I don't know if the soj economy has really crashed or not. I've been staying clear of the D2 "market" for a very long time now.
But chips have been used as a currency for a very long time now.
Consider Sojs as the dollars, and chips as the "cents".
The reason why people want chips is that barring hacked items, what is considered the best sword in the game is a cruel colossus blade, preferably with a great second mod (like "of quickness") and with 3 sockets available.
You get such a sword by using the Magic Sword + 3 chips cube formula.
It takes a lot of attempts to cube such a sword (the mods are random, and you want "cruel" to spawn), hence the need for a lot of chipped gems.
By the way, this is another instance of Blizzard screwing up. They claimed that they wanted to encourage diversity, and indeed with LOD they rebalanced weapons rather nicely. Axes in particular were now very competitive.
But by making that formula only available to swords, and further favouring sword with the whirlwind breakpoints formula, they ensured that swords would still be the dominant weapon for barbs.
PS: When I left bnet, the few paladin players out there also figured out that a cruel mythical sword with the runes eth + 2 x lo made for a very powerful duelling weapon (ignore enemy defense thanks to the eth bug, and 40% deadly strike). So that cube formula was starting to be used by paladin players too.
But chips have been used as a currency for a very long time now.
Consider Sojs as the dollars, and chips as the "cents".
The reason why people want chips is that barring hacked items, what is considered the best sword in the game is a cruel colossus blade, preferably with a great second mod (like "of quickness") and with 3 sockets available.
You get such a sword by using the Magic Sword + 3 chips cube formula.
It takes a lot of attempts to cube such a sword (the mods are random, and you want "cruel" to spawn), hence the need for a lot of chipped gems.
By the way, this is another instance of Blizzard screwing up. They claimed that they wanted to encourage diversity, and indeed with LOD they rebalanced weapons rather nicely. Axes in particular were now very competitive.
But by making that formula only available to swords, and further favouring sword with the whirlwind breakpoints formula, they ensured that swords would still be the dominant weapon for barbs.
PS: When I left bnet, the few paladin players out there also figured out that a cruel mythical sword with the runes eth + 2 x lo made for a very powerful duelling weapon (ignore enemy defense thanks to the eth bug, and 40% deadly strike). So that cube formula was starting to be used by paladin players too.