This guide will help you understand Chia coin related questions that you must know before buying your first machine to start plotting. The Chia wiki will help you understand following:
- What is Chia?
- What’s Chia blockchain plotting?
- What’s Chia blockchain farming?
- Chia Network Nodes
- Chia Coin wallet
- Chia coin mining
- The difference between Bitcoin vs Chia coin blockchain
When did Chia Network start?
Chia was initiated back in 2017 to ensure smart blockchain transactions and aimed at improving the global financial system and securing it. Chia or PoS and Time uses the latest Nakamoto consensus algorithm which is the only cryptocurrency which uses it after Bitcoin.
Bram Cohen the inventor of bitTorrent is also the inventor of Chia who is known as the most reliable network protocol engineer to-date.
Chia uses Chialisp, the new programming language developed for transaction processing which is auditable, reliable and very powerful.
What is the concept of proof of space and time for farming Chia coin?
PoS or Proof of Space is the mechanism used for Chia verification of plots which shows that a farmer allocated storage for farming Chia. To use it through the consensus algorithm cryptographic technique it’s necessary to tie it to PoT or Proof of Time. To know more about it in detail see Proof of Space Construction document. In which a plot is a big chunk of allocated disc space. Whereas a harvester is allowed to harvest as many plots as he wants on a single system. Not only that, a farmer is also allowed to manage tons of projects on several machines.
Later he can manage to ‘farm’ or look after them. Technically, farming uses way less amount of power. Learn more about Chia power management.
What is Verifiable Delay Functions VDF/proof of time?
VDF or Verifiable Delay Functions is the technique to impose delay on pseudorandom generators to prevent malicious attackers from influencing pseudorandom generator. The process requires a defined amount of time to compute that cannot be overcome or increased by parallel plotting and also results in a group to be quickly verified. To verify it, Chia uses ‘ideal class group.’
They are run as vdf_client by Timelords in a group of 3 internal Chia blockchains. Learn more about Class Group here.
Quick Tips and Tricks For Parallel Chia Plotting
What is XCH, TXCH, and Chia mojos?
All crypto currencies come with a symbol and Chia uses XCH for the symbol. While TXCH is used for testnet chias for just testing purposes. It has zero value. We can divide Chias into testnet chias into 12 decimal places. The smallest of them “trillionth Chia” is also called ‘mojo’ to tribute Zooko Wilcox and Bram Cohen’s Mojo Nation the file storage platform they created in early 2000s.
How Does Chia’s Proof of Space and Time Actually Work?
PoS ‘Proof of Space’ is the proof of space that you have kept unused space on the hard drive which Chia can use. The Chia Blockchain would “seed” it through installing a software or a collection of cryptographic numbers stored on the allocated space better known as ‘plots.’
The Chia blockchain starts a challenge to reward those farmers. The farmers or owners of plots will scan each plot to see if their plot has hash to win the block. However, the farmer with more ‘plots’ has more chances to win. So basically winning Chia coins is directly proportional to the allocated space.
PoT ‘Proof of Time’ is simply the time-period passed between the blocks which is executed by VDF which requires an amount of time to compute.
What is k-size plotting used for Chia?
“k” is the space parameter for the size of plots and is an integer for the following equation: plot_size_bytes = C1 * 2^k(k + C2) where C1 is constant 1 and C2 is constant 2. In practice this means that final size is roughly ((2 * k) + 1) * (2 ** (k – 1)) * 0.762 though that constant is roughly calculated. To know more about the Space Required section of the Chia Proof of Space Construction document to find out about exact space requirements k size tables. A k=32 plots is 239 GiB or 256.6 GBs.
What k-size is better to plot Chia?
One of the reasons that the farmers would go for plotting on more than k=32 space to utilize the space to its maximum. As if few K=33 plots are generated with the majority of K=32 they can utilize space well.
What is recommended for plotting?
There are few recommendations for plotting. One of which is never to use the root/OS SSD for plotting. You might face drive failure. However, using hard drives and plotting in parallel is beneficial and recommended. You can easily do plotting on new NVMe SSDs and also move the plots. Even Raspberry Pi 3 or 4 with USB 2.0 can be used. It’s all good and glorious. Once again it’s highly advisable to use the latest NVMe SSDs for plotting Chia instead of regular ones. You can see this document why SSDs are recommended for Chia plots.
Can I plot more chia plots than one plot at a time?
Yes you can. You can use GUI or CLI with Beta 19 in the beginning. A farmer can reap more benefits by controlling plots on CLI. Any Windows or Mac use can find CLI commands in the Quick Start Guide. Many things exclusively depend on the hardware quality.
Can I plot Chia on one machine and move it later to the other one?
Absolutely. Although we have discussed it above as well. You can see this wiki about moving chia plots. Not only that, if you want to remote harvest you use a remote harvester.
What is the secondary Chia ‘temp directory -2’, and how to set it?
Here is how the whole procedure of ‘temp directory -2’ gets through including phase 3 and 4 while plotting Chia:
- -2 comes during phases 3 and 4 it happens when the file gets built in the resulting .plot file.
- As soon as it finishes compressing tables in the phase 3, they get moved to the .plot.2.tmp file (-2)
- While during phase 4 they get scanned through the .plot.2.tmp (-2) file, and then the table headers get written to be accessed easily by the harvester.
- As this phase finishes, if -2 = -d, it gets renamed as .plot.2.tmp to .plot. If -2 != -d, first the file gets copied, renamed, and finally the -2 file gets removed. The 110% total writing takes place of the resulting .plot file space.
- It exclusively depends upon the speed of your hardware – So either your hardware is quick at moving the compressed tables into the .plot.2.tmp file, then it scans meticulously the whole file quickly, and create names for the table headers and finally copy to -d (-2 = -t) –
- Or your setup is even far superior-speed machine that can directly send compressed tables to -d (-2 = -d) directory, then scan as well as write table headers inside instead -d (-2 = -d) as well as skipping the final copy into place. You can set -2 directory in the Advanced Options for Step 3 in the GUI.
How to farm Chia with Bluepool – new Chia pool?
How to avoid the Chia plotting error “Caught plotting error: Not enough memory” for plotting?
If your Chia farming set up catches memory error:
- You might encounter the Chia plotting error Caught plotting error: Not enough memory for sort in memory. Need to sort X.XXGiB you must select or increase either of the memory buffers/buckets.
- However if you add more buckets they will require less memory but create tons of temp files. Every Chia plotter needs to add 128 buckets and also add more RAM max usage/-b to 4608MiB.
What to do if the Chia plotter encounters “RuntimeError: bad allocation”?
Many Chia plotters might face “RuntimeError: bad allocation” error. It’s a RAM related error. Not only that also could be your swap file configuration as well, overclock, XMP settings and even can be a faulty RAM stick. Chia plotting is better than memtest at surfacing broken or mis-configured RAM.
What to do if the computer/drive goes into power save or rebooted while Chia plotting?
At this moment it’s not possible to resume a plot but soon they are going to be. It’s better to disable power saving mode prior to starting the process and also check other things which might be the cause of it as well. On average a single K=32 plot takes 6-20 hours depending on the hardware. So if it takes more than 8 or 10 hours it is not a hassle.
That’s one of the reasons K=32 is the best size to begin with. It’s a win-win situation. If you’d move further in Ks the time is going to be a big issue.
Do I need to have an internet connection for plotting Chia?
No, technically, you can do all the plotting without an internet connection. However, for farming you need to have an internet connection. Because you’d receive challenges from Chia and might win a few blocks. Winning of one farmer is not related to the other winners. Many farmers can win at the same time.
That’s the reason sometimes 10 blocks are released in a single minute and other times just a single block gets released. .
How do I know if my Chia blockchain plots are working fine or missing?
You can check the status of your Chia plots by running chia plots check -n 30 which will give 30 different challenges to each plot and determine its health. When each plot is given 30 challenges it must return the same number which is a 100% proof of space. You can even try -n 100 because such a random number will generate more accurate results if returns them and that means your plot is working 100% fine. It’s even fine if it returns 80%-12%. On the contrary, if you find some plots missing you can add them from their directory where they exist to the config.yaml file. You can do them from the GUI with the MANAGE PLOT DIRECTORIES button or on the command with chia plots add -d [directory].
How to deal with UPnP Error in Chia blockchain?
Many people get confused over using UPnP for nodes’ settings. For Chia it’s not necessary. Whatever your outgoing Nodes are can easily establish connections without using UPnP.
However, if it’s disabled you need to enable UPnP manually from router settings. You can also use port forwarding that’s basically telling the router to forward all requests on port 12345 to 67890 for tesnet on your setup.
How to establish node connections if it shows ‘no connections?’
You need to follow these steps:
- You need to update the Chia software as it gets updates very often. You should keep an eye on the INSTALL page.
- There could be many reasons If the node shows zero connections.
(i) – No users available to connect with. You need to open port 8444 on the router to let others connect. Here is the complete guide that you can follow Resolving Sync Issues Port 8444
(ii) – The common port for Chia users is 8444 to connect with other peers. As soon as you change your port to 8444 your computer starts connecting with other machines on the Chia network which are also using Chia Software which leads to syncing with the network.
(iii) – As the Chia network is growing rapidly and so are the plotters and farmers. Many new Chia farmers even do not know how to set up port 8444. So if you are also having trouble connecting with the peers just port forward to port 8444.
Please note that, if nothing works and you want to check your router’s port 8444 just check it on portchecker.
- Simply disable the UPnP in the config file (~/.chia/mainnet/config/config.yaml) or by using the cli command chia configure -upnp false. Check all the nodes running on your Chia setup and make sure to close all the Chia related apps, check the firewall and antivirus as well. Any of these hurdles could be blocking it.
- Restart the Chia after Deleting and closing the peer DB which will be located at ~/.chia/mainnet/db/peer_table_node.sqlite.
- First edit ~/.chia/mainnet/config/config.yaml, then search for weight_proof_timeout and increase the value from 180 to 400. However, in some cases the value might be absent which you need to add from full_node section.
Please note that you need to maintain your patience as it’d take several hours to sync and a few minutes to start getting peers.
How to deal with the Node “Not Synced” issue in Chia plotting?
Most of the time the system clock causes the display to be “Not synced.” All you need to do is to set the clock at the exact time. Make sure the time you have set is absolutely correct.
How to find out if I am farming Chia correctly or not?
Check out the Farm page in the GUI to see whether your plots are farmed or not. You can check in the Last Attempted Proof section all the challenges and proof attempts. Generally, the farmers would not find proofs worth sending to the Chia network mainly due to plot filter. Here are the things you should check:
- Check GUI for farmed plots
- Check Last Attempted Proof Section for challenges and attempts
- Check Farm view for Total Size of Plots and the real space used, average time it takes to win blocks and proper nodes syncing
- Check the Full Node page in the GUI on the cli, do chia show -s -c.
Does my internet speed matter for responding to challenges or winning blocks?
Not at all. That’s a totally different phenomenon. You can respond to any challenge within 30 seconds which is enough.
Can someone ever win XCH on the mainnet with 10 TB?
The latest Nakamoto consensus algorithm throws 4608 chances on a single day to win 2 TXCH in Beta 27 and XCH on mainnet. A farmer with 10TB can win ~0.46 TXCH per day from 200PB storage space on the mainnet. Mathematically .010 PB/200 PB * 4608 * 2 = 0.46. That also means if you stand for long you get more chances to win every 4-5 days a week.
Why did not my Chia plot pass through the Chia plot filter?
A plot basically computed by farmers depends on three things: signage, plot ID and sub-slot challenge. All these get hashed together to form the plot filter bits. These plot filter bits start with 9 zeroes to pass through for signage and further process. For a single signage point 511/512 of total proofs (there are 4608 * 2 or 9216 total signage points) get disqualified on the network each day. If we calculate this each plot is required to pass the filter a total of 18 times.
Best Proof of Space – Once the plot passes through the plot filter it competes against all other passed plots for the signage point for the best proof of space. So if the plot then wins the best proof of space it can get rewarded. However, the chances to win the best proof of space depends more importantly on the availability of total size of plots on your farm.
Chia internal file errors – Any Chia plot that passes the filter and does not have any file errors becomes eligible for the best proof of space competition against others. However, moving the filter passed Chia plots to other directories does not affect its chances of winning.
Look up Time – You should keep the speed below 5 seconds while passing the plot filter. If a farmer wins a reward then the drive needs to perform even more lookups.
How to join a Chia XCH farming pool?
Chia farming pools are not available yet. Bram Cohen announced on twitter they’d be made available soon.
Check out the recent video shared by Bram Cohen on Twitter about Chia Network Pool System
A presentation on status and plans for chia pooling protocol
Should a winning Chia plot be deleted on mainnet after winning?
There are chances that an attacker who can also coordinate N_deep might force the winner to rewrite the transaction block. Although the consensus algorithm is very smart to quell such attackers, the plotter would just need to replot in excess of IPB farm size. And if a plotter is smaller than that would not be easy to hunt and could easily keep plotting and winning. We are just telling you the rare case scenario and even its chances are next to impossible.
Very soon the software would take care of that whole process that we just discussed to kick start the plotting and also carry out remote plotting if the farmer’s current set up is not up to the task.
Please Note that deletion of an already won plot would always be to the discretion of the Chia farmer.
Do Chia plots “wear out, go bad, become useless”over time?
The answer to all these questions is “No.” Nothing happens to Chia plots overtime. Here are the reasons you might need to replot:
- In case of joining Chia open pools. However, you can distinguish the plots for contesting in pools in this case you might not have to worry about replotting.
- If the speed of your setup becomes so advanced that the K value milestone becomes null and void (e.g., k=32 due to excessive plotting speed they might get banned and the Chia network might force farmers to replot them with k≧33). The fun fact is k=32 would not become obsolete at least not before 2026-2031.
How to conduct Chia Network transactions?
The Wallets page in the GUI has your receiving address and also provides you with an interface to carry out Chia fund transfers. You can also apply to get a new Wallet if you want to change it as the funds are based in HD Keys.
You’d see increasing functional availability on the command which you can check on chia wallet -h. There are tons of features available for coloured coins, and several trade offers. You can also get a receive address on the cli with chia keys show.
What is the Chia Coin XCH model based on?
The chia coin UTXO is technically a Bitcoin style transaction model that can also be used for Chia. The Chia wallet is designed to keep the record of a set of coins in XCH amount. To concede transactions you’d need to spend the whole amount and divide it into coin additions or outputs. You and receive both get the piece of the transacted amount. As the change would go to a new address it would not be available for us to see on Chia explorer but it will be tracked and included in the balance.
Technically every Chia block is a list either to be removed (spend) or add (create.) The block explorer does not show transactions because they are not conceded in the Chia blockchain.
How Much Is Chia Coin Worth?
What are the HD Keys in a Chia coin wallet?
Hierarchical Deterministic or HD keys in the Chia wallet are the public key/private key schemes in which a private key comes with innumerable public keys. That’s how the Chia wallet receives addresses. That transacted amount can become spendable with that single private key.
How many confirmations does a Chia miner need to trust a Chia transaction?
Chia consensus uses correlated randomness ( Proof-of-Stake Longest Chain Protocols: Security vs Predictability) to avoid any hassle and concede transactions faster than Blockchain which remain unaffected as long as the whole network is working fine. The Chia miner would need to wait for more than 6 blocks as they would require waiting for 6 blocks in Bitcoin. In Chia the transactions are prevented from creating confusion.
Why does my Chia Wallet show ‘not synced’ how to connect it from the GUI?
If a farmer cannot connect the Chia wallet from the GUI or it shows ‘not synced’ then the wallet might have been corrupted. In any such a scenario do following steps to connect your Chia wallet from the GUI:
- Immediately close all Chia processes and shut it down. Check the task manager if it’s shut or not before proceeding. Note that this will cancel running plots, so make sure everything.
- Restart the machine
- Delete the ~/.chia/mainnet/wallet/db folder
- Finally restart Chia
Why does my Chia wallet show ‘negative balance’ and the transactions are not getting confirmed?
If all the blocks are full all Chia pending transactions can take a few minutes more. However, if this is not the case then your transaction might have been stuck. You should follow these steps to overcome it:
- Turn your XCH node and wallet off
- Carefully delete all of your Chia wallet DB files: located at ~/.chia/mainnet/wallet/db. Make sure to sync your wallet only but not the node before resubmitting the transaction.
- Upgrade to the latest version
- Wait for the wallet to sync after starting the application
- As soon as your Chia wallet gets fully synced to the height of Full Node it will show your balance correct
Please note that when you resync your wallet all the previous transactions will be shown as incoming.
Where can I buy Chia?
You can buy Chia XCH the following way:
- XCH/USDT
- XCH/ETH
- XCH/USDT
Operating Systems for Chia Plotting:
- MacOS 10.14 Mojave
- Windows 10
- Ubuntu 18.04 (20.04 highly recommended)
- Raspberry Pi OS 64 or Ubuntu 20.04 for Pi/ARM64 (Not recommended for plotting or timelord)
How to Farm Chia XCH on Raspberry Pi 3 or 4?
You can farm Chia Xch on both Raspberry Pi versions by following these instructions.
- Minimum Raspberry Pi Requirement to install Chia: 64 bit OS so a Pi 3 or Pi 4
- You can easily manage to run all the Chia farming functions and conclude Chia full nodes on the Pi.
- You can also plot on Pi with Chacha8 instead of AES
- The difference between Pi and other machines is you can plot on laptops and Desktops 0.07 – 0.10 GiB/minute range while the Pi 4 plots at 0.025 GiB/minute. Pi is not a part of the Timelords or VDF
Video About Chia Plotting and Farming on Raspberry Pi 4
How to upgrade the Chia setup without losing plots and keys?
If you use the GUI, it will migrate from release to release for the miners. The keys get stored on OS specific keychains for GUI as well as the command line. If the Chia farmer is using the command chia init to migrate to the new version they will migrate config.yaml and dbs. All the plots and keys become useless created before running Beta 8.
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