FAQ
General
What are harvesters, farmers, full nodes, and timelords?
You can read about each of them and the architecture in the Architecture Overview page. The Consensus Intro page is the most current documentation, however.
What is a proof of space?
A proof of space is a proof that a farmer has allocated a portion of their storage in a way that is very difficult to create in real-time but efficient to pre-compute and store on a hard drive. The Chia Proof of Space Construction document goes deeply into the math and implementation considerations to mitigate Hellman's Time - Memory tradeoff problem. A plot is a large set of proofs of space. A harvester can harvest multiple plots on the same machine. A farmer can then control multiple harvesters across many machines to manage the whole "farm".
Farming uses substantially less electricity than Proof of Work for the same unit of security. You can learn more at chiapower.org.
What is a VDF/proof of time?
A VDF, also known as a proof of time, is a sequential operation that takes a prescribed amount of time to compute (and which cannot be accelerated by parallelism) and which produces an accompanying proof whose result may be quickly verified. This must be done in a group, for which Chia uses ideal class groups. You can learn about them in our class group document. Timelords usually run three VDFs at a time for the three internal blockchains of the Chia blockchain. They run as vdf_client
processes.
What is a genesis challenge?
A genesis challenge is the first VDF challenge on a network that uses the Proof of Space and Time consensus. For more info about the genesis challenge for Chia's mainnet, see the consensus section of this website. For more info about the genesis challenge for Chia's mainnet, see the consensus section of this website.
What is XCH, TXCH, and mojos?
XCH is the currency symbol for Chia. TXCH is the currency symbol currently being used for testnet chias. TXCH has no value and is only used for testing purposes. Chias and testnet chias can be divided up to 12 decimal places (trillionths). The smallest unit of chia, a trillionth of a chia, is called a mojo, as a tribute to Mojo Nation, a decentralized file storage platform created in the early 2000s by Zooko Wilcox, Bram Cohen, and others.
Chia vs XCH vs mojo vs chia
- Chia - uppercase Chia depending on context, this can refer to Chia Network the company, the Chia software (Chia client), or the Chia blockchain.
- XCH - refers to the Chia token, XCH.
- mojo - a trillionth of an XCH.
- chia - lowercase chia refers to the Chia token, XCH. Similarly, mojos are lowercase. Similarly, mojos are lowercase.
How do I sign up for the Chia email newsletter?
You can sign up for the Chia email newsletter by following this link.
You can select either General Chia News or Developers News or both to receive emails about those topics.
What are the rules and guidelines around using Chia's trademarks and copyrighted materials on my own site or project?
Chia, like all companies, has an obligation to protect and enforce its Trademarks and Copyrights in the relevant jurisdictions. We do this both to ensure that we properly maintain our own responsible use of them, as well as to prevent bad actors from attempting to leverage Chia’s property in an effort to scam the ecosystem or cause other harm. That said, we do want to make it possible for people to talk about Chia, and build tools and platforms that support it’s growth openly. To this effect we have several guidelines that we hope will help you better understand some “Do’s and Don’ts” as you go about this. (And if you are ever unsure, you are always welcome to email us at [email protected] with questions about this subject!)
How do I contact Chia with more questions?
You can email us at [email protected] or join us on Discord.
Please note that for support with Chia, we do not offer 1:1 direct support. All support is provided via our discord #support channel. All support is provided via our discord #support channel.
Will the average person be able to use Chia as a payment instrument?
Our hope is that, over time, Chia will be supported by point of sale systems and consumer payment apps all over the world. For example, if you pay for a coffee at Tully’s in England with your GrabPay app from Thailand, it should “just work” without you needing to know it was paid in Chia. For example, if you pay for a coffee at Tully’s in England with your GrabPay app from Thailand, it should “just work” without you needing to know it was paid in Chia.
Or, for example, if services like Venmo or Cash App aren’t available where you live, using Chia will be far less of a hassle than executing a slow and expensive wire transfer. Using legacy banking to send and convert cash across borders is cumbersome, slow and expensive, and while alternative money transfer services might be faster, they’re not cheap: Western Union can charge upwards of 10% in transfer fees. Using legacy banking to send and convert cash across borders is cumbersome, slow and expensive, and while alternative money transfer services might be faster, they’re not cheap: Western Union can charge upwards of 10% in transfer fees.
The technology is completely open source and accessible, and anyone can build a new wallet without our permission or assistance. The technology is completely open source and accessible, and anyone can build a new wallet without our permission or assistance. However, we intend to help wallet, exchange, and merchant processing partners with support and integration services, joint marketing and lending for liquidity.
Why are you named Chia?
We’re green money! Our founder Bram Cohen started the company knowing he wanted to reduce the energy dependence of blockchains through a “green” option. The concept of farming seemed to be the best metaphor for filling unused disk space and monitoring it for winning sprouts. This led us to look for a grain that had the properties we wanted to embody with our new Network. The team wanted a name that would be short and impactful. Everyone was amused that it was also a grain associated with a whimsical meme. Chia Network was born.
Is the value of Chia going to be as volatile as other cryptocurrencies?
We believe that Chia coins will be less volatile than other cryptocurrencies due to the planned nature of our planned public company status which will allow financial institutions to hedge and leverage coins and equity. Initially, we expect Chia Network to largely be valued based upon the valuation of the chia that the Company will hold on its balance sheet. Movements in the price of chia on digital exchanges are likely to be mirrored by price movements in the price of our stock on a stock exchange. There will be more ways to get exposure to the success of chia than traditional blockchain projects. This will also allow the usual options and derivatives to our stock to be used as something like a synthetic derivative for the price of chia coins. Additionally, our ability to use the Chia Strategic Reserve may reduce some volatility of chia in the market.
Why does Chia run competitions?
We believe that more eyes on our code will only make it better. We believe that more eyes on our code will only make it better. For example, the results of our VDF Competition produced a VDF implementation whose runtime was 80% faster than our original implementation.
Where has Chia advanced the state of the art in applied cryptography?
Chia has created three new core inventions and advanced the interest in, and adoption of, a fourth. Firstly, Chia created the first intended for production BLS Signatures library. Second, Chia is the first production use of Verifiable Delay Functions, or VDFs. Third, Chia created Proof of Space and Time for Nakamoto consensus.
Finally, Chia is the first production use of class groups of unknown order which has spawned significant new research into their applicability to cryptography.
Does Chia use Bitcoin's code?
No. No. Chia is written entirely from scratch with a custom form of Lisp called Chialisp.
Chia also advanced applied cryptography as described above.
Isn't Bitcoin good enough?
When Bitcoin was developed, it was not foreseen that specialized hardware could vastly outperform the computers that everyone owns. What was intended to be a decentralized network is now controlled by a small number of miners with access to chip fabrication plants and wholesale electricity purchasing (or worse). The miners who currently control the Bitcoin Network feel they have a competitive advantage as is and oppose changing the protocol even when it’s clear that it should be changed. Chia has had ten years to study the new digital money ecosystem and believes we can make cryptocurrency more decentralized, more secure, and easier to use. What was intended to be a decentralized network is now controlled by a small number of miners with access to chip fabrication plants and wholesale electricity purchasing (or worse). The miners who currently control the Bitcoin Network feel they have a competitive advantage as is and oppose changing the protocol even when it’s clear that it should be changed. Chia has had ten years to study the new digital money ecosystem and believes we can make cryptocurrency more decentralized, more secure, and easier to use.
What is Chia's inflation?
After the Chia pre-farm, Chia offers farming rewards of 64 chia every 10 minutes. Over the first 12 years the farming rewards will be halved at the end of each 3rd year. From year 13 to infinity, the rewards will remain constant at 4 chia every 10 minutes leading to ever decreasing inflation rates. Chia’s inflation falls through the 0.50% rate 22 years after mainnet launch. More information can be found in our halving schedule Over the first 12 years the farming rewards will be halved at the end of each 3rd year. From year 13 to infinity, the rewards will remain constant at 4 chia every 10 minutes leading to ever decreasing inflation rates. Chia’s inflation falls through the 0.50% rate 22 years after mainnet launch. More information can be found in our halving schedule
Where is the Chia source code?
The Chia Blockchain comes together from a few different repositories:
Repository | Contents |
---|---|
chia-blockchain | Consensus code, networking, and reference Chialisp implementations. |
chia-blockchain-gui | An Electron/React graphical user interface to the plotter, node, and wallets. |
clvm | Chialisp Virtual Machine in Python |
clvm-rs | Chialisp Virtual Machine in Rust for security and performance. |
chiapos | Creating plots and verifying Proofs of Space. |
chiavdf | Proofs of time/VDFs and Timelords. |
bls-signatures | IETF standard BLS-12-381 signature scheme. |
clvm_tools | Tools for Chialisp and CLVM. |
Chia Network Organization | Contains all of the public Chia repos released by Chia Network |
When did Chia launch mainnet?
Chia launched mainnet on March 19, 2021. Chia launched mainnet on March 19, 2021. You can follow along with code updates across our many repositories outlined here
What is the Chia Strategic Reserve?
Chia has a novel business model to both, lower volatility of the coin and increase adoption. By loaning Chia and managing the interest rates of those loans as well as other tools like buying our stock with chia coins, we hope to lower the quarter to quarter volatility of the coin. To drive adoption, we intend to loan Chia to Global 5000 companies who will use it to pay their international vendors quickly, less expensively, and more securely. We also intend to use the strategic reserve to aid development and adoption. We plan to do things like invest in promising startups in the Chia ecosystem, potentially increase farming rewards during limited periods of time to spur additional farming, and fund corporations paying 105% of the value of their international payables in Chia instead of fiat currency.
Chia Network Inc created 21 million chia at mainnet launch. This is known as the Strategic Reserve. For details on the Company’s plans for the Strategic Reserve, see page 20 of the Business Whitepaper. This is known as the Strategic Reserve. For details on the Company’s plans for the Strategic Reserve, see page 20 of the Business Whitepaper.
Did Chia have an ICO?
No. No. Chia did not have and is not planning an ICO. Instead, our goal is to take the company’s equity public on an American stock exchange. This way, shareholders can share risk and return with management with transparency and disclosure while we use well understood corporate controls to make binding statements about how Chia Network intends to use the Strategic Reserve. The chia coin (XCH) is meant to be a useful payment instrument and not an investment opportunity. Chia intends to complete a fully compliant SEC registered equity IPO and will come to market as market-timing is amenable. Instead, our goal is to take the company’s equity public on an American stock exchange. This way, shareholders can share risk and return with management with transparency and disclosure while we use well understood corporate controls to make binding statements about how Chia Network intends to use the Strategic Reserve. The chia coin (XCH) is meant to be a useful payment instrument and not an investment opportunity. Chia intends to complete a fully compliant SEC registered equity IPO and will come to market as market-timing is amenable.
Why do I want to farm Chia?
You can farm Chia on the unused storage of your laptop, desktop, or corporate network and, in return, you have the chance to receive rewards in chia for helping secure the blockchain. Our software allows you to allocate a certain amount of unused disk space to create plots. Since the only resource intensive step is the initial plotting, once you download the Chia node software, your drives will be plotted in the background. Once plotting is complete, your computer will begin farming on your behalf and the software does all the work and tracks your rewards for you. Ongoing farming uses very little network bandwidth and almost no resources other than storage. By making the farming process available to anyone with unused disk space, we are moving towards our goal of a truly decentralized blockchain that will also serve as a cross subsidy to the storage and cloud industry. Visit our Farming Basics doc to get started. Our software allows you to allocate a certain amount of unused disk space to create plots. Since the only resource intensive step is the initial plotting, once you download the Chia node software, your drives will be plotted in the background. Once plotting is complete, your computer will begin farming on your behalf and the software does all the work and tracks your rewards for you. Ongoing farming uses very little network bandwidth and almost no resources other than storage. By making the farming process available to anyone with unused disk space, we are moving towards our goal of a truly decentralized blockchain that will also serve as a cross subsidy to the storage and cloud industry. Visit our Farming Basics doc to get started.
What is the Chia Network Strategy?
It is our belief that the blockchain industry is still led by developers. We intend to be the superior chain for deploying new applications and services as well as being the only serious and secure choice for applications like sovereign backed stable coins. The Chia Network business will be the first for profit company that manages a pre-farm and we intend to be the first publicly tradable “near ETF” cryptocurrency. We believe that - as Redhat and MySQL AB were necessary to drive corporate adoption of linux and mysql - we will be the source for support and training as sovereigns, financial institutions, and corporations look to use cryptocurrency in daily commerce. Finally, we believe that we will be able to leverage the storage ecosystem to drive adoption at corporations and end users as hard drive manufacturers and storage server sellers are likely to bundle space farming into their offerings.
Our Business Whitepaper is the definitive document on our strategy and approach.
Where can I learn more about the technical details of your consensus algorithm?
Details can be found on the Consensus page of our docs site.
Additionally, we maintain a list of academic papers and presentations about Chia on our references page.
What is the difference between mining and farming?
Mining requires expensive single use hardware that consumes exorbitant amounts of electricity. We are mitigating this problem through a fair, eco-friendly, and better blockchain that uses farming to leverage existing empty hard disk space distributed on nodes around the globe. Farming remains decentralized because anyone that has installed our software and has plots can win the next block. Mining requires expensive custom single use hardware and access to electricity at wholesale or better prices which only purpose built corporations can afford to mine. Farming is more decentralized because it relies on empty hard disk space and anyone with a mobile phone, laptop, or corporate network tends to have extra space not currently being used. Unlike mining, once you’re done farming your storage you can repurpose it to, for example, store your family photos.
For more information we have this blog article, or you can refer to our Farming and Plotting docs.
Where can I learn more about Chialisp?
Documentation can be found at Chialisp.com.
Why is Chia better?
Chia has a new innovative Nakamoto consensus algorithm, Proof of Space and Time, that removes the energy demands of Proof of Work from the system. Compared to other cryptocurrencies, Chia has significantly better security due to its more decentralized blockchain by Nakamoto Coefficient. Chia has a newly developed, innovative blockchain programming language called Chialisp.com, which is powerful, easy to audit, and secure. Chialisp is a superior on-chain smart transaction development environment that will unlock the security, transparency, and ease of use that cryptocurrencies promise. Chia is also adopting more modern cryptographic tools to enable richer smart transaction capabilities. Chia is taking a new and superior approach to funding, building, and supporting a blockchain via an eventually public, for-profit, open source development company that holds a pre-farm. Chia will use its Strategic Reserve to ease the volatility of the coin to mitigate bubbles and crashes and to drive adoption of chia.
What is Proof of Space and Time?
Chia developed a new innovative Nakamoto consensus algorithm, Proof of Space and Time, that eliminates the energy demands of Proof of Work while maintaining and in some cases enhancing security.
Proof of Space is a cryptographic technique where provers show that they allocate unused hard drive space for storage space. In order to be used as a consensus method, Proof of Space must be tied to Proof of Time. PoT ensures that block times have consistency in the time between them and increases the overall security of the blockchain. In order to be used as a consensus method, Proof of Space must be tied to Proof of Time. PoT ensures that block times have consistency in the time between them and increases the overall security of the blockchain.
What is Chialisp?
Chia has a newly developed, innovative blockchain programming language called Chialisp.com, which is powerful, easy to audit, and secure. Chialisp is a superior on-chain smart transaction development environment that will unlock the security, transparency, and ease of use that cryptocurrencies promise.
How does Proof of Space and Proof of Time work?
Proof of space can be thought of as a way to prove that you are keeping some storage unused on your hard-disk drive. Users of the Chia blockchain will “seed” unused space on their hard-disk drive by installing software which stores a collection of cryptographic numbers on the disk into “plots.” These users are called “farmers.” When the blockchain broadcasts a challenge for the next block, farmers can scan their plots to see if they have the hash that is closest to the challenge. A farmer’s probability of winning a block is the percentage of the total space that a farmer has compared to the entire network.
Proof of time requires a small period of time to pass between blocks. Proof of time is implemented by a Verifiable Delay Function that takes a certain amount of time to compute, but is very fast to verify. The key idea of a VDF is that they require sequential computation, and since having many parallel machines does not yield any benefit, electricity waste is minimized. There will likely be relatively few VDF servers (“Timelords”), as the fastest one will always finish first and it takes only one fast and fair Timelord on the network to complete a block and move the chain forward.
More information can be found in the Green Paper.
Where can I get answers to questions about running Chia?
You should first read through the Chia Introduction and docs FAQ, check out the wealth of information on our docs site and join us on discord in the #support or #general channels. We have also created a good summary of the basics of creating plots for Chia. We have also created a good summary of the basics of creating plots for Chia.
What is Chia?
Chia was incorporated in August of 2017 to develop an improved blockchain and smart transaction platform. We are building the Chia Network to improve the global financial and payments systems. Chia is the first enterprise-grade digital money. Chia was incorporated in August of 2017 to develop an improved blockchain and smart transaction platform. We are building the Chia Network to improve the global financial and payments systems. Chia is the first enterprise-grade digital money. Chia is using the first new Nakamoto consensus algorithm since Bitcoin. Called Proof of Space and Time, it was created by Bram Cohen, the best network protocol engineer alive and the inventor of BitTorrent. Chialisp is Chia’s new smart transaction programming language that is powerful, easy to audit, and secure. Reference smart transactions currently available are: atomic swaps, authorized payees, recoverable wallets, multisig wallets, and rate-limited wallets. Called Proof of Space and Time, it was created by Bram Cohen, the best network protocol engineer alive and the inventor of BitTorrent. Chialisp is Chia’s new smart transaction programming language that is powerful, easy to audit, and secure. Reference smart transactions currently available are: atomic swaps, authorized payees, recoverable wallets, multisig wallets, and rate-limited wallets.
What is the official Chia Network DID used for NFTs?
From time to time, Chia Network may release NFTs for a variety of reasons, such as our inaugural Chia Friends collection. Any NFTs minted by Chia Network will use our official DID: did:chia:19qf3g9876t0rkq7tfdkc28cxfy424yzanea29rkzylq89kped9hq3q7wd2
. Always check the provenance of an NFT purportedly to be official from us by looking for this DID as the minter. Fortunately, the majority of 3rd party platforms are designed to automatically show the Chia Network name and/or logo with these NFTs, but it never hurts to double check! Any NFTs minted by Chia Network will use our official DID: did:chia:19qf3g9876t0rkq7tfdkc28cxfy424yzanea29rkzylq89kped9hq3q7wd2
. Always check the provenance of an NFT purportedly to be official from us by looking for this DID as the minter. Fortunately, the majority of 3rd party platforms are designed to automatically show the Chia Network name and/or logo with these NFTs, but it never hurts to double check!
What makes Chia different from proof of work blockchains?
One core difference is the consensus algorithm called proof of space and proof of time. One core difference is the consensus algorithm called proof of space and proof of time. Basically as after the farmer creates a proof of space and a block, other computers called timelords add proofs of time to the block, which is a cryptographic proof that says that a certain amount of time (like 30 seconds) has passed. So instead of the whole world mining at the same time, only a few computers are "mining" for each proof of space that won. Since these are all cryptographic proofs, they cannot be forged or broken, making the consensus extremely secure. So instead of the whole world mining at the same time, only a few computers are "mining" for each proof of space that won. Since these are all cryptographic proofs, they cannot be forged or broken, making the consensus extremely secure.
In Chia, the only electricity required is the electricity to create the plots, and to run the hard drives, which is on the order of 10 watts to power, plus CPU power required to run a full node (which is very light). In comparison Blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum rely on huge farms of GPUs ( 300W each GPU), or ASICs (hundreds or thousands of watts per machine) to secure the blockchain. You can think of proof of work, as millions of computers "making" lottery tickets by using electricity, but each ticket can only be used once. Chia will use vastly less electricity as each plot will last over 5 years, and the only electricity required is the initial setup (plotting) and 10W for farming a drive.
For more information on the power utilization of Chia please read through the Chia power site.
What is Chia's burn address?
Mainnet Burn Address
xch1qqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqm6ks6e8mvy
Testnet Burn Address
txch1qqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqm6ksh7qddh
The Burn Address Explained
Chia addresses are puzzle hashes encoded into the "xch" prefix address format using the bech32m encoding scheme.
A traditional bech32m puzzle hash for a burn address is all zeros ending in "dead": 0x000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000dead
Converting this to an address, you end up with the burn address for mainnet: xch1qqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqm6ks6e8mvy
The testnet burn address is different: txch1qqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqm6ksh7qddh
You can use a puzzle hash converter to verify these burn addresses for yourself.
What is a burn address?
A burn address is an address whose private key (24 words) is unobtainable. There's no feasible way to determine the key for the above burn addresses. This means anything sent to a burn address is inaccessible forever, aka "burned." There's no feasible way to determine the key for the above burn addresses. This means anything sent to a burn address is inaccessible forever, aka "burned."
Thank you to r/chia member juraj for this information.
How does the transactions_generator work?
Some important changes went into the transactions_generator
code with the 2.1.0 hard fork. These changes are detailed in the Block Format page.
Plotting
What is k?
"k" is the space parameter that controls the size of plots. It is an integer for the following equation: plot_size_bytes = C1 * 2^k(k + C2)
where C1 is constant 1 and C2 is constant 2. In practice this means that final size is roughly ((2 * k) + 1) * (2 ** (k - 1)) * 0.78005
though that constant is estimated. You can examine the Space Required section of the Chia Proof of Space Construction document for the calculation of how much space is required for a given k.
Prior to Chia 2.0, the estimated space constant factor of 0.762 slightly incorrect. This led to a netspace calculation that was lower than the actual netspace. Prior to Chia 2.0, the estimated space constant factor of 0.762 slightly incorrect. This led to a netspace calculation that was lower than the actual netspace. To correct this, we have updated the constant factor to 0.78005.
How big are plot sizes (k)?
You can see some example plot sizes, times to plot, and working space needed based on various k's in these k size tables. Current working space needed for the default plotting options of a k=32 is 239 GiB and the final file is approximately 101.4 GiB. There is small natural variation in temp space needed and the final file size of each plot. Note that 239 GiB is 256.6 GB.
What k-size should you plot?
The minimum plot size is k=32. There is only one reason why you might want to plot larger than k=32: to maximize the total utilization of a given drive or space. A couple of k=33 plots with a majority of k=32 plots can reduce the amount of leftover unused space on a drive.
The reason k=32 was chosen as the minimum plot size was to prevent a short-range replotting attack, which is detailed in our consensus doc. The gist of the attack is that if someone can create a plot in less than ~30 seconds, they could create a new plot that passes the filter for each signage point, and then delete the new plot immediately afterward. This would effectively emulate storing 512 plots, thus turning Chia into PoW.
- Note that this attack does not create a winning plot; it only creates a plot that passes the filter.
This attack won't be economically feasible for some time, if ever. Two potential mitigation techniques are to lower the plot filter (thus reducing the benefit of the attack), or to increase the minimum plot size (thus making the attack more difficult to perform).
k=32 is expected to be the minimum plot size until at least 2026. If and when that size is increased, you will be given ample notice to replot before the change is made effective.
What is recommended for plotting?
We think you will want to use used Data Center grade NVMe SSD drives to create your plots. Regular consumer NVMe SSD generally has too low of a TBW rating. One of our community members keeps this handy SSD Endurance page up to date so you can compare various SSDs. You should never use your root/OS SSD to plot as it can lead to drive failure and loss of booting. You can plot directly to hard drives and get good results, especially if you plot in parallel to different drives. You can use non-root SSD over Thunderbolt 3 and migrate your plots off to whatever storage you want to keep them on long term. You could even load them on a Raspberry Pi 4 with outdated USB 2.0 drives attached and they will harvest and farm just fine. PC World offers this great background on current storage technologies but this graph gives you a quick view of why we recommend NVMe SSD:
Can I plot more than one plot at a time?
Yes, using either the GUI or CLI. Over the short run you have a bit more control of plotting using the CLI. You can read the Installation page to learn more. You may have better results if you stagger the start time of parallel plotting processes depending on your hardware setup.
Can I make plots on one machine and move it to another machine?
是的。 The Moving Plots page gives you the details. You may also want to consider running a remote harvester. You can also use the same private key set to plot on more than one machine at a time but be aware of the uPnP issues.
What is the secondary temp directory -2
, and how should I set it?
-2
is in use during phase 3 and 4. It is the file being built into the resulting .plot file. As it is done compressing tables during phase 3, it will move them into the .plot.2.tmp
file (-2
), and phase 4 will scan through the entire .plot.2.tmp
(-2
) file, and write table headers for easy access by the harvester. When phase 4 is done, if -2
= -d
, it will simply rename the .plot.2.tmp
to .plot
. If -2
!= -d
, it will copy the file into place, then rename, and finally remove the -2
file. The amount of writing is about 110% of the resulting .plot
file size. It is a setup dependent option - is your setup faster at moving the compressed tables into the .plot.2.tmp
file, and then scan through the entire file, and write table headers during phase 4 - and then copy to -d
(-2
= -t
) - or is it faster to send the compressed tables directly into the -d
(-2
= -d
) directory, and then in phase 4, scan through the entire file, and write table headers inside -d
(-2
= -d
) thereby skipping the final copy into place. The -2
directory can be set in the Advanced Options for Step 3 in the GUI.
My plotting attempt got "Caught plotting error: Not enough memory..."?
If you see something like Caught plotting error: Not enough memory for sort in memory. Need to sort X.XXGiB
then you need to either select more memory buffer or more buckets. More buckets require less memory but will create more temp files and more sporadic disk writing. You will almost always want to use 128 buckets and you should try increasing the RAM max usage/-b
to 4608MiB.
My plotting attempt ended with "RuntimeError: bad allocation"?
This is a RAM problem with your machine. It can be how your swap file is configured. It is often your overclock, or XMP settings and even can be a faulty RAM stick. Chia plotting is better than memtest at surfacing broken or mis-configured RAM.
Can I resume plotting if my computer or drive reboots or enters power save mode while plotting? ? ?
Unfortunately, resuming a plot is not supported. We suggest that you disable power saving mode - especially for external drives - and try to limit other possible causes of interruptions. Plotting a k=32 could take multiple hours, depending on your hardware, so these interruptions can be painful. They are also a part of why we don't recommend plotting plots larger than k=32 as each increment in k generally doubles the time to complete a single plot.
Do I have to be connected to the internet or synced to plot?
No. Plotting can be done entirely offline and needs nothing from the blockchain to complete. The only time you have to be online and synced is when you're farming so that you receive new challenges for the next blocks and transactions to include in a transaction block if you're lucky enough to win one of them and get the transaction fees. Note that one farmer winning is independent of other farmers winning at the same time. All farmers can "win" at nearly the same time. That is why sometimes there are 10 blocks in one minute, and sometimes there is only 1 block per minute, etc.
Is there any advantage in plotting larger k sizes?
No. As long as you plot at least k=32, those plots will be eligible to win on mainnet. In a decade or more, k=32 may become too small, but that's speculative. Usually the only reason to plot larger than k=32 is to optimize using all of the space on a given drive. For example, it may make sense to have two k=33's and the rest k=32 so that you only leave 10 GB free on a given drive.
Is the final size of the plotted space the only variable in how often I can win block rewards?
是的。
How do I know if my plots are OK?
Run chia plots check -n 30
to try 30 sample challenges for each plot. Each of your plots should return a number around 30, which means it found around 100% of the attempted proofs of space. If you're still worried try -n 100
as more random attempts will give you a more valid assessment that the plots is fine. It really is ok if your plot is within 80%-120%. If some of your plots are missing for some reason you may need to add the directory they are in to your config.yaml file. That can be done in the GUI with the MANAGE PLOT DIRECTORIES button or on the command line with chia plots add -d [directory]
.