The Chia Network blockchain said April 14 that it had submitted a proposal for an initial public offering (IPO) to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The size and price range of the offering have not been determined, the company said. The proposal was submitted confidentially and the announcement was made under a Securities Act of 1933 rule to allow limited information to be released to measure investor response.
The Chia Network is a decentralized smart contract platform that uses a novel consensus protocol based on data storage space. It claims the network has lower energy consumption than blockchains that use proof-of-work consensus and is able to reutilize worn storage hardware. BitTorrent founder Bram Cohen created the Chia Network in 2017.