There has been lots of talk about the amount of electricity that some blockchains use. In particular bitcoin and Ethereum. For anyone that doesn’t know the latest bitcoin miner, the S19 Pro, currently this sells on amazon for about $13,250 usd.
So this is one of the latest, most efficient miners on the market. It boasts 110 TH and uses 3250 Watts. Then there is Chia. Instead of needing to have a 3250 Watt machine hashing as fast as it can for every bitcoin block, Chia essentially does all the hashing before hand and stores the hashes in a file called a plot. So then this 100~ GB file is searched through for the correct hash to complete a block.
The difference between calculating hashes on the spot and having them calculated before hand and saved in a file saves about 300 times the electricity.
This also means that instead of running a 3250 watt bitcoin miner, anyone can use their home computer using say 150 watts and participate in mining (or farming as Chia calls it) for crypto coins.
If you want to learn more about Chia, click here.