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**Chia Network Inc.** is a US-based blockchain technology company. The company built the Chia blockchain that uses proof of space and proof of time consensus protocols and issues the digital currency Chia (XCH). Chia Network was founded in 2017 by Bram Cohen, the creator of BitTorrent, and Ryan Singer. Its headquarters are in South San Francisco, California.
Chia Network is based in South San Francisco, California. Bram Cohen took over as chief executive officer (CEO) when Ryan Singer left in June 2019. In 2023, Gene Hoffman succeeded Cohen as CEO; he previously held the role of chief operations officer. Cohen transitioned to the role of chief technology officer.
## **History**
Chia Network was co-founded by Bram Cohen, the creator of BitTorrent, and Ryan Singer in 2017. Cohen said he was inspired by Bitcoin and the rise of cryptocurrency, and that he believed digital currencies would be safer, faster, and create more financial autonomy. He also had reservations about the various issues surrounding cryptocurrencies, such as the energy consumed in bitcoin mining. He created the Chia Network in an effort to design and launch the Chia blockchain, which used unused hard drive space, which would consume less energy than the proof of work protocol commonly used by blockchain networks.
In 2018, Cohen raised $3.4 million in seed funding. Chia Network released a beta version of its blockchain and native token, XCH, to developers in April 2019. By the end of 2020, the network had 1,700 nodes. Following an early 2021 funding round in which Chia Network raised $61 million, the company was valued at $500 million. Investors in the company include Andreessen Horowitz, Naval Ravikant, Breyer Capital, and others.
By 2021, users had allocated approximately 40 billion gigabytes of storage to Chia Network. Rather than the typical initial coin offering used to launch many cryptocurrencies, Chia Network opted to reserve pre-farmed tokens and raise venture capital. That year, the company announced that it was considering going public via a traditional initial public offering (IPO) or by merging with a special-purpose acquisition company. When the company began trading XCH on May 3, 2021, it held 21 million tokens in reserve. According to Business Insider, the growth of the company and its XCH token led to a rise in prices of hard disk drives and solid state drives. On April 14, 2023, the company announced that it was nearing an IPO having submitted a draft registration statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
## **Partnerships**
In August 2022, the International Finance Corporation announced a partnership and fund with Chia Network, Aspiration, Inc., and Cultivo to tokenize and track carbon offsets. Chia Network also provides technology infrastructure for the Climate Action Data Trust, a partnership between the International Emissions Trading Association, World Bank, and the Government of Singapore, which seeks to enhance the overall integrity of carbon markets.
