SiaPrime is a decentralized cloud storage platform based on the Sia core protocol. Leveraging smart contracts, client-side encryption, and sophisticated redundancy (via Reed-Solomon codes), SiaPrime allows users to safely store their data with hosts that they do not know or trust. The result is a cloud storage marketplace where hosts compete to offer the best service at the lowest price. Hosts can include everyone from individual hobbyists up to enterprise-scale datacenters with excess capacity to sell.
The SiaPrime protocol currently provides very basic storage capability. We expect the SiaPrime product suite will begin to roll out in 2019 as we work in parallel with SiaPrime core developers to deliver live products as soon as the protocol can support them. As they build key features into the network, we'll extend into an easy-to-use application suite with versions geared at different customer profiles and market verticals.
Traditional cloud storage is dominated by a small number of companies, with most based in Silicon Valley. China is also dominated by a few entities creating region specific barriers and firewalls. The individual companies decide what level of encryption to offer to users, usually based on the price each customer is willing to pay. All of the companies are compliant with national laws and even sometimes, with assisting governmental entities to restrict or compromise user data. They maintain strict control over customer data in ways that can jeopardize customer security and privacy.
We are rapidly seeing a public desire to retake control of private data. Users are demanding companies explain their policies in data gathering and use. SiaPrime is an important initiative to provide companies, organizations and individuals a comprehensive cloud storage environment uncompromised by inside or outside interference. This is achieved through fragmenting user data and spreading it across a distributed network of hosts. No single datacenter has access to your complete data.
These fragments are duplicated over enough hosts that even if several hosts disappear, your data is still accessible. Switching to different hosts for better geographic coverage, price, speed or reliability is easy as hosts compete with each other to provide the best service offering.
As we develop and release our product suite for customers, SiaPrime will offer a complete cloud storage solution for file backup, long term archival needs, CDN use cases as well as bridging the gap between online and offline strategies.
The SiaPrime network allows for highly parallel data transfer, which when coupled with geographic targeting can significantly reduce latency and access to your data no matter if you are storing family photos or large database backups.
The process of choosing hosts on the SiaPrime network allows customers to choose based on latency, lowest price, widest geographic coverage, or even a strict whitelist of IP addresses or public keys. We expect to provide customers multiple ways to purchase storage on the SiaPrime network, including simple Dropbox-like web interfaces up to sophisticated client dashboards for enterprise clients.
Purchasing storage on the network will have several variants, though all ultimately use our core cryptocurrency utility token called a PrimeToken. PrimeTokens will be available on cryptocurrency exchanges. We will also be creating fiat to storage gateways to encourage broad adoption of the SiaPrime storage model.
Because SiaPrime is based on the core SiaPrime protocol, we expect SiaPrime software and custom integrations to facilitate purchase of storage on the main SiaPrime network as well as SiaPrime project forks that continue to use the core protocol. As the protocol becomes widely used, it is likely individual SiaPrime blockchains will experience typical scaling issues. Though we expect the Nebulous team to work on solutions, multiple chains/networks have the potential to ease scaling issues while providing another layer of redundancy and privacy.
To get started with SiaPrime, check out the initial SiaPrime guides below. The interface is the same except for our branding. As we launch our own product suite, the core application should still exist but be less useful:
Check out the guides below:
This release comes with 2 binaries, spd and spc. spd is a background
service, or "daemon," that runs the SiaPrime protocol and exposes an HTTP API on
port 4280. spc is a command-line client that can be used to interact with
spd in a user-friendly way. There is also a graphical client, SiaPrime-UI,
which is the preferred way of using SiaPrime for most users. For interested
developers, the spd API is documented here.
On Windows, double-click spd.exe. For command line operation, navigate to the
containing folder and click File->Open command prompt. Start the spd service
by entering spd and pressing Enter. The command prompt may appear to freeze;
this means spd is waiting for requests. Windows users may see a warning from
Windows Firewall; be sure to check both boxes ("Private networks" and "Public
networks") and click "Allow access." You can now run spc (in a separate command
prompt) or SiaPrime-UI to interact with spd.
To build from source, Go 1.10 must be installed
on the system. Make sure your $GOPATH is set, and then simply use go get:
go get -u gitlab.com/SiaPrime/SiaPrime/...
This will download the SiaPrime repo to your $GOPATH/src folder and install
thespd and spc binaries in your $GOPATH/bin folder.
To stay up-to-date, run the previous go get command again. Alternatively, you
can use the Makefile provided in this repo. Run git pull origin master to
pull the latest changes, and make release to build the new binaries. You
can also run make test and make test-long to run the short and full test
suites, respectively. Finally, make cover will generate code coverage reports
for each package; they are stored in the cover folder and can be viewed in
your browser.