Chia (XCH) is the native digital currency of the Chia Network.  Introduced in May 2021, Chia was designed by Bram Cohen, the creator of the peer-to-peer file-sharing system BitTorrent, as a decentralized blockchain to achieve greater energy efficiency than other crypto assets. 

Presented as the “green crypto,” XCH is created through a process dubbed “farming,” a more eco-friendly version of mining. Rather than creating coins through an energy-intensive process of solving complex equations through a traditional Proof-of-Work (PoW) model, Chia farmers harvest XCH through a “Proof-of-Space-and-Time" (PoSt) process intended to maximize storage space.

The point of the Chia PoSt process is to allow network participants to demonstrate that they have been collaboratively storing data over measured time periods. Under the Chia protocol, a farmer will initially expend energy creating "plots" on hard drives but will subsequently utilize the energy-efficient resource of drive space over the following years to participate in the consensus mechanism used to verify new entries on the Chia blockchain. In simple terms, this means that farmers will load up unused computer storage space with strings of digits used to validate transactions.

The protocol uses an enhanced, streamlined implementation of Bitcoin’s unspent transaction output (UTXO) model. These simplifications increase the flexibility and programmability of coins. Chia farmers are rewarded with two XCH per block for the initial three years as the incentive mechanism that supports a new Nakamoto consensus.

Critically, the Chia blockchain is friendly to small “mom & pop” home participants and was adopted by thousands of initial farmers upon launch in March of 2021. User adoption soared in May 2021 after Amazon began offering Chia mining in the Amazon Web Service’s cloud.

What is the price of XCH? 

On May 3, the network released, alongside their programming language Chialisp, 21 million of their green digital currency, XCH.

Volume in XCH has been light, as only a few exchanges thus far have listed it. After an initial trading price of nearly $1,600 per XCH, it fell to a low of $550 as of the end of the first week of May 2021. During the following week, as of May 16, 2021, XCH rose back near $1,300.

It could take up to 21 years for the supply to double via farming under the current protocol but with evolving technology, it is expected to be close to achieving that level within six years. A governing company oversees the network and holds a significant cache of pre-mined XCH. Chia intends to go public in the U.S. through an IPO. The company’s purpose in the listing is for the public shares to float in a manner like an exchange-traded fund tied to the value of the pre-mined cache.