An Announcement & A New Chapter

Effective Q4 2023, Luke Champine has assumed the new role of Blockchain Researcher at the Sia Foundation. Luke will also retain his seat on the Foundation board.

Luke served as the President of the Foundation since its inception in late 2020 and guided it through its often-turbulent first years. He handled the company’s incorporation, managed the treasury, personally interviewed and onboarded the initial team, helped integrate ecosystem partners, and more — all while working tirelessly to overhaul Sia’s entire tech stack, from low-level consensus algorithms to user-facing apps and services. In his new position, Luke will be able to focus his energies on that last item, with a specific emphasis on the v2 hardfork and other long-term research efforts, to ensure that Sia remains ahead of the curve in the decentralized storage space.

Following a thorough selection process, we are excited to announce Nate Maninger as The Sia Foundation’s new President. Nate will also be joining The Foundation’s board of directors. The Foundation’s board issued this statement:

Nate has repeatedly demonstrated a level of commitment to Sia that few others can match. A long-standing member of the community, his work on SiaCentral proved both his technical chops and his alignment with the Foundation’s open-source ethos. Upon joining the Foundation, Nate’s willingness to take initiative, combined with his levelheaded disposition and deep technical understanding, quickly marked him as a natural candidate for leadership. Our trust in him was rewarded time and again as he established the first Sia testnet, restarted the monthly community calls, took charge of our hiring process, and more. We endorse him unreservedly as President and we eagerly anticipate the coming year under his leadership.

In concert with these role changes, we are pleased to announce that Chris Schinnerl has been promoted to Director of Engineering. Chris has been deeply involved with Sia since 2017 and has made key contributions to every aspect of the system. At the Foundation, he took charge of the renterd project, leveraging his broad technical expertise to design and implement a next-generation Sia renter. As Director of Engineering, Chris will oversee all Foundation engineering efforts, execute and maintain our technical roadmap, manage the engineering team and sprints, and ensure the timely completion of our technical goals.

From the President

I am deeply grateful to the Foundation board and employees for placing their trust in me. This is a big change for the Foundation and the Sia ecosystem. Under Luke’s leadership, the Foundation has achieved remarkable milestones. His role in key projects, like renterd, hostd, walletd, and spearheading the upcoming v2 hardfork, set a solid foundation for our future growth.

Building on the groundwork laid by Luke, our immediate focus remains on enhancing Sia’s technical capabilities and utility. We are committed to developing an ecosystem where Sia emerges as the go-to solution for developers, entrepreneurs, and others seeking advanced cloud storage solutions. That begins with the successful launch of the v2 hardfork, a critical step in modernizing Sia’s technology and improving its usability and performance.

Looking ahead, our strategy involves forging strong partnerships in markets aligned with our mission. We will continue refining Sia’s technological capabilities to better align with the challenges faced by storage consumers to enure we are delivering practical value for those building and scaling on Sia. To begin elevating Sia’s presence, we will focus on expanding our team, particularly in the areas of marketing and business development. This expansion will enable us to better onboard and educate new builders, accelerate Sia’s adoption, and integrate with more ecosystems.

I am excited to lead the Sia ecosystem and continue to push toward our vision where users own their data and developers and businesses have robust tools to build applications backed by Sia’s decentralized storage network. I look forward to the ideas and contributions of our community as we embark on this exciting journey together.