So .. is this like FileCoin, where people provide storage services and are rewarded, or is it a proof-of-waste scheme?
The more storage you invest, the more numbers you have, it's analogous to bingo in a way.
With Chia anybody can get started with their spare hardware.
Right now, it is a gold rush and this is leading to shortage of supply especially in China. This is a short term phenomenon as there eventually comes a point where you cannot compete against people who just have spare hardware and therefore $0 upfront investment.
> This is a short term phenomenon as there eventually comes a point where you cannot compete against people who just have spare hardware and therefore $0 upfront investment.
Very quickly people with just a regular amount of spare storage won't have any incentive to bother, compared to those with racks of PiB of drives and dedicated plotting hardware streaming to it. It's already at the point where 1TB of plots would take a year or so to win a reward, and the difficulty is increasing exponentially, so it would actually be far longer.
Perhaps farming pools will eventually make it feasible to make something with spare space, but likely not enough for it to be worth most people's time.