It's already been a great year for cryptocurrencies so far, but a number of familiar issues continue to plague the industry, including questions about the environmental impact of crypto mining. In an effort to solve the problems associated with traditional mining and give small-scale miners a seat at the table, a new class of cryptocurrencies has emerged that uses storage capacity rather than computing power to determine how minor they are. rewarded. TechRadar Pro spoke with Jason M. Feist, vice president of product engineering and emerging solutions at storage company Seagate, to learn more about storage-focused cryptocurrencies and the opportunities they can create.
What is storage-centric cryptocurrency and how does it work?
For most people, crypto is synonymous with Bitcoin. Those with knowledge of Bitcoin know that the technology relies on a "proof of work" to validate transactions. This requires significant CPU and GPU resources. Other blockchains pursue different roles using different validation methods. Increasingly, "proof of space," which validates operations with participants' excess storage capacity, offers an approach that can be both greener and rich in opportunities for organizations to earn revenue from their IT infrastructure. Storage-focused blockchains are considered a more energy-efficient alternative to proof-of-work-reliant blockchains. This is the case because storage-enabled coins do not have the energy-intensive transactions. According to a US data center energy report, storage typically only accounts for 11% of data center energy. Protocol Labs' Filecoin is an example of storage-centric cryptography. It uses 'proof of space and time' for blockchain validation and rewards similarly to FIL coin miners. Storage miners make their unused capacity available to the network. Given the massive amount of capacity promised to Filecoin, a mining entity can archive vast amounts of data, freeing up its local capacity for other, more critical uses. Chia is another well-known example of a storage-focused currency.How will storage companies try to meet the growing demand for high-capacity drives brought on by crypto?
It is true that Seagate is currently experiencing high demand. Using sound operating principles, we manage risk to minimize supply disruption and ensure resiliency. We will meet existing commitments to direct customers and authorized dealers by the June quarter of 2021. We continue to work closely with our customers to understand future demand and adjust plans accordingly.How viable is Chia's write-intensive extraction system in the long run for miners, given the cost of SSDs?
We cannot address the details of the chia system. The performance of the player depends on how the user chooses to use it. Seagate's rule of thumb on how to optimize any storage – to extend its life and ensure the best performance – is: Always choose the right storage for your needs. In the world of crypto, it pays to use a combination of highly reliable enterprise-class SSDs and high-capacity hard drives. Considering the importance of data protection and durability, it is best to use a hardware RAID or code erasure solution with redundant drives and even controllers. This type of configuration would maximize availability and data protection. Applications vary, of course, but in general cryptography involves three main scenarios, with the following storage recommendations: 1).If a particular cryptocurrency penalizes capacity loss, choose storage systems that offer additional controller protection (RAID and erasure coding), which should prevent this from happening. 2).
For transaction-intensive workloads like data stamping, SSDs are a good bet that help achieve application performance. 3).
For high-capacity workloads, cost-effective, space-saving hard drives are the answer.