Backblaze will now let Chia miners store and farm plots in the cloud

[Humza]

TL;DR: Backblaze, the cloud storage company famously known for churning out HDD reliability figures every quarter, is now offering its services to the Chia community. The cryptocurrency requires lots of storage space for plotting and farming, a perfect use case (and business opportunity) it seems for Backblaze and its cloud storage platform.

Chia continues to disrupt the storage industry, even with the crypto's struggling price. It's spawned SSDs with an insane endurance of 54,000 TBW and sent sales skyrocketing for major manufacturers like Seagate and WD.

Now, Backblaze is hopping onto the Chia bandwagon with the announcement of its experimental Chia plot storage and farming service. For $5/mo, miners can get access to 1TB of space on Backblaze's B2 cloud platform, which the company says comes with cache optimizations that offer 'some advantages' over farming plots with a standard physical hard drive.

It's important to note that users would still need to create Chia initial plots/lottery tickets locally, which they can then upload to Backblaze's servers for farming. Although Backblaze says the use of its B2 cloud platform would be profitable, citing Chia Calculator and other dependencies like network space growth rate and the crypto's current price, the actual earning potential at present seems unconvincing.

As Tom's Hardware notes, the figures currently come down to ~$6/mo with 10 plots, estimated by the Chia Calculator (simplified), while the advanced version (that takes netspace growth into account) shows earnings of ~$7 over a six-month period. If Chia doesn't suddenly explode in value during this time, that amounts to spending $30 over six months to make $7. Stonks! 

Nonetheless, Backblaze is targeting this service at users who've already "delved into farming and are now facing empty shelves as they seek out storage solutions for their plots." Since such users are likely going to need lots of storage, Backblaze has applied a 100TB ceiling for storage of Chia plots for every user, while those with even larger requirements can get in touch with the company's sales team.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/90030-backblaze-now-chia-miners-store-farm-plots-cloud.html

 

[Geralt]

I moved from BB to Google Drive just in time.

 

[cliffordcooley]

Chia farming can reportedly ruin a 512GB SSD in 40 days

To recap, Chia uses a 'proof of space and time' model instead of 'proof of work' (Bitcoin) or 'proof of stake' (Etherium 2.0), which essentially means farmers---it...

www.techspot.com

That would be the equivalent of two SSDs in a month for $5. Blackblaze is not using SSDs but still it can't be cheap financing such demanding work loads. My only guess is that mining would be limited by Internet transfer rates.

 

[terzaerian]

Techspot really has a bee in its bonnet about Chia.

In and of itself it is, like BTC, a good proof of concept, but at this juncture I don't understand why someone would go out of their way to buy new and/or rent storage for it. By all means, salvage old drives and unused storage, but anything beyond that seems excessive, at least until we start seeing practical services offered (like decentralized cloud storage) using proof of time and space.

 

[BadThad]

If crypto currency didn't exist, hackers would NEVER get paid.

 

[yRaz]

If crypto currency didn't exist, hackers would NEVER get paid.

What is with your vendetta against hackers? I don't think anyone likes hackers but you openly call for them to be executed and shill against them anytime you get the chance

 

[VitalyT]

They say, a miner can make only one mistake. I wish it were true here too

 

[BadThad]

What is with your vendetta against hackers? I don't think anyone likes hackers but you openly call for them to be executed and shill against them anytime you get the chance

What? Do you like hackers?

I hate them for the damage they do to society. They are no different from any other thug that belongs in jail. The untold cost in terms of labor they cause CRIPPLES society and causes the loss of goods and services we want, need and desire. Even if you never get personally hacked, you still have to deal with software patches and craptastic stuff like reducing the performance of CPUs due to microcode exploits.

Image a world in which PC scumbags don't exist! No patching, no AV, no nothing but using computers to do work for us. It would make mankind SIGNIFICANTLY more productive.

 

[terzaerian]

What? Do you like hackers?

I hate them for the damage they do to society. They are no different from any other thug that belongs in jail. The untold cost in terms of labor they cause CRIPPLES society and causes the loss of goods and services we want, need and desire. Even if you never get personally hacked, you still have to deal with software patches and craptastic stuff like reducing the performance of CPUs due to microcode exploits.

Image a world in which PC scumbags don't exist! No patching, no AV, no nothing but using computers to do work for us. It would make mankind SIGNIFICANTLY more productive.

Except hackers existed before cryptocurrency. They would exist in a world without cryptocurrency. You'd just as well argue we need to exterminate stupid people, or code, because then hackers couldn't ply their trade.

It's also pretty damn funny that the same peanut gallery of salty gamer commenters liking your post also contend that cryptocurrency has no value because it's intangible, yet is simultaneously bad because it provides easy, intangible value to hackers. Which is it, hypocrites?

 

[yRaz]

....we need to exterminate stupid people.....

Well, now that you put it that way.....

 

[Aspy68]

Using The Cloud to Chia farm is a quick road to bankruptcy.

We (actual Chia plotters and farmers) have discussed and experimented with cloud plotting and farming extensively.

The few who advocated using the cloud were shown conclusively that you lose any chance of profit if you are paying a monthly rental for your plot storage. Paying someone to plot for you just makes the equation worse.

Those who ignored the warnings and the math and still tried to use the Cloud for Chia farming have or are now ceasing their cloud rental, unable to even sell their plots due to security and bandwidth issues and resulting in zero return on investment.

What once was a discussion is now a joke.

Hear about the peep who rented 1 PiB of cloud storage and now he's trying to sell his plots?

Ahahahaha ..... groan

 

[Aspy68]

I had read that Tom's Hardware was a shill and a censor of dissenting facts before but this is the first time I have personally experienced it.
Screen shots, copied, and will pass on the experience.

 

[kiwigraeme]

You can get 10tb of storage for a year on idrive for $5 on I think Tomshardware referral I think - get 5Tb for 3.50 and upgrade to 10 for $1.50 - I'm just going to use it as a temporary year backup.

And yes bitcoin makes it a lot easier to cash out for hackers - a lot of effort setting up bank accounts and transferring to 3 or 4 times - more audit trail and can be stopped at anytime.

Yes I know you can track bitcoin - so what - a lot of effort and like white corporate collar fraud it can be passed through multiple channels/companies - complicating the hell out of it