Chia Network AMA - security, community training, ASIC

Chia's credibility is growing: changes in pre-farm security

The first change concerns the so-called Chia pre-farm. What is it? Let's take Bitcoin, which naturally has a limited supply. In this case, it was established that there will be 21 million BTC, and not a single one more. With the activity of miners, additional coins of this cryptocurrency are "born" and enter the market. Chia approached this differently. They created the so-called Strategic Reserve, also known as the pre-farm. Simply put, Chia Network Inc created 21 million XCH "from the top" and placed them in the first block of their blockchain, becoming the owner of all these coins. Originally, they were stored in two different locations, and now they have been moved to four proprietary wallets over which Chia Network Inc has full control (known as custody wallets). This was done to increase the security layer of the coins in the pre-farm. Two wallets were placed in North America, and the remaining ones in Europe. All four are distributed on completely disconnected from the network computers called Hardware Security Modules (HSMs). These changes were a response to concerns of the network participants regarding the security of the pre-farm. The introduced security measures are of corporate-class, which was previously unheard of in the world of cryptocurrencies. From an average user's perspective, this may be purely informative, but it's essential to remember that such actions make Chia more reliable.

Meetings and training for the community

During the live stream, a new team member responsible for developer relations was also introduced. They expressed their willingness to organize meetings for programmers to encourage the community to create their own solutions to improve the Chia project. Independent developers undoubtedly want to contribute to the project, but the truth is that their capabilities are limited. Officially released documentation is one thing, but meetings and training with someone who has a deeper insight into the project would open the door to many potential improvements in the project. Chia Network Inc cannot realize all the ideas of the community, so the more people can contribute, the better.

Political considerations: distributed ASIC-based security

There was also a mention of another layer of security that is expected to become part of the blockchain soon, namely solutions based on ASIC technology. Not only will they be four times faster than the solutions they are supposed to replace, but they will also be distributed in many geographical locations, which will have advantages not only in terms of security but also in political matters. What does this mean? Chia Network Inc wants to proactively avoid a situation where, for example, one country shouts at another, "How come most of the Chia nodes are in your country?!". If one of the characteristics of a cryptocurrency is the equality of all network participants, then an even distribution of nodes among countries is somewhat complementary to this principle.

As we can see, the future of the Chia project looks promising. Continuously improved security, attention to community relations, and aspects that go beyond technical issues are just some of the factors that may indicate that Chia has the potential to secure its place on the crypto-podium.