109 lines
5.8 KiB
Markdown
109 lines
5.8 KiB
Markdown
# [](http://sia.tech) v1.1.1 (Andromeda)
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=========
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[](https://travis-ci.org/NebulousLabs/Sia)
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[](https://godoc.org/github.com/NebulousLabs/Sia)
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[](https://goreportcard.com/report/github.com/NebulousLabs/Sia)
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Sia is a new decentralized cloud storage platform that radically alters the
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landscape of cloud storage. By leveraging smart contracts, client-side
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encryption, and sophisticated redundancy (via Reed-Solomon codes), Sia allows
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users to safely store their data with hosts that they do not know or trust.
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The result is a cloud storage marketplace where hosts compete to offer the
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best service at the lowest price. And since there is no barrier to entry for
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hosts, anyone with spare storage capacity can join the network and start
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making money.
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Traditional cloud storage has a number of shortcomings. Users are limited to a
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few big-name offerings: Google, Microsoft, Amazon. These companies have little
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incentive to encrypt your data or make it easy to switch services later. Their
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code is closed-source, and they can lock you out of your account at any time.
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We believe that users should own their data. Sia achieves this by replacing
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the traditional monolithic cloud storage provider with a blockchain and a
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swarm of hosts, each of which stores an encrypted fragment of your data. Since
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the fragments are redundant, no single host can hold your data hostage: if
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they jack up their price or go offline, you can simply download from a
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different host. In other words, trust is removed from the equation, and
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switching to a different host is painless. Stripped of these unfair
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advantages, hosts must compete solely on the quality and price of the storage
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they provide.
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Sia can serve as a replacement for personal backups, bulk archiving, content
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distribution, and more. For developers, Sia is a low-cost alternative to
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Amazon S3. Storage on Sia is a full order of magnitude cheaper than on S3,
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with comparable bandwidth, latency, and durability. Sia works best for static
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content, especially media like videos, music, and photos.
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Distributing data across many hosts automatically confers several advantages.
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The most obvious is that, just like BitTorrent, uploads and downloads are
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highly parallel. Given enough hosts, Sia can saturate your bandwidth. Another
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advantage is that your data is spread across a wide geographic area, reducing
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latency and safeguarding your data against a range of attacks.
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It is important to note that users have full control over which hosts they
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use. You can tailor your host set for minimum latency, lowest price, widest
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geographic coverage, or even a strict whitelist of IP addresses or public
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keys.
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At the core of Sia is a blockchain that closely resembles Bitcoin.
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Transactions are conducted in Siacoin, a cryptocurrency. The blockchain is
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what allows Sia to enforce its smart contracts without relying on centralized
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authority. To acquire siacoins, use an exchange such as [Poloniex](https://poloniex.com), [Yunbi](https://yunbi.com), or
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[Bitsquare](https://bitsquare.io).
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To get started with Sia, check out the guides below:
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- [How to Store Data on Sia](https://blog.sia.tech/getting-started-with-private-decentralized-cloud-storage-c9565dc8c854)
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- [How to Become a Sia Host](https://blog.sia.tech/how-to-run-a-host-on-sia-2159ebc4725)
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- [Using the Sia API](https://blog.sia.tech/api-quickstart-guide-f1d160c05235)
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Usage
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-----
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Sia is ready for use with small sums of money and non-critical files, but
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until the network has a more proven track record, we advise against using it
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as a sole means of storing important data.
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This release comes with 2 binaries, siad and siac. siad is a background
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service, or "daemon," that runs the Sia protocol and exposes an HTTP API on
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port 9980. siac is a command-line client that can be used to interact with
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siad in a user-friendly way. There is also a graphical client, [Sia-UI](https://github.com/NebulousLabs/Sia-UI), which
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is the preferred way of using Sia for most users. For interested developers,
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the siad API is documented [here](doc/API.md).
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siad and siac are run via command prompt. On Windows, you can just double-
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click siad.exe if you don't need to specify any command-line arguments.
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Otherwise, navigate to its containing folder and click File->Open command
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prompt. Then, start the siad service by entering `siad` and pressing Enter.
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The command prompt may appear to freeze; this means siad is waiting for
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requests. Windows users may see a warning from the Windows Firewall; be sure
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to check both boxes ("Private networks" and "Public networks") and click
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"Allow access." You can now run `siac` (in a separate command prompt) or Sia-
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UI to interact with siad. From here, you can send money, upload and download
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files, and advertise yourself as a host.
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Building From Source
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--------------------
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To build from source, [Go 1.7 must be installed](https://golang.org/doc/install)
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on the system. Then simply use `go get`:
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```
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go get -u github.com/NebulousLabs/Sia/...
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```
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This will download the Sia repo to your `$GOPATH/src` folder, and install the
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`siad` and `siac` binaries in your `$GOPATH/bin` folder.
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To stay up-to-date, run the previous `go get` command again. Alternatively, you
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can use the Makefile provided in this repo. Run `git pull origin master` to
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pull the latest changes, and `make release-std` to build the new binaries. You
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can also run `make test` and `make test-long` to run the short and full test
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suites, respectively. Finally, `make cover` will generate code coverage reports
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for each package; they are stored in the `cover` folder and can be viewed in
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your browser.
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