In today's blockchain field, the PoST (Proof of Space and Time) consensus algorithm is leading a new technological wave. Under this craze, the Chia project, as a classic project of the PoST consensus mechanism, and the Kaspa project, which is currently attracting much attention on the computing power circuit, cannot be ignored. Although these two projects each pursue different goals and characteristics, their core concepts revolve around the computing power track. Therefore, this article will comprehensively compare these two projects with the emerging project Spacemesh on the same track. Has a certain reference value. Next, let us delve into the consensus mechanism, technical architecture, and performance of Chia, Kaspa, and Spacemesh in terms of scalability, decentralization, etc.
SMH is the native token of Spacemesh, and has experienced several major surges, from $0.1 at the opening of trading to a maximum of $11, with the highest increase exceeding 100 times. Now due to the bear market, the price of the coin is sideways at around $3, with a stable increase of 20 times, and a daily transaction volume of several million US dollars, so there is reason to believe that Spacemesh will take off in the future as the price of the coin continues to rise. The wealth-making effect of blockchain has made traditional finance eager to move. Friends who want to participate in the Spacemesh & Aleo first mine, please add v at the end of the article.
01
Project Introduction
When
Kaspa is a decentralized and fully scalable Layer-1 based on the GHOSTDAG protocol. Unlike traditional blockchains, GHOSTDAG does not create isolated blocks in parallel, but allows them to coexist and be ordered by consensus. Kaspa maintains the level of security provided by the most secure proof-of-work environments while supporting high block rates. Its design is faithful to the principles embedded in Bitcoin by Satoshi - proof-of-work mining, isolated state of UTXO formation, deflationary monetary policy, no pre-mine, and no central governance.
Divide
Chia Network is a cryptocurrency project founded by BitTorrent founder Bram Cohen in 2017. It aims to build a green and environmentally friendly cryptocurrency and plans to develop an improved blockchain and smart trading platform, as well as deploy enterprise-level applications. Chia Network has developed its own smart contract programming language Chialisp, which retains the advantages of the "UTXO model" while introducing the common functions of the "Ethereum Solidity model", thereby achieving more powerful functions such as multi-signature, atomic swap, authorized payee wallet, transfer retraction, limit wallet, paper wallet with delayed recovery function, digital identity wallet and Chia Color Coin (similar to ERC20 token). On March 18, 2021, Chia officially released the Chia 1.0 mainnet, and the token is called XCH.
Spacemesh
Founded in Israel in 2017 by Aviv Eyal and Tomer Afek, Spacemesh aims to build a decentralized, secure and scalable cryptocurrency and smart contract platform that solves many common problems that plague first and second generation blockchain networks. To achieve this goal, SpaceMesh uses a protocol called Proof of Space-Time (PoST) that enables anyone with free space on a hard drive to participate in the protocol, and adopts a mesh network structure to limit the incentives for selfish miner behavior and promote decentralization. The currency of the protocol is called Spacemesh Coin (SMH), and the SpaceMesh team believes that they can provide the greatest value by prioritizing the "fairness" of the protocol and developing a product with low entry barriers, sustainable transaction fees and strong decentralization.
02
Project Comparison
Chia, Kaspa, and Spacemesh are three different blockchain projects that have some similarities in consensus mechanism, technical implementation, mining methods, and other aspects, but they also have obvious differences.
Consensus Mechanism
Divide
Chia Network uses a novel Nakamoto consensus algorithm called "Proof of Space" and "Proof of Time" (PoST). This consensus mechanism is designed to use disk space and computing time to achieve blockchain security and verification.
When
Kaspa uses the GhostDAG/PHANTOM protocol (equivalent to a consensus mechanism based on PoW and DAG), which is a consensus mechanism based on proof of work that can achieve high throughput and low latency transaction confirmation.
Spacemesh
Spacemesh uses its own unique consensus protocol based on Proof of Spacetime (PoST) and mesh technology, aiming to achieve a highly decentralized, high-throughput and high-security blockchain network.
Technical realization
Divide
Chia technically implements a unique proof-of-space and proof-of-time mechanism to achieve consensus and mining by using unused hard disk space and verifying verifiable delay functions.
When
Kaspa uses the GhostDAG/PHANTOM protocol to achieve fast confirmation and high-throughput transaction processing by building a block DAG structure.
Spacemesh
Spacemesh's technical implementation includes mesh technology and space-time proof, as well as a unique consensus protocol, designed to create a decentralized, high-throughput and highly secure network.
Mining method
Divide
Chia's mining process involves creating "plots" that take up hard drive space and participate in block generation through proof of space and proof of time.
When
Kaspa’s mining process involves using proof-of-work mining, leveraging the GhostDAG/PHANTOM protocol to generate block DAGs to quickly confirm transactions.
Spacemesh
Spacemesh's mining process involves the use of space-time proof and mesh technology, as well as a unique consensus protocol to verify transactions and generate blocks.
other aspects
All three projects focus on providing higher throughput and faster transaction confirmation speeds to meet different application needs.
Their consensus mechanisms and mining methods are similar in some aspects, such as using hard disk space, computing power, or proof of work to achieve consensus.
In terms of technical implementation and project goals, Chia focuses on environmental protection and green mining, Kaspa focuses on providing high-throughput transaction processing, and Spacemesh focuses on decentralization and security.
Although these projects have some things in common, their unique characteristics and technical implementations give them their own positioning and advantages in the blockchain field.
03
PoST (Proof of Space-Time)
Definition: The resource used by the Spacemesh protocol is spacetime. The project makes spacetime a publicly verifiable resource by having miners publish Proofs of Spacetime (PoSTs). At a high level, PoST is a proof that a node has allocated a certain amount of space S to participate in the mining process within a given period of time T. The spacetime resource of a node is calculated as S · T. Roughly speaking, PoST consists of two phases: an initialization phase (executed once), during which miners "commit" to fill space S with data, and an execution phase (repeatedly executed), during which miners prove that they are still storing data. The time component of the spacetime resource is the elapsed time between consecutive proofs - if the interval between the initialization (or the previous execution phase) and the latest execution phase is T, it proves that the miner consumed S · T of spacetime resources.
Unfortunately, PoST cannot actually prove that the miner stored the data between two proofs. It proves a slightly weaker statement: "Either the miner stored the data, or the miner reconstructed the data". This is unavoidable because the miner can always rerun the initialization process to recreate the data. The project party handles this problem by explicitly parameterizing the initialization cost in PoST. The initialization cost is important because its relationship with the storage cost determines whether to store data or recompute in the interval between two proofs. If the initialization cost is lower than the cost of storing the data, rational users will prefer to recompute - in this case, the protocol is still secure, but essentially becomes a proof-of-work based protocol. Since the actual cost of storage and CPU in the real world can fluctuate, the project party must be able to adjust the initialization cost to ensure that storing data is still a rational choice.
Additionally, in the Spacemesh protocol, the project solves the problem of maintaining a fixed communication complexity by increasing the interval between consecutive proofs as the number of miners increases. This means that the cost of storing data between consecutive proofs will increase linearly with the number of miners. Even if the CPU and storage costs remain the same, the initialization cost will eventually need to be adjusted to accommodate this increase.
Additionally, while the spatial component of PoST is publicly verifiable, relying only on the content of messages sent in the PoST protocol, the temporal component is not: it requires the verifier to measure the time elapsed between PoST executions. The project achieves this by transforming PoST into a completely “non-interactive”, publicly verifiable primitive (NIPoST) by adding a proof of elapsed time (PoET) to the construction.
Intuitively, miners will use PoET to prove in a publicly verifiable way that a time interval of length T has passed between PoST executions. To verify that the miner has used S·T of space-time resources, it is only necessary to check whether PoST is S space and PoET is T time. Since the project party has no direct way to prove that time has passed, the project party uses sequential work as a proxy for elapsed time (similar to sequential iterative cryptographic hashing). The basic idea is that it is extremely difficult to make the calculation speed of iterated hash sequences faster than the fastest mass-produced commercial CPU, especially if the project party uses a hash such as SHA256, which mainstream CPU manufacturers have invested considerable resources to speed up. (This is in stark contrast to increasing the total work throughput - this can be done through parallelization, and the cost is only linear in the required throughput).
04
Spacemesh
Spacemesh's combination of low barriers to entry, low operating costs, and incentive compatibility establishes novel guarantees of fair distribution. Once a participant joins the network by submitting the required minimum amount of storage, they become an active participant and receive a fair share of rewards each period, which may be enough to cover any electricity bills or hardware replacement costs. This results in a diverse ecosystem where even smaller participants can actively contribute without being priced out. Everyone is guaranteed to receive a fair share of rewards consistently and predictably, no matter how many other participants join the network
Spacemesh ensures fairness for small home miners by rewarding them based on their storage commitment size each epoch (which happens approximately every two weeks). This prevents powerful Smesher from receiving disproportionate rewards. Spacemesh also has significantly lower barriers to entry compared to other permissionless cryptocurrencies. To become a smesher, all you need is a PC with available storage space, any OpenCL-capable GPU (graphics card), and a reliable internet connection. Of course, joining a professional team is also a good choice, which will make your income more stable and the return on investment becomes considerable.
