[ANN] Sia - Decentralized Storage

[Taek]

Hey so I have some contracts where I am playing the host, but no payments.  There is a 'to be earned' field too, but thats empty, I appear to be storing for free even though I set a rate of 1SC/GB/Month.
Is this an issue with the amount being stored is so small that it cant scale the payment calculation?

upped the rate to 10SC/GB/Month and now I have 115 contracts and an amount of SC 'to be earned', kinda counter intuitive, but seems to work

I think it's just coincidence. Increasing your price should not increase the number of contracts that you are receiving. Right now, I think that uploads are happening in waves.

Also, please advise i am desperately trying to upgrade from 0.46 to 0.51 but i seem to be unable , first,  if i simply copy the wallet folder, the password works and wallet unlocks but i see no funds or transactions. Then, if i also copy the consensus.db folder and file, the command line wallet works showing all the transactions and the funds ( with the same problem as 0.46, missing the funds for the last 2 transactions ) however the GUI won't start, showing a blue 1 in the middle of the GUI and the error :ECONNREFUSED 127.0.0.1:9980

Thanks

I'm not quite sure what problem you are describing. But, I think you just need to wait for more confirmations. You need to wait until the blockchain is synchronized before your wallet will recognize all of the incoming transactions. For blocks that you have mined, you will not see the coins from mining in your wallet until the block has 144 confirmations. The same is true for getting money from file contracts - the money will not show up in your wallet until the storage proof has 144 confirmations.

Normal transactions should show up in the wallet immediately as 'pending', and should show up in the wallet as confirmed after only 1 confirmation.

ECONNREFUSED means that the GUI is unable to find 'siad'. My guess is that you need to wait for siad to turn on, sometimes this can take several minutes. There should be a loading screen, but I think there is a bug related to the loading screen.


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Loading screen bug aside, we are ready to announce v0.5.1!

https://github.com/NebulousLabs/Sia-UI/releases/tag/v0.5.1-beta

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[NASdaq]

What response (if any) do the sia devs have to this claim? Follow the provably scams link for his analysis.

@TPTB, what do you make of Sia tech for decentralised cloud storage? They're more advanced than either of Storj and Maidsafe, as they've already launched a live beta version.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1060294.0

Storj, Maidsafe, Sia, and Permacoin (and any other decentralized file system that pays to store a file instead of only paying to serve the file) are all provably scams.

He seems to be saying (among many other criticisms) that the economics of decentralised cloud storage systems can't work, and storage providers will end up using dedicated servers and smaller opertions will get shut down by their ISP's. He's a wacky guy, but not a light weight thinker. Does he have a point?

He makes a few valid points about the potential pitfalls of building systems like Sia. Sia has either already addresses most of these problems, or has plans to address them in the near future. I don't want to do as much as point-by-point, but I'll address the big things that stood out to me. If there's something else in his post you would like addressed, let me know and I'll go into more depth.

1. Sybil Attack

This is probably the biggest thing we haven't fully addressed. While we do some IP address gating to help minimize the Sybil attack, we're not doing as much as we could be. Storj requires everyone to have 10,000 Storjx coins, which is not a bad defense mechanism. You can also use web-of-trust style barriers-to-entry, or use trusted whitelists to fill out a large portion of your hosts.

We have not worried about it too much up to this point because it's both annoying to execute and the payoff is very tiny, at least while the network is small. We will have stronger defenses in v1.0. We are planning on introducing a 'burn' that hosts can participate in to be put on a priority list, from which renters will be drawing a large number of their hosts.

Ultimately, the way you fight a Sybil attack is by making identity expensive. In Bitcoin, a Sybil attack is fought using POW. To submit a new block, you need a massive amount of hashing power. Sia takes a similar approach. To make an identity, you must demonstrate expense. Expense can come in many forms. The simplest is burning some volume of coins, which I think we're going to call 'cryptographic advertising' or something similar. Another form of expense is owning an IPv4 address. While it's not that expensive, most people already have 1, which means you can costlessly give power to legitimate users while adding expense to Sybil users. Unfortunately, there are not many costless things that we can leverage to prevent Sybil attacks, which is why we are probably going to resort to cryptographic advertising (also called proof-of-burn).

2. Deduplication Attack

An attack was mentioned where you can't be certain about the redundancy of your file. Maybe all of the redundant copies are lies? This is an actual attack, and I usually call it a deduplication attack. If you upload a bunch of redundant pieces such that anyone on the network can repair them, then one person can gather a single copy and pretend to store at maximum redundancy, receiving pay for lots of storage that they actually aren't participating in. Sia prevents this by encrypting each piece separately, using a random key. This completely stops the deduplication attack, but has a tradeoff: only the uploader can repair the file if pieces start to go offline.

Sia's reliability is very good, however. Even if you are only logging in every few weeks, there should be no issues with uptime. And eventually, we might be able to implement a pass-the-hat type of protocol that allows for files to be refreshed for as long as there is money. (though, that would require a soft-fork).

3. ISP issues & legality

We've gone over this a few times, and there are some threads dedicated to it at https://forum.sia.tech, but the quick version is that it's legal for hosts to accept random files from strangers, even if they are illegal files. If the host is caught with an illegal file, they are required to remove it within a certain period of time (usually 24 hours). Sia v0.5.0 (recently completed, though we haven't finished updating all the links yet) has support already for complying with these types of requests, though no host has ever been asked to remove a file thus far.

Great answer Taek!! Thanks for that

What about net neutrality issues, and possible adverse reactions from ISP's and governments (which aren't exclusive to sia, but *might* effect small business sia users)

[tranzactionezlive]

Guys i have two wallets mining - the block i found lately show up as transactions but no funds have been added to wallets. One of the wallets was new so it shows 2 transactions of blocks of yesterday but 0 balance and 0 pending.

Please advise.


So 1 block for one wallet, shows transactions but funds have not shown not even as pending and on another pc another wallet with 2 blocks that show transaction mined but the same - no balance , no pending.


I know we're still in BETA but please advise a way to recover these. PM works best.


Edit :

3 different wallets on 3 PC's mining, two of them have each 1 transaction that shows for 270000 mined but no funds arrived nor pending, the third one has two transactions in the same state, unexistent. The transactions appear in the wallet both the GUI and the command line one but funds are simply missing.



Also, please advise i am desperately trying to upgrade from 0.46 to 0.51 but i seem to be unable , first,  if i simply copy the wallet folder, the password works and wallet unlocks but i see no funds or transactions. Then, if i also copy the consensus.db folder and file, the command line wallet works showing all the transactions and the funds ( with the same problem as 0.46, missing the funds for the last 2 transactions ) however the GUI won't start, showing a blue 1 in the middle of the GUI and the error :ECONNREFUSED 127.0.0.1:9980.


Thanks

I'm sorry to repeat but i have not found your post helpful, fact is :


First problem : the blocks are two days old. I've already mined a bunch of sia and confirmations take a few hours, + in this case, the transactions do show up in the wallet, only the actual funds do not.

Second problem : Can you please post a guide to how to update from 0.4.6 to 0.5.1 ? If i copy the wallet JSON without the consensus db, neither funds nor transactions appear in the unlocked wallet. Does this mean sia wallets cannot be moved without the consensus.db ? If i do copy the consensus db, the GUI won't start in spite of anything i do, or how long i wait, giving ECONNREFUSED 127.0.0.1:9980.

If it helps i can make a video showing this problem if there is anything unclear about it.

[killerjoegreece]

what price my hosting contracts should have to be competitive and where can i see other peoples contracts?

[bitspill]

what price my hosting contracts should have to be competitive and where can i see other peoples contracts?

You can view some statistics about the other hosts on siapulse.

http://siapulse.com/page/network

[in-cred-u-lous]

what price my hosting contracts should have to be competitive and where can i see other peoples contracts?

You can view some statistics about the other hosts on siapulse.
http://siapulse.com/page/network

Let me add that SiaPulse is still running 0.4.8 and thus does not see the 0.5.x hosts. The number of hosts on SiaPulse today is therefore an underestimate. I should have this fixed soon.

There is a price limit that is hardcoded in siad above which file contracts will not be made. I think its currently set to 500 SC. So, you definitely want to be below that limit.

Also, the host selection algorithm currently takes into account only price, and dependency is very non-linear, meaning cheap hosts are selected with high probability and more expensive hosts selected with very low probability. Still, you should be getting plenty of contracts as the number of hosts is currently low and file pieces need to be dispersed across most of them to guarantee that they are retrievable. Redundancy is also high at the moment (x6 I think), amplifying the probability of your host being selected even more.

As the network grows the competition for file contracts will be stiffer and you need to be more careful about the price you charge.

[tranzactionezlive]

Anybody, a solution for my problems ?

[Taek]

Guys i have two wallets mining - the block i found lately show up as transactions but no funds have been added to wallets. One of the wallets was new so it shows 2 transactions of blocks of yesterday but 0 balance and 0 pending.

Please advise.


So 1 block for one wallet, shows transactions but funds have not shown not even as pending and on another pc another wallet with 2 blocks that show transaction mined but the same - no balance , no pending.


I know we're still in BETA but please advise a way to recover these. PM works best.


Edit :

3 different wallets on 3 PC's mining, two of them have each 1 transaction that shows for 270000 mined but no funds arrived nor pending, the third one has two transactions in the same state, unexistent. The transactions appear in the wallet both the GUI and the command line one but funds are simply missing.



Also, please advise i am desperately trying to upgrade from 0.46 to 0.51 but i seem to be unable , first,  if i simply copy the wallet folder, the password works and wallet unlocks but i see no funds or transactions. Then, if i also copy the consensus.db folder and file, the command line wallet works showing all the transactions and the funds ( with the same problem as 0.46, missing the funds for the last 2 transactions ) however the GUI won't start, showing a blue 1 in the middle of the GUI and the error :ECONNREFUSED 127.0.0.1:9980.


Thanks

I'm sorry to repeat but i have not found your post helpful, fact is :


First problem : the blocks are two days old. I've already mined a bunch of sia and confirmations take a few hours, + in this case, the transactions do show up in the wallet, only the actual funds do not.

Second problem : Can you please post a guide to how to update from 0.4.6 to 0.5.1 ? If i copy the wallet JSON without the consensus db, neither funds nor transactions appear in the unlocked wallet. Does this mean sia wallets cannot be moved without the consensus.db ? If i do copy the consensus db, the GUI won't start in spite of anything i do, or how long i wait, giving ECONNREFUSED 127.0.0.1:9980.

If it helps i can make a video showing this problem if there is anything unclear about it.

I'm not sure what problem you are running into with the first problem. I don't think I understand.

For the second problem, it should be sufficient to copy all of the folders over - the consensus, wallet, host, renter, etc. folders in to the new upgraded version. There is compatibility code that will do any needed conversions. Conversions may take a while.

[tranzactionezlive]

Guys i have two wallets mining - the block i found lately show up as transactions but no funds have been added to wallets. One of the wallets was new so it shows 2 transactions of blocks of yesterday but 0 balance and 0 pending.

Please advise.


So 1 block for one wallet, shows transactions but funds have not shown not even as pending and on another pc another wallet with 2 blocks that show transaction mined but the same - no balance , no pending.


I know we're still in BETA but please advise a way to recover these. PM works best.


Edit :

3 different wallets on 3 PC's mining, two of them have each 1 transaction that shows for 270000 mined but no funds arrived nor pending, the third one has two transactions in the same state, unexistent. The transactions appear in the wallet both the GUI and the command line one but funds are simply missing.



Also, please advise i am desperately trying to upgrade from 0.46 to 0.51 but i seem to be unable , first,  if i simply copy the wallet folder, the password works and wallet unlocks but i see no funds or transactions. Then, if i also copy the consensus.db folder and file, the command line wallet works showing all the transactions and the funds ( with the same problem as 0.46, missing the funds for the last 2 transactions ) however the GUI won't start, showing a blue 1 in the middle of the GUI and the error :ECONNREFUSED 127.0.0.1:9980.


Thanks

I'm sorry to repeat but i have not found your post helpful, fact is :


First problem : the blocks are two days old. I've already mined a bunch of sia and confirmations take a few hours, + in this case, the transactions do show up in the wallet, only the actual funds do not.

Second problem : Can you please post a guide to how to update from 0.4.6 to 0.5.1 ? If i copy the wallet JSON without the consensus db, neither funds nor transactions appear in the unlocked wallet. Does this mean sia wallets cannot be moved without the consensus.db ? If i do copy the consensus db, the GUI won't start in spite of anything i do, or how long i wait, giving ECONNREFUSED 127.0.0.1:9980.

If it helps i can make a video showing this problem if there is anything unclear about it.

I'm not sure what problem you are running into with the first problem. I don't think I understand.

For the second problem, it should be sufficient to copy all of the folders over - the consensus, wallet, host, renter, etc. folders in to the new upgraded version. There is compatibility code that will do any needed conversions. Conversions may take a while.

I will try all that you have said.

The first problem , here it is :


I am mining SIA on 3 PC.


On one PC ihad 6.9 million for a few days, then i find two blocks which show up in the transaction list of the wallet, adding up to about 7.4m, however even though two days have pased, my funds are still 6.9 million.

It's not like it's shown mined and the block failed,  no, the blocks show up as transactions but the funds did not update and i see no way to do so, neither has loading the wallet in the v 0.51 command line wallet helped.

The same has happened on the other 2 pc's , showing transactions for 2 blocks on one and 1 ( last i checked ) on the other, but no funds.


So again, the funds are 6.9m but if i add up each transaction it adds up to 7.4m. Thus, 2 transactions show up as they should, because the blocks had been mined and accepted but the wallet did not update funds. I think it is a bug of sorts and i hope the funds aren't lost.

Please advise.

[4emily]

Currently running 0.4.4 and in the process of upgrading to 0.4.8, preparatory to the upgrade to v.0.5.0.

I've d/loaded Sia-v0.4.8-beta-darwin-amd64.zip (from https://github.com/NebulousLabs/Sia/releases/tag/v0.4.8-beta) but my Windows 7 OS claims the 'siac' and 'siad' files are unknown file types and ask me what program I want to use to open them with.

darwin is the zip for Mac. You want to download the Sia-v0.4.8-beta-windows-amd64.zip file.

I'm not 100% certain, but I don't think that you need to upgrade from 044 to 048 before going to 051.

Also, 051 is approx. ready, should be done in under an hour. We thought it was done, but at the last minute we were seeing a weird UI bug. I'll make the announcement once we're happy that everything is reasonably smooth and ready to use.

Thanks

[tomahawkeer]

Hello guys, i'm new to SC and apparently the faucet isn't working. Could I get someone to send me a small amount to to ensure my wallet is functioning correctly? Thank you!

Here is the address.

094a35d858657f8d99a58c3e499ef44a426a9a6d97cd5aab63a456c87e3470e8a749676c71a3

[in-cred-u-lous]

Hello guys, i'm new to SC and apparently the faucet isn't working. Could I get someone to send me a small amount to to ensure my wallet is functioning correctly? Thank you!

Some funds are on the way 

Have fun with Sia!

[tomahawkeer]

Hello guys, i'm new to SC and apparently the faucet isn't working. Could I get someone to send me a small amount to to ensure my wallet is functioning correctly? Thank you!

Some funds are on the way 

Have fun with Sia!

2k pending, thats a good sign! Thanks a bunch!

[in-cred-u-lous]

Hello guys, i'm new to SC and apparently the faucet isn't working. Could I get someone to send me a small amount to to ensure my wallet is functioning correctly? Thank you!

Some funds are on the way 

2k pending, thats a good sign! Thanks a bunch!

Faucet should be working now too:
http://siapulse.com/page/faucet

SiaPulse was updated to v0.5.1 today.

[child_harold]

noob Q

1. How much Sia does it cost to upload 10MB of data?
2. How much Sia does it cost to download 10MB of data?
3. How much Sia do I receive for storing 10MB of data for 60 days?
4. If I rent 1GB of space for 30days how many Sia will I pay?
5. And can I extend the rental by paying more before the term expires
6. Is there a price list, and how will the fluctuation in the price of Sia be reflected in the cost of storage?

thanks

[in-cred-u-lous]

How much Sia does it cost to upload 10MB of data?
How much Sia do I receive for storing 10MB of data?

Is there a "price list"?

See http://siapulse.com/page/network for some network statistics. You can see there what Hosts charge. Note that your files are copied 6 times over on the network, to guarantee (99.99999+%) that your files are retrievable even if a good portion of the network gets knocked out. This redundancy factor will diminish as the number of hosts increase.

If you open your Sia UI wallet you can see the current *estimated* price on the Files page (per GB/Mo).

There is also a calculator here: http://siapulse.com/page/market

Its not working so great at the moment though. I'm working on fixing this.

[child_harold]

How much Sia does it cost to upload 10MB of data?
How much Sia do I receive for storing 10MB of data?

Is there a "price list"?

See http://siapulse.com/page/network for some network statistics. You can see there what Hosts charge. Note that your files are copied 6 times over on the network, to guarantee (99.99999+%) that your files are retrievable even if a good portion of the network gets knocked out. This redundancy factor will diminish as the number of hosts increase.

If you open your Sia UI wallet you can see the current *estimated* price on the Files page (per GB/Mo).

There is also a calculator here: http://siapulse.com/page/market

Its not working so great at the moment though. I'm working on fixing this.

ok thats great. thanks.

if the price of Sia goes x3 does the amount of Sia required to store the same data after cost 1/3 what it did before?

EDIT: Doh, I get it. its based on offers I guess

[in-cred-u-lous]

How much Sia does it cost to upload 10MB of data?
How much Sia do I receive for storing 10MB of data?

Is there a "price list"?

See http://siapulse.com/page/network for some network statistics. You can see there what Hosts charge. Note that your files are copied 6 times over on the network, to guarantee (99.99999+%) that your files are retrievable even if a good portion of the network gets knocked out. This redundancy factor will diminish as the number of hosts increase.

If you open your Sia UI wallet you can see the current *estimated* price on the Files page (per GB/Mo).

There is also a calculator here: http://siapulse.com/page/market

Its not working so great at the moment though. I'm working on fixing this.

ok thats great. thanks.

if the price of Sia goes x3 does the amount of Sia required to store the same data after cost 1/3 what it did before?

EDIT: Doh, I get it. its based on offers I guess

The exact price is unknown as hosts are picked at random. Though, cheaper hosts are selected with higher probability. The price is always set in Siacoins, regardless of its price on the exchanges.

[child_harold]

The exact price is unknown as hosts are picked at random. Though, cheaper hosts are selected with higher probability. The price is always set in Siacoins, regardless of its price on the exchanges.

So I would not know exactly how many Sia Id be paying? The system approximates the total cost before I agree to the deal?

This service sends the Sia to me or the hosts? http://nethut.no/page/cart?action=update&item=&id=20384&qty=1

[akaman]

The exact price is unknown as hosts are picked at random. Though, cheaper hosts are selected with higher probability. The price is always set in Siacoins, regardless of its price on the exchanges.

So I would not know exactly how many Sia Id be paying? The system approximates the total cost before I agree to the deal?

Currently, Sia does not inform you about the exact price. What happens is this:

Sia contacts available hosts and asks for price
If price is ok, and host is available, a file contract is negotiated
The file contract is noted on the blockchain and Siacoins go out of your wallet
Uploading starts

This is done many, many times for each file as its cut into little pieces that are spread across multiple (20+ hosts).

Think of the estimated price as an average; eventually with enough uploads you'll converge towards this average price although sometimes you'll pay less and sometimes more than the estimated price.

Hope that makes sense