[ANN] Sia - Decentralized Storage

[Taek]

Taek, would be great if you can produce a redemption list, just so we can confirm our transfers went through prior to launch. 

Sounds like a good idea, we should also make an FAQ. It will take me a few days to pull that together, look for it on Tuesday.

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[msin]

Taek, would be great if you can produce a redemption list, just so we can confirm our transfers went through prior to launch. 

Sounds like a good idea, we should also make an FAQ. It will take me a few days to pull that together, look for it on Tuesday.

Great, thanks.

[chrysophylax]

Apologies everyone, we discovered a cross-compilation bug that affected the Windows and OS X versions of Sia. This happened because we do all our development on Linux. In future releases we will perform more thorough cross-platform testing to catch these sorts of bugs.

If you are using Windows or OS X and Sia is not working properly, it's probably due to this bug. Unfortunately, this means that you will have to redownload Sia. The download links have been updated to their respective patched versions.

Thanks for bearing with us as we roll out this release.

In the final wallet, will there be a default suggested fee for giving away space storage? Otherwise, how should we know the value of the space storage that one would share?

Yes, there is a default listed on the "Hosting" page. The field is misleading though, because it says SC, when it's actually "base units" (1/10^24th of a SC). So the current default (1000000000) is actually a very small fraction of 1 SC. This value will likely be changed once we're off the testnet.

where are you guys based? ...

if close - i have equipment ...

#crysx

[mrnxtuser]

congratulations guys. Looks like i'll be buying sianotes off the asset exchange!

[Tobo]

where are you guys based? ...
if close - i have equipment ...
#crysx

They are located in Boston. See the Job Openings section on the OP.

[Tobo]

How will the fees be calculated?

[chrysophylax]

where are you guys based? ...
if close - i have equipment ...
#crysx

They are located in Boston. See the Job Openings section on the OP.

tanx ...

#crysx

[Sythyn]

Decentralized storage sounds great is there a whitepaper on it?

[Tobo]

Decentralized storage sounds great is there a whitepaper on it?

OP has the the white paper link - http://www.siacoin.com/sia.pdf

The github link - https://github.com/NebulousLabs/Sia

[athenaclub]

I'm a Sianote investor since the beginning. Glad to see things coming along.

I've just been a lurker with no reason to post before. Excuse my ignorance but I was always under the impression that Siacoins would be mined
with proof of storage. So we are using proof of work like Bitcoin to mine? And proof of storage is only for renting storage?
So we are attracting all the worthless miners who want to mine siacoins cause it is new and think they can unload them off idiots like they do
with every other shit clone.


I thought people will "mine" with their spare unused storage to earn siacoins. As long as they are providing storage they are earning coins. So that
guarantees space available for people to rent from. And the siacoins are in the hands of the people who deserve it, the hosts providing the storage.
What is the incentive for people to become hosts to earn siacoin if mining will get them coins too? Having lots of people eager to provide their empty
storage is what is needed for people to go renting it.


So now its the same miners who mine bitcoin and litecoin that will be earning the siacoins? Can the devs explain in better detail how this all works
and why this is going to work this way? I honestly don't understand but I want to.


So are there details as to what is needed to mine? Cpu power? Is it pointless to mine on a laptop?


Also be prepared to defend mining the first 100 blocks vigilantly. Since you are now attracting the miner community they don't like the word premine
no matter how many times its explained your reasons. People will not comprehend that siacoin is an open sourced decentralized solution for cloud storage
but it was developed to provide income to the devs who will need it to keep hiring and grow otherwise centralized storage will win forever. They will think
its like dogecoin.

[CoinBateman]

This is promising. I like the idea and it has real world utility. In the world of cloud storage though, what benefits would users have using decentralised storage? P2P like torrent already presents some form of meaningful 'storage' already, and is ubiquitous technology.

[nemo1618]

Excuse my ignorance but I was always under the impression that Siacoins would be mined
with proof of storage. So we are using proof of work like Bitcoin to mine? And proof of storage is only for renting storage?

That's correct.
A pure proof-of-storage solution was what we had in mind when we set out to build Sia. However, the problem is much thornier than it appears. It's easy to hand-wave and say "easy, just use Byzantine Paxos!" but the truth is cryptosystems are extremely difficult to get right, both in theory and implementation. After working on proof-of-storage for close to a year, we were still grappling with a number of theoretical problems, and the implementation had grown unacceptably complex with no end in sight. I don't believe these problems are completely intractable, but it's important to keep in mind that they must be solved in a practical context where things like complexity, efficiency, and attack surface are just as important as the theoretical solution itself. (Taek can give you more details if you're interested.)
So we made the difficult decision to scrap it all and start over with a proof-of-work blockchain, which remains the only real "tried and true" cryptocurrency consensus algorithm in widespread use today. We are a bit disappointed that we had to make the switch, but ultimately our goal was (and is) distributed storage, not proof-of-storage-based consensus. By building on top of the solid theoretical base that the blockchain provides, we can focus on the storage aspect without worrying about someone discovering a theoretical attack on proof-of-storage and sabotaging the network.

So are there details as to what is needed to mine? Cpu power? Is it pointless to mine on a laptop?

Our hashing algorithm is BLAKE2, which (to my knowledge) has GPU miner implementations, but no ASICs yet. Still, mining on a laptop probably won't be very fruitful. If you're lucky you might mine a block or two immediately after launch.

This is promising. I like the idea and it has real world utility. In the world of cloud storage though, what benefits would users have using decentralised storage? P2P like torrent already presents some form of meaningful 'storage' already, and is ubiquitous technology.

Sia is very torrent-like, in that you can download from multiple peers simultaneously. The difference is the introduction of cryptocurrency. If you squint, you can view Sia as a means of incentivizing people to "seed" your "torrents." The reason no one stores their personal data on a torrent is that there's no guarantee that people will seed it. The closest we have is private trackers with "seeding points", "upload credit", etc. Sia gives you much stronger guarantees that people will retain your data, and better ways to manage the risk associated with P2P cloud storage (e.g. encryption, erasure coding).

[CoinBateman]

This is promising. I like the idea and it has real world utility. In the world of cloud storage though, what benefits would users have using decentralised storage? P2P like torrent already presents some form of meaningful 'storage' already, and is ubiquitous technology.

Sia is very torrent-like, in that you can download from multiple peers simultaneously. The difference is the introduction of cryptocurrency. If you squint, you can view Sia as a means of incentivizing people to "seed" your "torrents." The reason no one stores their personal data on a torrent is that there's no guarantee that people will seed it. The closest we have is private trackers with "seeding points", "upload credit", etc. Sia gives you much stronger guarantees that people will retain your data, and better ways to manage the risk associated with P2P cloud storage (e.g. encryption, erasure coding).

So I accumulate the Sia through apportioning some of my space to the network storage quota which if used rewards me with Sia.

What then do I do with the Sia?

[nemo1618]

This is promising. I like the idea and it has real world utility. In the world of cloud storage though, what benefits would users have using decentralised storage? P2P like torrent already presents some form of meaningful 'storage' already, and is ubiquitous technology.

Sia is very torrent-like, in that you can download from multiple peers simultaneously. The difference is the introduction of cryptocurrency. If you squint, you can view Sia as a means of incentivizing people to "seed" your "torrents." The reason no one stores their personal data on a torrent is that there's no guarantee that people will seed it. The closest we have is private trackers with "seeding points", "upload credit", etc. Sia gives you much stronger guarantees that people will retain your data, and better ways to manage the risk associated with P2P cloud storage (e.g. encryption, erasure coding).

So I accumulate the Sia through apportioning some of my space to the network storage quota which if used rewards me with Sia.

What then do I do with the Sia?

If you're in it purely to make a profit, the answer is: exchange it for a different (crypto)currency. Or, hold onto it if you think the value of a siacoin will go up. Or, if you have storage needs of your own, use it to rent storage. But ultimately, we don't intend for siacoins to be used for anything besides storage. Nothing is preventing merchants from accepting them directly, but it would be a bit silly to do so.

[mrnxtuser]

Just to clarify, mining is done through proof of work and no longer through proof of storage where you offer up your storage space?

I'm a little confused. Do you get siacoin by offering storage or not?

[stonehedge]

It might be worth talking to georgem over at Spreadcoin to see if there is a possibility of a reciprocal arrangement where their service node network could provide storage services for this project.

[gjhiggins]

We are currently urgently looking for a UI/UX person to join full time.

Bumped that for you  ... the wallet UI is so impoverished that it will significantly hinder the launch.

Cheers

Graham

[ciocgun]

Follow!
Hope to remember the date on june

[-Greed-]

We already have Storj. How is Sia different from it?

[vytasz7]

Is it the same SIA which made an asset on NXT AE last summer?