The State of Sia, July 2024

July has been a month of substantial progress for the Sia network, marked by significant updates across various projects and the approval of innovative grants. This month’s achievements showcase the collective effort to enhance the Sia ecosystem and push the boundaries of decentralized storage technology.

Development

Recent updates to the Sia network’s core components highlight the continuous efforts by the team to refine and expand its capabilities. The walletd service saw the release of version 0.8.0, which includes updated API documentation and new endpoints to streamline block scanning for exchanges. This update also introduced experimental scanning-over-HTTP support, allowing users to interact with the network without needing to store the entire blockchain locally.

The hostd service saw the release of versions 1.1.1-beta.2 and 1.1.2, featuring user interface improvements and continued cleanup of core conversion processes.

Significant enhancements were made to the renterd service this past month, which saw improvements in the efficiency of the health code and contract archival. The handling of account syncs and slab migration processes was also improved, ensuring smoother operations even under challenging conditions. Further updates included enhancements to the renterd UI, with fixes for file operations and the addition of comprehensive end-to-end tests. Configuration options were improved to provide better allowance and price calculations, ensuring optimal resource allocation and reducing host churn.

The app-sia-x service saw updates that integrated Ledger's UI guidelines and made a number of changes to enhance user experience, including icon fixes and snapshot updates. The Ledger app also received a couple of audit changes and documentation updates, along with various fixes to enhance security and usability.

General updates to the desktop platform included expanded testing across different systems, refined release build scripts, and additional support for arm64 Linux and MacOS. The website's download sections were updated to list system requirements and link to terms of service, enhancing transparency and user experience.

coreutils has been updated to support Siafund claims and refined contract resolution events while progress was made toward finalizing the RHP4 host implementation. We have also updated the js-sdk to support non-browser environments, and the design system saw a refactor of configuration and form components, streamlining code and improving custom use cases. Additionally, issues with the siascan faucet were resolved following a DNS migration.

Grants Program

The Sia Foundation’s Grants Program continues to play a pivotal role in fostering innovation within the community. Over the past month, the committee approved several new grants, each aimed at advancing the Sia network’s capabilities and expanding its ecosystem.

The S5 Network 2024 grant was approved to stabilize specifications, enhance libraries, and make the Vup App production-ready. This project also aims to extend web archiving services powered by Sia, demonstrating the network’s potential for diverse applications.

The SiaLearn initiative was approved to provide comprehensive training courses and resources for developers, ensuring a steady stream of skilled contributors to the Sia ecosystem. Similarly, the SkyMusic Part 2 project received approval to develop a decentralized music streaming application, highlighting the network’s versatility in supporting various types of digital content.

A standout approval was the Sia NFS Gateway, designed to provide access to Sia buckets via a regular NFS interface. This project aims to make Sia more accessible across different operating systems, enhancing its usability and broadening its appeal.

The committee’s decisions reflect a balance of ambition and practicality, with a focus on clear, realistic project outlines. While some proposals were rejected due to scope issues, the overall enthusiasm for new ideas remains high, and the committee welcomes reapplications at any time.

Events

Looking ahead, the Sia Foundation will be attending Mainnet 2024 in New York. This will be our final event of the year, providing another valuable opportunity to connect with industry leaders and showcase our latest advancements.

Next year, we plan to refine our focus based on feedback from the events we attended this year. This feedback will help us target areas of the tech industry where we have seen the most interest, allowing us to expand our connections and partnerships strategically.

Conclusion

July has been a month of remarkable progress for the Sia network. With significant updates across various projects and the approval of promising new grants, the Sia community can look forward to continued innovation and growth. These efforts reflect the ongoing commitment to enhancing the Sia ecosystem and promoting user-owned data through decentralized storage solutions. As these projects advance, the Sia network is poised to achieve even greater heights in the months ahead.

Changelog

All public repositories can be found here.

renterd

renterd is our new stand-alone renter. The renterd repository is currently public and can be found here, and the app is available for download on the Sia website.

• Updated health code to be more efficient when updating the health of objects (View)
• Updated contract archival to be easier on the database by archiving them one-by-one and to prevent a single contract failing to archive from preventing all contracts from archiving (View)
• Account syncs can’t be interrupted by price table gouging anymore (View)
• Slab migration will happen even if refreshing the health of slabs fails (View)
• Cache DNS responses. (View)
• Better handling of revision submission buffer on the renter side (View)
• Refactor of host scanner to improve FTUE and logging (View)
• Various fixes to ensure critical migrations have a higher chance of succeeding (View)
• Improve the renter startup in cluster setups (View)
• Fix cache invalidation issue in worker (adds events system) (View)

renterd ui

This is a small collection of monthly changes. A full, detailed changelog can be found here.

• Fixed an issue where renaming a file would throw an error. View)
• Fixed an issue where the empty directory state showed an empty bucket message. (View)
• The slab migration failed alert now shows health and an object IDs list that includes the file context menu for each object. (View) (Closes #1322)
• The configuration no longer offers an option to auto-calculate the allowance. (View)
• The configuration now has an option to automatically calculate prices from the user-specified allowance. The prices are calculated to spend around the allowance while keeping upload, download, and storage prices proportionally fixed while also allocating based on estimated usage in each category. The max prices also include headroom so that variations in contract prices average out while avoiding host churn. (View) (Closes #1303)
• The estimates in the stats bar are now based directly off the configured allowance. (View)
• The contracts table can now be sorted on prunable size. (View)
• The file stats no longer show reclaimable space. (View) (Closes #1247)
• The contracts table now allows the user to check the prunable and expiring data size for a specific contract across all contracts or a filtered set of contracts. Prunable means data that the autopilot sector pruning feature would prune. Expiring means prunable data outside of autopilot contracts that will likely eventually expire. (View) (Closes #1247)
• The contracts contract set column tags now more clearly show whether a set is the autopilot set, default set, or both. (View)
• All contract table financial columns now show a sum total across filtered contracts in the summary row. (View)

renterd desktop app

• Fixed an issue where the tray icon tooltip displayed the wrong app name. (View)
• The recovery phrase is now displayed in a locked state if a saved value exists. (View) (Closes #67)
• Recovery phrase and password visibility selections no longer persist between app starts. They now reset to hidden. (View)
• Regenerating the recovery phrase now warns the user and asks for confirmation. (View) (Closes #67)
• The tray icon now matches the system theme on MacOS. (View) (Closes #79)
• Copying the recovery phrase value is now only required if the value has changed. (View)

hostd

hostd is the app you use to rent out your excess storage space to the Sia network. The hostd repository is public, and the app is available for download on the Sia website.

• Released v1.1.1-beta.2, which has some UI changes over the first version (View)
• Finishing cleanup on the core conversion
• Released v1.1.2. (View)

hostd ui

This is a small collection of monthly changes. A full, detailed changelog can be found here.

• The pin max collateral switch is now visible in basic view mode. (View) (Closes #417)
• Max collateral no longer has an option to auto-calculate its value. The same value is shown as a suggestion. (View) (Closes #418)
• Fixed an issue where suggestions or errors were not showing for some fields. (View)

hostd desktop app

• The recovery phrase is now displayed in a locked state if a saved value exists. (View) (Closes #67)
• Recovery phrase and password visibility selections no longer persist between app starts. They now reset to hidden. (009fdc6)
• Regenerating the recovery phrase now warns the user and asks for confirmation. (View) (Closes #67)
• The tray icon now matches the system theme on MacOS. (View) (Closes #79)
• Copying the recovery phrase value is now only required if the value has changed. (View)

walletd

walletd is our brand new wallet-only software. Find the public repository here.

• Released v0.8.0 (View)
• Updated API docs
• Added /consensus/update/:index endpoint so that exchanges can scan blocks for deposits instead of checking addresses individually. (View)
• Added experimental scanning-over-HTTP support so that users don’t have to store the blockchain at all.
• Fixed an off-by-one in the event maturity height and added sanity tests for all supported event types. (View)

walletd ui

This is a small collection of monthly changes. A full, detailed changelog can be found here.

• Refactor wallet events to use updated types and format walletd (View)
• Fixed an issue where calculating the siacoin value for a transaction without relevant siacoin inputs would cause an error. (View) (Closes #150)

walletd desktop app

• The desktop app is now running with daemon v0.8.0-beta.1. (Automatic updates will kick in once it has an official release). (View)
• Fixed an issue where the tray icon tooltip displayed the wrong app name. (View)
• The tray icon now matches the system theme on MacOS. (View) (Closes #79)
• The bootstrap option now defaults to true. (View)

core-rs

This core-rs repository is a Rust implementation of core Sia types and can be found here.

• Added deserialization for a lot of types (View, View)

coreutils

The coreutils repository is public and holds implementations of Sia components that will be reused across our various nodes. The full repository can be found here.

• Added support for Siafund Claims to the SingleAddressWallet. (View)
• Refactored the v2 contract resolution event to include the resolution type
• Working on finalizing the RHP4 host implementation

js-sdk

• The SDK now works in non-browser environments like node-js and bun. (View)

explored

The explored repository is a private repository currently under development.

• Encode some file_contract_elements fields that were previously treated as integers to fix errors with larger-than-expected values. (View)
• Add index on siacoin_elements to improve syncing time substantially. (View)
• Fix too many variable errors in updateBalance. (View)
• Fix metrics inaccuracies. (View)
• Add endpoint to get peers. (View)
• Add endpoint to retrieve element type for an ID to make search possible. (View)

app-sia-x

The app-sia-x repository is public and provides Sia compatibility for Ledger devices. The full repository can be found here.

• Ledger suggested changes to follow UI guidelines: (View)
• Ledger audit changes: creating setting to enable/disable blind signing. (View)
• Ledger audit changes: Update documentation, fix potential out of bounds write error, use new recommended UI flow function. (View)
• Miscellaneous Updates: Fixed Stax icon, fixed NanoSP icon, Updated Stax snapshots and UI navigation in tests, and updated ledger_app.toml (View)
• Stax app is now available!

website

• Software downloads now also list system requirements. (63f12c8) Closes #553
• The website download sections now prompt and link to the terms of service. (View) (Closes #548)
• The website now displays both desktop and terminal/daemon downloads. (View) (Closes #649) (Closes #548)

siascan

• Fixed the faucet which got lost in the DNS migration. (View)

That’s all folks!

Thanks for your continued support and dedication as we build the foundation of the decentralized future.

Take care, and see you next month.

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