Sia – decentralised storage, secured by blockchain

Sia is a decentralised storage platform that is secured by blockchain  technology. Fundamentally, instead of buying storage from a central bank of servers, which is the traditional cloud-based model, the Sia storage platform leverages hard drive capacity around the world to create a decentralised data storage market place. People are incentivised to rent out their unused disk space and are remunerated with Sia coin. The whole processed is underpinned by blockchain technology, much the same as with bitcoin, but with a few modifications allowing it to be used for file storage.

Sia is an encrypted peer to peer storage platform. So, in layman terms the data is divided up into many parts and multiple copies of each bits of data is stored by many hosts. When a client wants to use storage, the client and host agree on a file contract ( i.e. the terms of the storage agreement) and these contracts are stored in Sia’s blockchain.

When the client wants to access their data, all the parts are recompiled to reconstruct the file. Anyone can rent out their underutilised storage space to the Sia decentralised storage network and be paid in Sia coin and in the same token anyone who wants to use the Sia storage platform can do so and needs to pay the host for this service with Sia coin.  Sia, could be likened to a cloud storage platform such as Google drive, Dropbox or Amazon cloud but what differentiates it from those platforms is that it is a decentralised platform based on blockchain technology.

Bitmain have created an ASIC crypto miner specifically for the Sia coin: the Antminer A3. If you would like information on hosting your A3 Antminer at Datanet, please click here.

 

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