PNY cuts SSD warranties due to Chia mining

Some of the smaller SSD makers are taking measures to protect their business against Chia mining. Chia is the latest craze in the cryptocurrency market, it's a new coin that uses storage disks. The benefit of Chia is that it doesn't consume a lot of energy, but its proof of space model does require a lot of storage space and eats through solid state disks quite rapidly.

Tom's Hardware reports PNY has slashed the endurance rating of its XLR7 CS3030 SSDs by up to 80 percent on some models. The site reports PNY's XLR8 CS3030 was one of the most durable solid state disks on the market, in terms of the TBW (terabytes written) rating for the drives.

The site suspects PNY is now selling XLR8 CS3030 disks with QLC instead of TLC NAND flash memory. PNY commented on the matter stating that the lowered TBW of its disks is due to Chia coin farming and the NAND chip shortage.

Several SSD makers are now explicitly adding TBW as a threshold in the warranty, to eliminate RMAs caused by Chia mining.

PNY’s Official statement:
The changes PNY made to its XLR8 CS3030 SSD’s warranty policy were driven by two factors, the uptick in demand for using high-speed, consumer-grade SSDs for Chia farming, and the industry-wide shortage of NAND. These changes were published and made public on the company’s website in both the warranty section as well as the CS3030 product spec sheet on May 17, 2021.

Why TBW was added to PNY’s CS3030 SSD warranty:
The onset of Chia farming has many PC component brands rethinking their warranties, as consumer-grade hardware is not typically under the type of intense write use that is synonymous with Chia farming. The write activity required to farm Chia coin can wear out typical consumer-grade SSDs in a matter of weeks. Because of this, PNY, like others, introduced a Terabytes Written (TBW) policy to its SSD warranty. For consumers using these SSDs as intended, the warranty time (years) period will likely run out before they hit the TBW thresholds.