Getting Started with Private, Decentralized Cloud Storage
Sia is a blockchain-based, encrypted, decentralized cloud storage platform. It provides a marketplace for individuals with spare disk space to rent out their free space to individuals who wish to upload to the network. This is achieved through a myriad of technical wizardry, the most important of which is erasure coding and encryption. At around $2/TB/mo, Sia offers an incredible value proposition on top of the technical benefits.
Sia has had a running beta since May 2015 and just released a major update, v1.1 ‘Andromeda’, which boasts significant improvements to the core data transfer algorithms. This article will walk you through the steps required to start uploading your data to the network.
Getting the software
The latest release can be downloaded from our website. This guide only covers using the UI to upload files, so go ahead and download the latest UI release for your platform. If you’re running Mac OS X Sierra or later, you’ll need to drag Sia-UI.app into your Applications folder before running it.
The Interface
After launching Sia-UI, you should be greeted with an interface similar to the screenshot above. There are 5 tabs, but the only ones we’ll use in this guide are the Files and Wallet tabs. Files provides an interface for uploading, downloading, and interacting with your files stored on the network, and Wallet provides an interface for sending and receiving money, the Sia cryptocurrency ‘SC’.
Your UI will likely show ‘Synchronizing’ in the top right, which means that the blockchain is being downloaded. Sia is powered by a blockchain, like Bitcoin, to provide a platform for secure, decentralized storage contracts. You form contracts to store data directly with other users trustlessly and without a central federating entity. You should leave the UI open for a few hours and allow it to fully synchronize with the blockchain, since being up-to-date is required to receive money and upload files. In the mean time, I’ll walk you through the process of getting some SC to pay for storage.
Getting Siacoin (SC)
In order to securely pay for storage on the Sia network, you must use the Sia cryptocurrency, Siacoin. The use of Siacoin is necessary to facilitate a trustless, decentralized storage platform. It’s used in Sia to pay directly for storage space and bandwidth, but also to penalize bad hosts who drop data or have disk failure. This guide will walk you through the process of acquiring Siacoin from Fiat currency. Keep in mind when you make your purchase that the current price of storage on Sia is around $2/TB/mo.
First step: Fiat to Bitcoin
The first step to acquire Siacoin is to purchase Bitcoin. If you already have Bitcoin, you can skip this step. There are a number of Fiat -> Bitcoin exchanges available. This page on bitcoin.org can help point you in the right direction for your country.
Second step: Bitcoin to Siacoin
There are four major exchanges that will exchange Bitcoin to Siacoin: Yunbi, Poloniex, Shapeshift.io, and Bitsquare. Choose the one that you prefer and exchange your Bitcoin for Siacoin.
Third Step: Exchange to Wallet
After your Sia-UI client has fully synchronized (check the indicator at the top-right, it should show ‘Synchronized’ in green lettering), head over to the Wallet tab. Follow the on-screen instructions for creating a new wallet, and save your seed/password (they are the same) in a safe place, either by writing it down or saving it in a secure password management software. Initializing and unlocking the wallet currently can take a fair amount of time, up to 15 minutes, but there are upgrades in the pipeline that will make this process nearly instant. Once your wallet has been initialized, click the ‘Receive Siacoin’ button and send the Siacoin you purchased from the exchange to that address. After a few minutes, you should see an incoming transaction for the amount that you sent in the wallet’s ‘Recent Transactions’ view. Now that your have Siacoin in your wallet, you’re ready to start uploading files.
Uploading Files
To upload files, you must first set an allowance. An allowance is a quantity of Siacoin that Sia will set aside for uploading, downloading, and storing files on the network. An allowance lasts for 3 months and is automatically renewed at the half-way point. To create an allowance, click the “Create Allowance” button in the Files tab. You will be greeted with a dialog explaining the process and mechanics of an allowance, along with an estimation of the cost of fees and the resulting storage space. Set your desired quantity of Siacoins, and click accept.
After clicking accept, Sia will begin selecting and forming contracts with hosts on the network. This is indicated by the ‘Forming Contracts’ spinner in the Files tab. The process of forming contracts can take up to 45 minutes, so please be patient while it completes.
Once you have successfully formed contracts, you should see about 40 contracts in the Files tab. You can now begin uploading files to the network, using the Upload Files button. Upload and download progress is indicated by the File Transfers view, and redundancy can be viewed on the files themselves (it’s the n.nX metric next to the blocks on the file). Upload progress represents the total progress of the upload including the redundant pieces, and redundancy represents the redundancy of the least redundant piece of the file. It’s normal for these two metrics not to entirely align with each-other.
Your allowance is a recurring expense, and must be renewed in order to keep your files. It will be automatically renewed roughly half-way through its duration, so you should open your Sia client at least once every few weeks to ensure this takes place. If the entire allowance period elapses and you do not renew your allowance, your hosts will delete your files, leaving them unrecoverable.
Conclusion
Sia is an exciting technology, especially at a time when the need for data privacy and security is at an all time high. Reports of database breaches and government spying roll in at a dizzying pace, making the need for a private, secure, decentralized cloud storage platform all the more apparent. Sia is fully open source, and can be viewed on GitHub (Sia, Sia-UI).
If you’re interested in diving deeper, check out the Hosting guide for how to run a Host on Sia, and the API Documentation if you’re looking to build an application on top of Sia.
Sia, by Nebulous Inc., is a blockchain-based decentralized cloud storage platform.
