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Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

blog.sia.tech

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Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#3
Although the cost of cloud backups are egregious compared to the cost of raw storage, I'll pay a premium for the peace of mind that comes from letting someone else be held liable for storing my data and credentials to access it. I can easily upload/download files to google, iCloud, or Dropbox from almost any device knowing only my email and password, which I find preferable to having to remember an arbitrary 29 word seed. With the amount of exit scams in cryptocurrency, too, I just don't trust any project to continue to provide the same amount of utility that they do now, if they provide any at all.

I suppose you could use a custodian site to link an email and password to the seed, but then you enter a centralized third party to the mix.

I see value in Sia but it's just not for the average person in its current state.

Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#6
post #2

How do services like Sia handle illegal content?

All data is fragmented and encrypted, so it's impossible to know whether a particular host is storing a fragment of illegal content or not. I suppose if you somehow _did_ find out you were hosting a fragment of illegal content you could breach the storage contract (and pay the resulting penalty) but that's very unlikely because, again, all content is encrypted.

Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#8

Although the cost of cloud backups are egregious compared to the cost of raw storage, I'll pay a premium for the peace of mind that comes from letting someone else be held liable for storing my data and credentials to access it. I can easily upload/download files to google, iCloud, or Dropbox from almost any device knowing only my email and password, which I find preferable to having to remember an arbitrary 29 word…

You could store your Sia seed for free on Google Drive. That way you get the benefit of Google being "liable" for your data and credentials, but with the much lower storage costs of Sia. Yes, it's a centralized third party, but you already implied you have no problem with that.

Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#9
> and their prices are suspiciously similar at about $20 per TB per month. Today it is possible to purchase a refurbished 1 TB hard drive for about $20 — so buyers are essentially paying Amazon each month the entire cost of the hard drives used to store their data!

Really? That's the argument? That you could store your files cheaper on a single, refurbished disk without considering the cost of housing, electricity, network, physical security, redundancy, management etc.?

Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#10
post #7
post #2

How do services like Sia handle illegal content?

It doesn't. The last real application of Sia that I heard of during the previous crypto boom basically sounded like renting your HD space out to people who would potentially use it to store illegal content.

That's the biggest risk of permissionless / decentralized -- you learn quickly why permissioning and centralization are important.
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