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How to start chia farming - startchia.com

F.A.Q. - Frequently Asked Questions

What is Chia?+

Chia was incorporated in August of 2017 to develop an improved blockchain and smart transaction platform. We are building the Chia Network to improve the global financial and payments systems. Chia is the first enterprise-grade digital money. Chia is using the first new Nakamoto consensus algorithm since Bitcoin. Called Proof of Space and Time, it was created by Bram Cohen, the best network protocol engineer alive and the inventor of BitTorrent. Chialisp is Chia’s new smart transaction programming language that is powerful, easy to audit, and secure. Reference smart transactions currently available are: atomic swaps, authorized payees, recoverable wallets, multisig wallets, and rate-limited wallets. Source: Chia

How big are plot sizes (k)? +

You can see some example plot sizes, times to plot, and working space needed based on various k's in these k size tables. Current working space needed for the default plotting options of a k=32 is 239 GiB and the final file is approximately 101.4 GiB. There is small natural variation in temp space needed and the final file size of each plot. Note that 239 GiB is 256.6 GB.

Can I make plots on one machine and move it to another machine? +

Yes. The moving plots topic here on the wiki gives you the details. You may also want to consider running a remote harvester. You can also use the same private key set to plot on more than one machine at a time but be aware of the uPnP issues.

How do I know if my plots are OK? +

Run chia plots check -n 30 to try 30 sample challenges for each plot. Each of your plots should return a number around 30, which means it found around 100% of the attempted proofs of space. If you're still worried try -n 100 as more random attempts will give you a more valid assessment that the plots is fine. It really is ok if your plot is within 80%-120%. If some of your plots are missing for some reason you may need to add the directory they are in to your config.yaml file. That can be done in the GUI with the MANAGE PLOT DIRECTORIES button or on the command line with chia plots add -d [directory].

Does it matter how fast my internet connection is? +

No. You have 30 seconds to respond to challenges.

How can I join a farming pool? +

Please first read the Pooling User Guide and Install the Chia client. You can find the release notes and download links here. Looking for a pool to join? Join Space Pool.

What are the minimum officially supported OS versions? +

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)

Can I run this on a Raspberry Pi 3 or 4? +

Yes, and here are the instructions. This project requires a 64 bit OS so a Pi 3 or Pi 4. One can install and run harvesters, farmers, and full nodes on the Pi. Plotting on a Pi is feasible now with Chacha8 instead of AES but the Pi isn't quick. Modern desktops and laptops plot in the 0.07 - 0.10 GiB/minute range and the Pi 4 plots at 0.025 GiB/minute. Pi is also not a candidate for Timelords or VDF clients...

What are hardware requirements for plotting? +

Minimum requirements for plotting are actually quite low, it requires just 265 GB of available disk space and 3.5 GB of available RAM. However, since plotting is a time consuming process, some may prefer to use a system with higher specifications to create many plots at once (in parallel) and start farming as quickly as possible.

How long are k=32 plots good for? +

In the future, when hardware improves to the point where k32s can be economically generated in seconds (grinding attack), the Chia network may make k33 the minimum farmable plot size. This is not expected to happen for at least 10 years

Does plotting wear out my SSD? +

Each ~100GB k32 plot requires about 1.7TB of disk writes in its creation process so this can take a toll on some consumer grade SSDs. For example an SSD rated for a lifetime of 600 TBW (Terabytes written) can create about 35TB worth of plots before exceeding its rated endurance.

Why does my status show Not Synced? +

First, check that port 8444 is open to your computer.

How to install Chia? +

Simply navigate to our home page and select your OS to get started.

How can I create Plots? +

To find out how to create your first plots and how to plot quicker or in parallel, navigate to our Plotting Guide.

I have my plots, but how do I farm? +

It is extreamly simple to farm Chia plots, just simply start the GUI or use the CLI to start the Chia application. Read our Farming Guide.

How to format and mount ssd`s/hdd`s? +

Format your ssd/hdd at your own risk, here are a few examples who you can format and mount ssd/hdd drives.
sudo fdisk -l
sudo mkfs.ext4 -m 0 -T largefile4 -L [drivename] /dev/sda
mkdir /mnt/hdd
mount /dev/sda /mnt/hdd
if using SATA build / 2x consumer NVMe, RAID 0 drives
sudo mdadm -C /dev/md0 /dev/sd[a,b,c] -n 3 -l 0 -c 64
sudo mdadm -C /dev/md0 /dev/nvme[1-2]n1 -n 2 -l 0 -c 64
format temp drive
mkfs.xfs /dev/nvme0n1
mkfs.xfs /dev/md0
mkdir /mnt/ssd
mount -t xfs -o discard /dev/md0 /mnt/ssd

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