About Chia Network

Chia Network is a blockchain and smart-transaction platform aiming to improve the global financial and payment system. Chia — the native token of Chia Network that goes by the ticker XCH — is used for transactions as well as reward incentives for users.

Motivated by Bitcoin's energy-intensive proof-of-work consensus mechanism, Chia Network aims to bring a "green" cryptocurrency to promote a sustainable environment. The protocol achieves its goal by using an energy-friendly consensus called "Proof of Space and Time."

Proof of Space allocates unused hard drive space for storage use. Users who plot unused space on their hard drive are called farmers, and they participate in the block production in the Chia Network. Compared to PoW, Proof of Space uses hard drive space for block production and saves massive electricity costs. The protocol also complements Proof of Space with Proof of Time — ensuring a consistent block time and improving the overall security of blockchain.

Chia Network recently enabled trading and transaction services for XCH. Chia Network Inc. — the company behind the protocol — aims to go public by registering a U.S. SEC-compliant equity initial public offering. If the public listing is successful, the company believes that XCH will be less volatile than other cryptocurrencies, as the price of XCH on digital exchanges will mirror the company's share price in stock exchanges.

Chia Network launched its mainnet in March 2021. Going forward, the protocol aims to gain support from point of sale systems and global consumer payment applications. The protocol plans to facilitate integration among wallet providers, exchanges and merchant processing partners.

XCH price and tokenomics

Chia Network minted an initial 21 million XCH at the mainnet launch. The initial supply is kept under Chia Network's Strategic Reserve and is used to make long-term investments in the Chia ecosystem.

Users can mint new XCH via farming rewards. According to the XCH emission schedule, Chia Network offers farming rewards of 64 XCH every 10 minutes. For the first 12 years, the farming rewards will be halved at the end of every third year. From year 13 onward, the farming rewards will remain constant at 4 XCH every 10 minutes.

As Chia Network Inc. intends to become a listed company on an American stock exchange, the company may issue XCH as dividends and offer XCH as share buybacks to shareholders.

About the founders

Chia Network was founded by Bram Cohen, the creator of BitTorrent. Credited as president and chief operating officer of Chia Network is Gene Hoffman, who previously led Emusic.com and Vindicia. Mitch Edwards is the chief financial officer of Chia Network and previously served as an acting chief executive officer at Overstock.com.

Chia Network Inc. is the company behind Chia Network. In March 2018, the company raised $3.4 million during a seed funding round from notable investors such as Andreessen Horowitz. In August 2020, the company raised another $5 million in equity in a funding round led by Slow Ventures.