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Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

blog.sia.tech

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Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#11

Post by Ajedi32 »

perlgeek wrote: post #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, n…

The implication is that with Sia you can get those same benefits without having to essentially pay the entire cost of a new hard drive every month. (Sia's rates are much cheaper.)

Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#12

Post by b_tterc_p »

> How is this possible? By removing intermediaries

> [Sia] makes a small transaction fee from each file contract.

Am I wrong in observing that the number of intermediaries between hosting data on AWS == the number of intermediaries oh Sia == 1?

What exactly is this doing? Blockchain contracts to rent out your hard drives?

Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#13

Post by yazan94 »

jameslevy wrote: post #5
yasp wrote: post #2

How do services like Sia handle illegal content?

I believe that censorship resistance is a key value proposition for decentralized file storage. So its agnostic handling of illegal content is a feature, not a bug.

In the spirit of blockchain and decentralization, I think you're right. But practically, explaining that to the authorities will probably not be a pleasant experience if they manage to find cp or other illegal data on your hard drive.

Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#14

Post by Ajedi32 »

b_tterc_p wrote: post #12

> How is this possible? By removing intermediaries > [Sia] makes a small transaction fee from each file contract. Am I wrong in observing that the number of intermediaries between hosting data on AWS == the number of intermediaries oh Sia == 1? What exactly is this doing? Blockchain contracts to rent out your hard drives?

They explain what the mean by that two sentences later:

> Hosts on Sia do not have to worry about building and maintaining enormous datacenters, employing thousands of employees, and marketing their services. They only need to worry about providing reliable storage capacity to renters on Sia.

And yes, it's essentially a decentralized storage market built on smart contracts. You can either pay to store your files (the client software handles redundancy, contracts, etc automatically) or _get_ paid to rent out space on your hard drive.

Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#15

Post by alexkcd »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #6
yasp wrote: 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.

Seems like this could be a common use case for pirates. Similar to how Megaupload or Fileshare worked a few years ago.

Sia's encryption doesn't protect the file hosts, if the uploader posts a link + decryption keys for pirated content to a public file sharing forum.

Does the take down notice go to everyone that hosts a fragment of the file? Who is liable if the uploader can't be traced?

Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#16

Post by b_tterc_p »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #14
b_tterc_p wrote: post #12

> How is this possible? By removing intermediaries > [Sia] makes a small transaction fee from each file contract. Am I wrong in observing that the number of intermediaries between hosting data on AWS == the number of intermediaries oh Sia == 1? What exactly is this doing? Blockchain contracts to rent out your hard drives?

They explain what the mean by that two sentences later: > Hosts on Sia do not have to worry about building and maintaining enormous datacenters, employing thousands of employees, and marketing their services. They only need to worry about providing reliable storage capacity to renters on Sia. And yes, it's essentially a decentralized storage market built on smart contracts. You can either pay to store your files (the…

How do they verify that a host can actually store all of the data?

Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#17

Post by lunchables »

perlgeek wrote: post #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, n…

Aren't all those costs priced in? I assumed the data storage with Sia was redundant and encrypted, which should cover basically all of those things, right?

Looks like it from looking at the site:

>File segments are created using a technology called Reed-Solomon erasure coding, commonly used in CDs and DVDs. Erasure coding allows Sia to divide files in a redundant manner, where any 10 of 30 segments can fully recover a user's files.

[...]

>Before leaving a renter's computer, each file segment is encrypted. This ensures that hosts only store encrypted segments of user data.

I'd love for someone to do an analysis on the performance and availability of the data. I wonder if you could pay more for faster speeds or higher levels of redundancy? That would be neat features.

Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#18

Post by Ajedi32 »

yazan94 wrote: post #13
jameslevy wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that censorship resistance is a key value proposition for decentralized file storage. So its agnostic handling of illegal content is a feature, not a bug.

In the spirit of blockchain and decentralization, I think you're right. But practically, explaining that to the authorities will probably not be a pleasant experience if they manage to find cp or other illegal data on your hard drive.

The data is encrypted by the client, so that's theoretically impossible. Neither you nor the authorities have the ability to determine what file fragments (whole flies aren't stored; just fragments) are on your PC.

Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#19

Post by Ajedi32 »

b_tterc_p wrote: post #16
Ajedi32 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They explain what the mean by that two sentences later: > Hosts on Sia do not have to worry about building and maintaining enormous datacenters, employing thousands of employees, and marketing their services. They only need to worry about providing reliable storage capacity to renters on Sia. And yes, it's essentially a decentralized storage market built on smart contracts. You can either pay to store your files (the…

How do they verify that a host can actually store all of the data?

If I recall correctly, the client pre-computes hashes of random fragments of each file then "quizzes" the hosts on that information periodically. If they're not actually storing a copy of the data, they won't be able to compute the resulting hash. (I may be misremembering some of the details, but I believe that's how it works in principle.)

Re: Sia – Decentralized cloud storage network

#20

Post by jason50 »

b_tterc_p wrote: post #12

> How is this possible? By removing intermediaries > [Sia] makes a small transaction fee from each file contract. Am I wrong in observing that the number of intermediaries between hosting data on AWS == the number of intermediaries oh Sia == 1? What exactly is this doing? Blockchain contracts to rent out your hard drives?

I think they are saying they are removing "trusted" intermediaries. There are zero trusted intermediaries sitting between buyer and storage/bandwidth in Sia's model. Thus, value cant be extracted from providing trust/confidence.
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