Chia Network, which emerged onto the cryptocurrency scene with the hope of cleaning upwardly the environmental mess left by Bitcoin (BTC) miners, may non be as green as it seems.

Different Bitcoin, Ethereum and others, Chia Network mines coins using an culling to the energy-intensive proof-of-work. CHIA coins are produced using only difficult drive storage and mining them doesn't require specialized ASIC hardware or GPUs.

But reports coming out of China suggest that saving the environment isn't every bit easy as information technology sounds when it comes to crypto. According to local outlet Fast Applied science, the shelf-life of a standard 512GB SSD would exist worn out later merely 40 days of continuous CHIA mining, based on a data write volume of 256 terabytes in that time period.

A 1TB hard drive would final around eighty days, while a 2TB hard drive would exist expected to last around 160 days. Under normal conditions, such pieces of hardware would be expected to terminal the average customer around a decade.

Once a hard drive exceeds a sure data write book, its consumer warranty protections become aught and void. Hard drives typically transport with anywhere from iii- to five-year warranties, withal CHIA mining could invalidate such warranties in just over a month.

Fast Engineering science reported that hard bulldoze manufacturers have begun rewriting the terms of their warranty agreements to reflect the reality of their components existence used in CHIA mining. When CHIA commenced trading in early May, Chinese retailers suffered a shortage of difficult drives, which eventually pushed the toll of high-capacity drives (16TB) up to six,000 yuan ($933).