I realize the title alone is quite provocative and perhaps gives the vibe of clickbait, but considering I've written very positive things about Chia previously I figured it wouldn't be right if I didn't share this new information that made me at least start to look at the project in a different light.
I want to start off by saying that my suspicions regarding the Chia project has nothing to do with the method it is being mined - Proof of Space. For those of you who are uninitiated, instead of traditional GPU mining Chia uses HDD storage space where something called "plotting" is conducted. Having a larger number of completed plots allows you to have a greater possibility to get Chia coin. This was proposed as a sort of GPU mining killer as the extensive electricity use of Bitcoin has been under scrutiny for years.
While the enviromental impact on this has been debated as it doesn't consume as much electricity as GPU mining and was proposed as a "green" alternative mining, the number of HDD used pokes holes in that argument, as many try to speed up the time it takes to create plots by using a SSD drive for plotting and then storing the finished plots on HDD, something which eventually wears out the drives, no doubt impacting the enviroment through extensive wear and tear of storage devices, resulting in a greater consumption.
The innovation of Chia is however groundbreaking in that it has pushed the boundairies of what can be achieved through these kinds of blockchain technologies no doubt, but my critique on Chia involves its extensive pre-mine. While fairly launched cryptocurrencies are not always the norm as the development team need some incentives to work, Chias pre-mine was so extensive that 86% of all Chia in existance were pre-mined one year into the existance of the coin. This alone is unacceptable in my eyes as this extensive pre-mine is no way near possible to justify by saying the coin needs stabilization.
There will need to be a lot of amends the development team has to do in order to win back the trust of the Chia users after this, but hopefully they will consider burning the pre-mine since the price itself is not unstable by todays standards.
Further difficulties with Chia is that many are talking about how its "too late" to get into the project as the ones rewarded are the ones who already have plots rather than the ones starting plotting now as the difficulty has increased. This could be compared to how hopeless mining Bitcoin has become after all the huge ASIIC farms moved in and made the difficulty impossible for the average miner.
Other articles about things that are more direct scams:
While I do believe Chia has a lot to answer for, I don't believe they are a scam on the same level as those mentioned in the articles.
Hopefully Chia will solve these issues in the future. If not, there is a fork (or perhaps more accurately described as a clone) called "Chives"
Chives is a sister project to the Ravencoin copy Hivecoin which I personally have a soft spot for due to liking Ravencoin and loving easily minable coins.
Do you think the Chia pre-mine is justifiable? Let me know in the comments below!