NewScientist have published an article about a new cryptocurrency Chia and the impact it is having on the global supply chain of hard disk drives. The proof-of-space (aka proof-of-capacity) technology adopted by Chia is intended to be more environmentally friendly than the energy-intensive proof-of-work system used by Bitcoin. However, since miners of Chia are incentivised to compete for new coins by owning large amounts of free storage space , there has been a global surge in demand for hard disk drives and other storage components across the globe. The physical drives require energy to produce and run, which has brought into question how “green” the technology is.
Director of the Blockchain Technology Lab, Prof. Aggelos Kiayias, gave his opinion on the subject for the NewScientist article. In it he states, “given the current numbers, being merely less resource hungry compared to bitcoin is a rather low bar as far as ‘green’ technology is concerned.”
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