. They will automatically update and areas synchronized with the network will be highlighted in green. In principle, you can start creating new rafts before the synchronization of your node is completed. To speed it up, try opening port 8444 on your computer and your router.
Available exchanges for selling coins
As of May 12, 2021, Chia cryptocurrency can be exchanged on the following exchanges:
- Gate.io;
- OKEx;
- XT.COM;
- MXC.COM;
- BKEX;
- DigiFinex;
- LBank;
- AOFEX;
- Bibox.
The current rate, current exchange pairs and other information are available on the resource https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/chia-network/markets.
Prospects
In early May, Chia showed active price movement after Amazon announced access to cloud mining on AWS. The mining industry as a whole is seeing a shift towards sustainability, and Chia is another step in that direction. However, from the point of view of miners, this is primarily an opportunity for affordable home income.
The coin has been actively discussed since the start of farming, and after entering the exchanges it immediately began to experience ups and downs. Investors are hoping big profits will lead to sustained price increases.
The forecast on the DigitalCoinPrice website signals that the price of the XCH coin will reach $2,314 by the end of 2022.
The Market Realist website notes that there are many that can support the rise in the price of the token. For example, quotes on various exchanges and brokerage platforms, especially Binance. In addition, Chia Network plans to become a public company, which could give the token more opportunities and increase its rate.
XCH has an optimistic price forecast also because institutional miners are partially switching to mining this coin. An example is iMD Companies, which stated that it is going all-in on Chia Coin. The CEO of this organization believes that Chia is here to stay and will be used at a global financial level.
Profitability and payback
Well, is the game worth the candle? How profitable is the mining of this cryptocurrency? Recently, the portal Overloker.ru published an article entitled: “It’s too late to mine Chia Coin.” The author calculated that to assemble a Chia mining farm that will bring in 1 coin in 18 hours, a farmer must spend at least 1,200,000 rubles or $16,263 at the current exchange rate.
At the same time, he assumed that one coin would cost $30. However, on May 12, one Chia token was sold on OKEx for $1,069, and a couple of days before that the rate was even higher. The truth is that the complexity of mining is constantly growing, and at the time of writing, such a farm will mine one coin every three days. But all the same, so far the profitability is beyond praise.
Small farmers have already begun to form pools. Find available ones at https://miningpoolstats.stream/chia.
Calculator
The Chia mining calculator https://chiacalculator.com/ will help you calculate your current profit. You just need to pull the slider and set the number of rafts you are seeding to see the approximate time frame in which you can earn one coin.
Preface.
The Chia blockchain was launched last month, and it is in the testing stage, Chia coins cannot be bought anywhere, at the moment they can only be mined (farmed).
Here is a news article about Chia Coin.
The Chia Coin blockchain was created by BitTorrent developer Bram Cohen with the goal of eliminating the shortcomings of Bitcoin and even replacing it in the future. For now the Bitcoin network is not decentralized, because most of the power is concentrated around a small group of people, mainly of Chinese nationality.
Presumably, Chia Coin can be mined even on smartphones and tablets with a large amount of built-in NAND storage (built-in storage, or additional SDcard).
Where is the best place to exchange cryptocurrency? TOP 5 exchanges
For a safe and convenient purchase of cryptocurrencies with a minimum commission, we have prepared a rating of the most reliable and popular cryptocurrency exchanges that support deposits and withdrawals of funds in rubles, hryvnias, dollars and euros .
The reliability of the site is primarily determined by the trading volume and the number of users. By all key metrics, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world is Binance. Binance is also the most popular crypto exchange in Russia and the CIS, since it has the largest cash turnover and supports transfers in rubles from Visa/MasterCard and payment systems QIWI, Advcash, Payeer .
Especially for beginners, we have prepared a detailed guide: How to buy Bitcoin on a crypto exchange for rubles?
Rating of cryptocurrency exchanges:
| # | Exchange: | Website: | Grade: |
| 1 | Binance (Editor's Choice) | https://binance.com | 9.7 |
| 2 | Bybit | https://bybit.com | 7.5 |
| 3 | OKEx | https://okex.com | 7.1 |
| 4 | Exmo | https://exmo.me | 6.9 |
| 5 | Huobi | https://huobi.com | 6.5 |
The criteria by which the rating is given in our rating of crypto exchanges:
- Reliability of operation
- stable access to all functions of the platform, including uninterrupted trading, deposits and withdrawals of funds, as well as the period of operation on the market and daily trading volume. - Commissions – the amount of commission for trading operations within the platform and withdrawal of assets.
- Reviews and support – we analyze user reviews and the quality of technical support.
- Interface convenience – we evaluate the functionality and intuitiveness of the interface, possible errors and failures when working with the exchange.
- Features of the platform are the presence of additional features - futures, options, staking, etc.
- The final score is the average number of points for all indicators, determines the place in the ranking.
