Today we use the web to carry out complex tasks such as interacting with each other, doing business, shopping, creating, publishing and sharing content among ourselves, etc.The centralized model that we use today, generally client-server, allows us to realize it since it is the server entity that is in charge of carrying out all these actions but always with the inconvenience that the agreements between those interactions are directed and controlled by the same entities that will decide on the storage and use of our data so we will never really have control over them and we pay the price imposed.
The web3 is the evolution of the web2 that comes to break the barriers of our own sovereignty in the network, as it applies a revolution of its own infrastructure, going from a centralized to a decentralized model and all this is being achieved by blockchain technologies.
The way to decouple from third parties and position ourselves at the centre of our operations and decisions is to build applications and move to decentralized architectures. That movement is gradually being naturalized step by step thanks to projects that give us something really useful, and not with more speculative tools.
One of the problems is that most blockchain projects operate only through tokens that are usually limited to issuing NFTs, trading, bridging between blockchains, lending and locking assets, swapping, etc. when the token model allows us much more power used in the right way. The financial world is very powerful, It does not arrive to cover all the needs of our current world based on people, business and data.
The Chia Project
The Chia Network project, created by BitTorrent founder Bram Cohen, is a Layer 1 blockchain that has not stopped surprising the whole community since its launch on May 4, 2021, thanks to its potential in which decentralization enhanced by the ease of use of its Proof-of-Space (PoST) consensus stands out, the capability of operation, a lisp-based programming language that is turing-complete called Chipalisp and that is excessively functional as it leaves open in the long term a capacity of expansion of its own "core" functionalities. That is when a new feature is implemented it will always be retro compatible with what was previously implemented and it will not be necessary to make constant revisions as has happened countless times with other projects (see Ethereum).
Chia allows us to perform financial transactions using XCH, run programs within the network with its smart contracts written in Chiplips, mint new tokens using its named CAT (Chia Asset Token), create NFT´s, thanks to new functionality, decentralized data transfer with DataLayer.
Chia nodes
The nodes that shape Chia's network are designed to run on very low-power systems and require very little hardware to operate. What makes it a sustainable project for the environment as well as access to most people in case they want to be part of their validation consensus that is what is colloquially known as farming (mining in other cryptocurrencies), in which a small amount is received in XCH (the native token of the network) each time the node successfully validates transactions within the network.
Security
The network is secured by thousands of Chia nodes that transmit and relay all new transactions and blocks to other nodes to each other.
Since the hashes of XCH and Cats are not reversible, it is infeasible for someone with malicious intent to analyze the blockchain to determine what type of currency it is, and not to see its source code. Chia says this is a superior solution to Ethereum, where the source code of an intelligent contract can be viewed easily and publicly.
The Pooling concept also exists in Chia as it is possible for nodes to join other nodes to gain weight in the network and a block will more likely have to be resolved. The operators of the Chia pools are only responsible for distributing the rewards and cannot modify the chain of blocks, making it impossible for miners to collude.
PoST agreement test
Chia's combined space test + time test consensus is more energy efficient than PoW and allows anyone with a connection and free space on a hard drive to participate as a node. Chia says this makes the network the most decentralized worldwide, with hundreds of thousands of nodes participating in its security.
Farming requires nodes to locally store large files called plots. These consist of random data and are at the core of Chia's space test consensus mechanism. These files are used to solve a challenge similar to the proof-of-work (Pow) as it requires miners to perform computational work. They function as a lottery ticket for a block reward for solving the puzzle. The more space the nodes provide on their computers, the greater the chance of winning the block reward.