[ANN] Sia - Decentralized Storage

[Taek]

Won't the storage providers put themselves at risk if someone uploads illegal files?

I am not a lawyer, please do not consider any of the following as legal advice.

There was a legal ruling that content hosts cannot be held responsible for the content that is uploaded by third parties. For example, it does not get YouTube in trouble when someone uploads illegal files to YouTube - as long as YouTube complies with legal requests to remove the files, then YouTube does not get in trouble, even though they were technically in possession of illegal files.

We expect the same rules to be enforced for Sia hosts. As all files are encrypted by default, it is between difficult and impossible for hosts to know whether or not they are accepting illegal files. Therefore, they cannot be held responsible for what is uploaded. If they receive takedown requests, they will have to follow through with the requests somehow. At the moment, we don't really have a button to help that happen, but if it becomes a problem in the future we will make sure that hosts have the tools required to remain compliant with the laws of their jurisdiction.

All decentralized technologies fall into a legal grey area. We will likely have to adapt as lawmakers start introducing regulations, but this is something that is not particular to Sia. All sharing economies are also in a regulatory grey area, such as Uber and Airbnb. I am not sure what the legal situation is going to look like in the future, but we are going to be conscious of the regulations and work hard to ensure that hosts can always be easily compliant with the laws of their jurisdiction.

I am not a lawyer, but I do not believe that running a Sia node is breaking the law, even if someone is using your Sia node for illegal activities. Dropbox, Amazon, and all cloud storage services have the same problem.

[Pito001]

I'm sorry to have to post this.

I had (HAD) 10MS with address 217f8b8bd4789be41beeffb6e70f0e701723df5bf5d53810122af4bd4fef815b4243d9b31fd5

Imported the new wallet in the 0.4.1 client. Funds transfered fine at first.

Made a deposit of 2.5MS to Poloniex. 7.5MS remained. Left home, a few hours(blocks) later my wallet was completely drained!! At first there was only 2.5MS left and now it's empty!  

I tried to address this in a pm, but since it's completely empty now I feel the need make this public. This is a SERIOUS ISSUE!

I hope my funds can somehow get recovered, since I have wallet file from previous version and password from current wallet.

Don't panic. I am sure your coins are there, your wallet is just not loading I think. Check the block explorer http://explore.siacoin.com/hash?h=217f8b8bd4789be41beeffb6e70f0e701723df5bf5d53810122af4bd4fef815b4243d9b31fd5&submit=Submit The new GUI wallet is slow to start up the daemon, SIAD, and to display a balance. It could take several minutes. It made my hard skip a beat at first too.    

Or....

I suspect you and others, including myself have corrupted their data base file (the block chain stored on our HDD). When closing the new UI, it does not close SIAD in the background. If you "Kill" the process, it corrupts the database and you have to delete it and reload. In windows it is in the .\Sia-UI-v0.4.1-beta-windows64\resources\app\Sia\consensus folder. Basically, you MUST run SIAC alongside even the GUI so that you can shut SIAD down with the command ./ siac stop

This was fixed in 0.3.3.3 and the devs are already working on a fix for the latest release. Your situation could be different, but I figured I would put this out there anyhow.

Edit: Also, I don't see this in the OP, but  this is a good "how to use" made by the devs: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zNpAct53E_5p4KO3_-ZOrg5N9HQw8ACTQ7zAyksSIf8

It may help some people.

One more edit, and a big one. The same thing just happened to me. The daemon was loaded and the UI displayed the latest block height. Zero balance. I needed to UNLOCK the wallet and then my coin balance showed up. I seriously recommend anyone wanting to utilize SIA at this stage in beta development should familiarize themselves with the command line wallet before depending on the GUI

Ok, so I deleted everything except the wallet files. Let it sync and now I have 2568971.37 SC again when I unlocked my wallet. Still 5M SC short...
I'll wait a few more blocks as suggested and restart the wallet completely. I'll know more in a few hours.

edit: I'm now at block 16275 (for future ref.)

[auctionitnow]

Won't the storage providers put themselves at risk if someone uploads illegal files?

I am not a lawyer, please do not consider any of the following as legal advice.

There was a legal ruling that content hosts cannot be held responsible for the content that is uploaded by third parties. For example, it does not get YouTube in trouble when someone uploads illegal files to YouTube - as long as YouTube complies with legal requests to remove the files, then YouTube does not get in trouble, even though they were technically in possession of illegal files.

We expect the same rules to be enforced for Sia hosts. As all files are encrypted by default, it is between difficult and impossible for hosts to know whether or not they are accepting illegal files. Therefore, they cannot be held responsible for what is uploaded. If they receive takedown requests, they will have to follow through with the requests somehow. At the moment, we don't really have a button to help that happen, but if it becomes a problem in the future we will make sure that hosts have the tools required to remain compliant with the laws of their jurisdiction.

All decentralized technologies fall into a legal grey area. We will likely have to adapt as lawmakers start introducing regulations, but this is something that is not particular to Sia. All sharing economies are also in a regulatory grey area, such as Uber and Airbnb. I am not sure what the legal situation is going to look like in the future, but we are going to be conscious of the regulations and work hard to ensure that hosts can always be easily compliant with the laws of their jurisdiction.

I am not a lawyer, but I do not believe that running a Sia node is breaking the law, even if someone is using your Sia node for illegal activities. Dropbox, Amazon, and all cloud storage services have the same problem.

Thanks for the reply! I really like this concept! There was a coin called Datacoin some year ago, I believe they had overlooked this problem. But I realize now that they had a quite different approach.

[Blazin8888]

I'm trying to understand value propositions for exactly what Sia is, at this point.

Does anyone have any ideas of what we have here?

What makes this have value?

Sia is valuable because it offers a decentralized way to do storage. On the current network, that value is rather low b/c you can only upload one file at a time and there is a 500mb limit to what can be uploaded. The next client will be much more powerful, the file size limit will be removed (or at least bumped to multiple GB) and there's a good chance that you can choose to upload entire folders instead of just one file at a time.

We do believe that in the long run, storage on Sia will be substantially cheaper than the current cloud storage platforms (Amazon, etc.), which is very attractive to enterprise customers. Enterprise customers will need siacoins to rent storage, this will create a baseline demand for the coin.

What I am not real clear on is when storage is used by a customer, is that persons data stored entirely on just the one PC in which you have a contract on? or is it dispersed around the network in bits and pieces across many storage units. I would think some form of the latter?

Ya I know, I need to read up and do more homework lol, but a quick answer is always nice

On the current network, the full file is uploaded to 8 different hosts. The hosts are selected randomly, but cheaper hosts are more likely to be chosen. I forget the exact algorithm, but someone who is 1/2 the price is ~8x as likely to be chosen. If you are a host and you are more expensive than everyone else by a significant amount, you will never be chosen for storage. If you are significantly cheaper than everyone else, you will be chosen pretty much every time, and your storage will fill up much faster.

The optimal price is the price where your storage fills up at the same rate as contracts expire. You make it cheap enough that you are pretty much always nearly sold out, but expensive enough that you are making money on every contract.

Right now, there's not enough upload demand to fill pretty much anybody's hard drive. It's difficult to upload more than a few files, people don't want to spend their siacoins, the filesize cap isn't that high, and the network doesn't have any sort of a proven track record. We hope to address a handful of these in the next major version (v0.4.0) in the next 6-8 weeks.

BEFORE I INVEST QUESTIONS:

1. Can I share my files with other Sia users or post them up like torrents?

2. Is there a a torrent system where people can get paid for seeding?


3. Are there any other coins working right now that allow me to do what Sia Coin does?

4. What does Sia stand for?

5. What makes Sia different from Storj?

[MinermanNC]

I'm trying to understand value propositions for exactly what Sia is, at this point.

Does anyone have any ideas of what we have here?

What makes this have value?

Sia is valuable because it offers a decentralized way to do storage. On the current network, that value is rather low b/c you can only upload one file at a time and there is a 500mb limit to what can be uploaded. The next client will be much more powerful, the file size limit will be removed (or at least bumped to multiple GB) and there's a good chance that you can choose to upload entire folders instead of just one file at a time.

We do believe that in the long run, storage on Sia will be substantially cheaper than the current cloud storage platforms (Amazon, etc.), which is very attractive to enterprise customers. Enterprise customers will need siacoins to rent storage, this will create a baseline demand for the coin.

What I am not real clear on is when storage is used by a customer, is that persons data stored entirely on just the one PC in which you have a contract on? or is it dispersed around the network in bits and pieces across many storage units. I would think some form of the latter?

Ya I know, I need to read up and do more homework lol, but a quick answer is always nice

On the current network, the full file is uploaded to 8 different hosts. The hosts are selected randomly, but cheaper hosts are more likely to be chosen. I forget the exact algorithm, but someone who is 1/2 the price is ~8x as likely to be chosen. If you are a host and you are more expensive than everyone else by a significant amount, you will never be chosen for storage. If you are significantly cheaper than everyone else, you will be chosen pretty much every time, and your storage will fill up much faster.

The optimal price is the price where your storage fills up at the same rate as contracts expire. You make it cheap enough that you are pretty much always nearly sold out, but expensive enough that you are making money on every contract.

Right now, there's not enough upload demand to fill pretty much anybody's hard drive. It's difficult to upload more than a few files, people don't want to spend their siacoins, the filesize cap isn't that high, and the network doesn't have any sort of a proven track record. We hope to address a handful of these in the next major version (v0.4.0) in the next 6-8 weeks.

BEFORE I INVEST QUESTIONS:

1. Can I share my files with other Sia users or post them up like torrents?

2. Is there a a torrent system where people can get paid for seeding?


3. Are there any other coins working right now that allow me to do what Sia Coin does?

4. What does Sia stand for?

5. What makes Sia different from Storj?

I would invest now ask later  

A lot of what you ask has been answered in this in this thread if you care to read.

As far as uploading shared files for downloading, there is this: https://staging.siafiles.com/#/browse/ However I think with the new version release the files that were on sunfish are gone.

Not really sure what SIA stands for if anything.

[Blazin8888]

I'm trying to understand value propositions for exactly what Sia is, at this point.

Does anyone have any ideas of what we have here?

What makes this have value?

Sia is valuable because it offers a decentralized way to do storage. On the current network, that value is rather low b/c you can only upload one file at a time and there is a 500mb limit to what can be uploaded. The next client will be much more powerful, the file size limit will be removed (or at least bumped to multiple GB) and there's a good chance that you can choose to upload entire folders instead of just one file at a time.

We do believe that in the long run, storage on Sia will be substantially cheaper than the current cloud storage platforms (Amazon, etc.), which is very attractive to enterprise customers. Enterprise customers will need siacoins to rent storage, this will create a baseline demand for the coin.

What I am not real clear on is when storage is used by a customer, is that persons data stored entirely on just the one PC in which you have a contract on? or is it dispersed around the network in bits and pieces across many storage units. I would think some form of the latter?

Ya I know, I need to read up and do more homework lol, but a quick answer is always nice

On the current network, the full file is uploaded to 8 different hosts. The hosts are selected randomly, but cheaper hosts are more likely to be chosen. I forget the exact algorithm, but someone who is 1/2 the price is ~8x as likely to be chosen. If you are a host and you are more expensive than everyone else by a significant amount, you will never be chosen for storage. If you are significantly cheaper than everyone else, you will be chosen pretty much every time, and your storage will fill up much faster.

The optimal price is the price where your storage fills up at the same rate as contracts expire. You make it cheap enough that you are pretty much always nearly sold out, but expensive enough that you are making money on every contract.

Right now, there's not enough upload demand to fill pretty much anybody's hard drive. It's difficult to upload more than a few files, people don't want to spend their siacoins, the filesize cap isn't that high, and the network doesn't have any sort of a proven track record. We hope to address a handful of these in the next major version (v0.4.0) in the next 6-8 weeks.

BEFORE I INVEST QUESTIONS:

1. Can I share my files with other Sia users or post them up like torrents?

2. Is there a a torrent system where people can get paid for seeding?


3. Are there any other coins working right now that allow me to do what Sia Coin does?

4. What does Sia stand for?

5. What makes Sia different from Storj?

I would invest now ask later  

A lot of what you ask has been answered in this in this thread if you care to read.

As far as uploading shared files for downloading, there is this: https://staging.siafiles.com/#/browse/ However I think with the new version release the files that were on sunfish are gone.

Not really sure what SIA stands for if anything.

SECURE INTERNATIONAL ARRAY


no idea if that makes sense lol.

[MinermanNC]

I'm trying to understand value propositions for exactly what Sia is, at this point.

Does anyone have any ideas of what we have here?

What makes this have value?

Sia is valuable because it offers a decentralized way to do storage. On the current network, that value is rather low b/c you can only upload one file at a time and there is a 500mb limit to what can be uploaded. The next client will be much more powerful, the file size limit will be removed (or at least bumped to multiple GB) and there's a good chance that you can choose to upload entire folders instead of just one file at a time.

We do believe that in the long run, storage on Sia will be substantially cheaper than the current cloud storage platforms (Amazon, etc.), which is very attractive to enterprise customers. Enterprise customers will need siacoins to rent storage, this will create a baseline demand for the coin.

What I am not real clear on is when storage is used by a customer, is that persons data stored entirely on just the one PC in which you have a contract on? or is it dispersed around the network in bits and pieces across many storage units. I would think some form of the latter?

Ya I know, I need to read up and do more homework lol, but a quick answer is always nice

On the current network, the full file is uploaded to 8 different hosts. The hosts are selected randomly, but cheaper hosts are more likely to be chosen. I forget the exact algorithm, but someone who is 1/2 the price is ~8x as likely to be chosen. If you are a host and you are more expensive than everyone else by a significant amount, you will never be chosen for storage. If you are significantly cheaper than everyone else, you will be chosen pretty much every time, and your storage will fill up much faster.

The optimal price is the price where your storage fills up at the same rate as contracts expire. You make it cheap enough that you are pretty much always nearly sold out, but expensive enough that you are making money on every contract.

Right now, there's not enough upload demand to fill pretty much anybody's hard drive. It's difficult to upload more than a few files, people don't want to spend their siacoins, the filesize cap isn't that high, and the network doesn't have any sort of a proven track record. We hope to address a handful of these in the next major version (v0.4.0) in the next 6-8 weeks.

BEFORE I INVEST QUESTIONS:

1. Can I share my files with other Sia users or post them up like torrents?

2. Is there a a torrent system where people can get paid for seeding?


3. Are there any other coins working right now that allow me to do what Sia Coin does?

4. What does Sia stand for?

5. What makes Sia different from Storj?

I would invest now ask later  

A lot of what you ask has been answered in this in this thread if you care to read.

As far as uploading shared files for downloading, there is this: https://staging.siafiles.com/#/browse/ However I think with the new version release the files that were on sunfish are gone.

Not really sure what SIA stands for if anything.

SECURE INTERNATIONAL ARRAY


no idea if that makes sense lol.

That definition sure has merit! lol sounds good to me 

[MickyCOB]

Looks like an interesting coin Nice wallet with good features.. All the best for this coin 

[OBAViJEST]

Wow....best looking wallet I've used so far!  Now to fill it up.... 

[MadCow]

I've got coins in a wallet.dat from the initial version back in June - v0.3.3.1

How do I safely get those coins into the latest version? I see reports that others have lost coins updating to the new version so I don't want to make a mistake

[bubbletea789]

I've got coins in a wallet.dat from the initial version back in June - v0.3.3.1

How do I safely get those coins into the latest version? I see reports that others have lost coins updating to the new version so I don't want to make a mistake

Just import the old wallet into your new 0.4.1 OR
Send them to exchange and send back to your new 0.4.1 wallet

[striker7334 2.0]

Another good day for SIA on the market it seems to really be catching fire after this wallet release, Im excited to try it on my Windows unit this weekend! 

[andyatcrux]

I've got coins in a wallet.dat from the initial version back in June - v0.3.3.1

How do I safely get those coins into the latest version? I see reports that others have lost coins updating to the new version so I don't want to make a mistake

Just import the old wallet into your new 0.4.1 OR
Send them to exchange and send back to your new 0.4.1 wallet

It is strongly recommended that you do not even open versions prior to 0.3.3.3. Import the wallet. Close the GUI and shut down siad with siac. Restart the wallet. Wait for it to sync. Then unlock the wallet. Your previous wallet balance will be there. However, the old address will not be restore-able from the new seed. You should save your old wallet.dat file as a backup in addition to the new wallet.json format. As far as I know, with 0.4.1 no one has actually lost any coins if they read the instructions, backup and don't delete stuff they shouldn't. Regardless, it is always smart to do a test transaction of a small amount.

[1echo]

i have issues running this GUI on windows x64

[andyatcrux]

i have issues running this GUI on windows x64

Many of the issues people are having is due to unfamiliarity. There are instructions, but some aspects of its use are still confusing to people. If you would like some step by step help, I recommend the slack channel. I am running the GUI on windows 64 without issue and I could probably help you figure it out in chat.

[Blazin8888]

How many coins exist? 4 billion something? So like 290 BTC to buy them all?

[OBAViJEST]

i have issues running this GUI on windows x64

works fine on my end, care to share the rest of your specs?

[luxintra]

The GUI for OSX isn't working. I've let it sit for hours wondering if it's supposed to be loading the blockchain.

Errors came up first time I opened the GUI.

[DreamSpace]

is now pool mining available?

[Pito001]

Ok, so I deleted everything except the wallet files. Let it sync and now I have 2568971.37 SC again when I unlocked my wallet. Still 5M SC short...
I'll wait a few more blocks as suggested and restart the wallet completely. I'll know more in a few hours.

edit: I'm now at block 16275 (for future ref.)

Have shut down the wallet (reboot comp) for over 8 hours. Restarted sia gui 0.4.1 just now. Still a balance of only 2568971.37 S and should be 7568971.37 S

I tried everything I can think of and haven't deleted any wallet files in the process. Still there's 5M SC missing from my wallet.