What is Siacoin (SC)?

Siacoin (SC) is an interesting proposal that uses the power and potential of blockchain technology to create an incensible and secure cloud storage system.

Lto technology blockchain allows to create unique ecosystems and one of them is elevated to the maximum with Siacoin (SC). You will surely wonder; What is Siacoin?. Well, imagine a system that allows you to earn money for those gigabytes of your hard drive that you do not use. Or to be able to save your data completely securely in the cloud at a very low cost. Well, this is precisely what makes the Sia platform, along with all its blockchain and data storage technology.

Under the SC trading symbol, Siacoin supports an incredible proposal for decentralized data storage. SC is the native token of the Sia platform. This token It is used to pay for storage space on the Sia platform. In doing so, Sia creates a real decentralized economy based on the ability to store data out of the clutches of large multinationals.

In other words, this eliminates the control of large companies such as Amazon, Google or Microsoft over our data. It also allows the owner of the data to maintain real control over it, as these pieces are found and encrypted among hundreds of computers that are part of the Sia network. As the data is encrypted with the owner's private key, only the owner of the data can access it.

In the Sia ecosystem, a decentralized supply and demand market is created in which storage space is offered. All this without registration of users, central servers, or the participation of trusted third parties is required. Furthermore, the data stored in Sia cannot be censored. Thanks to blockchain technology, the data is encrypted and distributed through a decentralized peer-to-peer network (P2P). With all this, Sia offers a cheaper, more robust, more effective, more reliable, inexpensive, and more robust data storage alternative than traditional alternatives.

Currently, the Siacoin cryptocurrency occupies a very good position in terms of market capitalization, ranking 71st.

Start and development of Siacoin (SC)

To know the beginnings of the Siacoin (SC) project, we must go back to September 2013. At that time, students of Computer Science David Vorick y Luke champion conceived the idea of ​​this great project during the HackMIT Hackathon 2013. At that time, Vorick and Champine presented the proposal to free up the world's unused storage space and unite it in a totally free global data market.

Thus, its creators focused on developing a completely decentralized infrastructure that would allow users to rent their available storage space. With this, users can earn money for the rented space and receive payment using the Siacoin token.

Later, Vorick, the CEO and main developer of Sia, together with Champine, co-founder of the platform, founded the company. Nebulous in 2014. Which is based in Boston and is currently the one that develops the Sia software and manages the developer of ASIC miner, Obelisk.

The development of Siacoin (SC) and the Sia platform continued and It was finally in 2015, when they released the first beta version of the platform to the public. Siacoin is written in the programming language Go and it runs on 64-bit versions of Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

How does the Siacoin platform work?

As we have already mentioned, the Sia platform and its cryptocurrency Siacoin (SC) are two well-differentiated but strongly intertwined pieces. And is that by joining these, it is possible to operate the most secure distributed storage system that exists. First, Sia has designed software capable of creating a peer-to-peer storage (P2P) network that allows anyone to be part of that network. In this way, the Sia blockchain network can be accessed from anywhere in the world and be resistant to censorship.

From this point on, on the Sia platform, a series of very important actors intervene and that we will know now.

Hosts or providers at Siacoin

By installing this software, each new computer becomes part of the nodes. of the network. With this, it collaborates with the services that the network needs. These nodes generally receive on behalf of providers or hosts. Providers are who They control the cost of storage, presenting offers for storage packages and the level of reliability of their service.

That is, the hosts are the ones who put their storage resources so that they can be rented by the clients. Suppliers are responsible for maintaining the data and its integrity.

Renters or customers at Siacoin

The other party that participates in the network are customers or renters. These are actually the people who need Sia's storage services. To access this service, they will pay to obtain a certain storage on the network using the Siacoin tokens.

Once renters have access to the service, they can upload the data they want to the Sia cloud until they reach the limit of their storage. The best thing about all this is that the client is the one who has control of their data at all times. This because of Every bit of data uploaded to Sia is encrypted using a private key that can only be handled by the client. Once the data has been uploaded, if the client so chooses, a process of data delocalization can be started. This process divides the data into different pieces placing it in different parts of the world. In this way, greater data redundancy and greater resistance to censorship are achieved.

Siacoin (SC), the economic incentive of the Sia platform

Of course, the above is expensive. Keeping computer equipment running all the time, storage hardware, backup systems, maintenance and bandwidth are not free. At this point, the Sia platform needed to create a means to create economic dynamics within its system. A dynamic that was safe for both suppliers and customers. It is there that the Siacoin (SC) token kicks in.

Through this Siacoin token, everything is paid on the Sia platform. But the system is more complex than just buying and selling storage space. One of the concerns of Sia's developers was that vendors would provide good service, and that customers might not get away with it. Thus, they created two security mechanisms linked to Siacoin and its blockchain. These mechanisms are the File Contracts and Proof of Storage.

Smart Contract and Siacoin Storage Testing

The Sia platform has the ability to use smart contracts. These smart contracts they serve as an agreement between the customer and the storage service provider. These contracts are created automatically after the allocation is fixed, and have the ability to be renewed. The conditions of storage and payment for said service are reflected in them.. Archive contracts end with the advance payment of the storage service by the client. But said payment is not released until the end of the contract term and the reliable demonstration that the agreement has been respected.

In addition, the smart contract blocks a variable amount of coins from the host, depending on the cost of storage, which will disappear if the contract is broken on their part, with the aim of discouraging a person from offering space for X time, but does not respect their permanence . This disincentive generates a Nash equilibrium which guarantees the permanence of the hosts.

This is where the second security measure comes into play. The Storage Test, is a cryptographic proof that is given by the provider at the end of a contract term. Only once this test is performed and approved, the funds held by the contract are released. All this is possible thanks to the blockchain and the Siacoin token, which gives an additional level of security to the platform.

Mining in Sia and its importance

The Siacoin platform uses a consensus protocol of Work test (PoW) Which incorporates BLAKE2b like its hash function. The token is created using the mining process, very similar to the one used in the Bitcoin network. And like this cryptocurrency, it uses a generation time of 10 minutes, in order to avoid attacks and protect the network.

And it is thanks to mining that the Sia platform can safely reach consensus. The goal of this consensus is to divide the files into small pieces that are then stored on multiple hosts using encryption called Reed-Solomon. This is an encoding used for error detection and correction. The code was invented by Irving S. Reed y Gustave Solomon in 1960.

Thus, the Sia platform allows users to safely store their data through a fairly wide network of participants. So your information will not be contained in the hands of a single person. In addition, the use of this encryption also allows Siacoin to achieve a triple redundancy. This allows information to be retrieved even if multiple hosts will go offline.

Furthermore, the platform employs smart contracts stored within the blockchain to make them publicly auditable. These contracts contain the guidelines and conditions by which a storage provider safeguards a customer's information. They also establish that evidence must be presented periodically until the expiration of the contract to ensure that the information is safeguarded and safe. Thus, these contracts are cryptographically secured to allow encryption and data transfer without the risk that a third party may interfere with the information in any way.

The presentation and verification of the storage tests are carried out through merkle trees. Which allow storage hosts to provide zero knowledge cryptographic evidence that it still stores the client files.

Such tests are constantly verified by the storage network. Thus, Sia allows to divide, encrypt and distribute the files through a decentralized network. Where the users who have the private keys have absolute control of their data. And like the Bitcoin network, in Sia it is not possible that any entity or company can access them, block them or control them. In short, all this potential is possible thanks to the mining provided by Siacoin and secures the network against practically all kinds of attacks.

Importance of Siacoin

Sia allows you to rent the available storage space and receive payments for it in the native Siacoin token. Being a decentralized cloud where data is stored on a blockchain, Sia has no single points of failure as it does on traditional platforms. In addition, it has a large amount of available storage space where the information is encrypted and protected using encryption algorithms. So it eradicates the need to trust centralized data services.

What are Siacoin Siafunds?

The Sia platform has two tokens. The first of these is Siacoin (SC), and the second is Siafunds. The first of them we already know, but the second is a bit more enigmatic. Siafunds are an income generating token, designed to provide a stream of income to their holders in the form of Siacoins.

Its operation is related to storage contracts. When one of these contracts is completed, 3.9% of each funding source is reserved for Siafund holders. The sources of financing for the contracts are:

1. Storage Lease Fees
2. Tenant bandwidth costs
3. Host collateral

At the end of a contract, the reserved amount is distributed to all Siafund holders equally. Because the entire Sia economic system is integrated, you can save your Siafunds funds in the same wallet for your Siacoins. Now, why have the Sia developers created the Siafunds?

On the Sia website they explain the following:

We created the Siafunds to sustainably finance the development of the Sia network. Siafunds allows us to maintain and grow the decentralized network and capture value for Siafund holders as the network grows and cloud storage activity increases on the Sia network.

In this way the developers of Sia, who in principle had all the Siafunds, sold these to obtain money and boost their development. But to this, an additional point is added and it is its extreme scarcity. And there are only 10.000 Siafunds, and all of them have already been generated. For this reason and following the concept of digital shortage, each Siafunds saves an enormous value, and as the network increases, this value continues to increase. In this way, each Siafunds holder receives a strong economic incentive to maintain their services and support the development of the Sia ecosystem.

Siacoin Features

1. The Sia platform is fully decentralized and it is more affordable than traditional platforms Amazon Cloud, Google Drive and Microsoft One Drive. On average, 1TB storage at Sia costs around $ 2 per month, compared to $ 23 at Amazon. So it is 90% cheaper.
2. If you use this cloud storage service, no hosts can view the content of the information on your disk or manipulate it. Since it is protected and protected by cryptography, so the only way to see the files is with private keys. That they are in the hands of the clients only.
3. The information stored in Sia is encrypted using the cryptographic algorithm Twofish. Where only the client that owns the private keys can decrypt it to see or modify it. Therefore, the hosts are only in charge of storing and do not have any access to the files.
4. Files are divided, encrypted, and stored on multiple hosts. So if several of them go offline, clients and users will still be able to access their files.
5. The Siacoin cryptocurrency can either be mined, or it can be obtained as a way to pay when renting the storage space available on our equipment. Thus, when we become a Hay we will receive Siacoin or according to the contract that we agree with a client.
6. The platform will have a infinite amount of SC cryptocurrencies. That is, there is no cryptocurrency issuance limit.
7. The reward for Siacoin mining will be reduced by 1 coin each block mined until it reaches 30.000 units per block. Thus, the first block mined awarded a reward of 300.000 Siacoin, the second block a reward of 299.999 Siacoin and so on until reaching 30.000 Siacoin.
8. The Sia platform has a wallet, called Siacoin Wallet, through which you can make transfers and operations with the funds received on the platform.

Some current uses of Sia

Surely you have thought about the enormous potential that Sia presents as an uncensorable storage platform or an uncensored YouTube. We are talking about the ability to securely upload information and prevent governments or power groups from censoring it. Although its possibilities can be enormous, this type of technology is being born and there is still a lot to create.

Many companies worldwide have already been interested in this potential. Therefore, they have integrated or take as a basis of their services, the storage system provided by Sia. Among these initiatives we can mention the following:

filebase

filebase, is a data storage service that offers compatibility with the Amazon S3 data storage service. This service uses Sia as a means of storing data that can be used from Amazon through an API. All this, while keeping the data away from Amazon's control, guaranteeing its security, uncertainties.

Filebase is one of the great storage services making use of Sia right now and offers free and paid services. All of them with the same level of security and quality of service.

goobox

Another well-known data storage service is goobox. Goobox is a free file sharing service. This allows users to share files up to 4 Gb in size, securely. Goobox is a free software development that you can review from your GitHub.

pixeldrain

pixeldrain is a text and file sharing website created for speed and ease of use. This service is free, and is maintained based on donations.

NextCloud

NextCloud is software that allows you to deploy your own cloud storage services. Recientemente Sia's developers have managed to integrate NextCloud to use Sia as the data storage medium. With this, the stored data is managed by NextCloud from its interface. In this way you can take advantage of the full potential of NextCloud while the true storage is managed by Sia and its providers.

Skynet, a new service based on Sia

Skynet is a new service created by Sia to facilitate the access and use of its blockchain distributed storage system. The objective of this new Sia project is to allow the creation of a content distribution network (Content Delivery Network or CDN), easy to use and accessible to application developers and users around the world. The project was launched in February 2020, and since then, it has made its functions accessible to the public from its official website.

Links of interest