Is Sia the new BitTorrent?

[IdolEyes787]

PS: Both of you are 100% useless, you can't help anyone here or direct them to anyone that does know anything related to any topic. What you CAN do is drive your worthless post count by cluttering the forum. Can you tell me the IPv4 address of FileSharingTalk?

I'm not denying that we all spend time doing things that are at best a total waste of time and at worst actually harmful.

With me it's posting on FST and with you it's using one of those penis enlarging machines.

[elastictshirt]

Well, let's get down to the juicy nut of it. What drives your interest?

Besides what drives every other mortal on this planet?

Are you soliciting advice about financial investments, or ...

No, I am not seeking advice about financial investments. Please read my first post for questions. Of course, like every other altcoin out there, you can 'invest' in Siacoins. I would not, however, simply because the coin has an extremely high inflationary rate: something like 40 million Siacoins are mined each day. The high number of coins is required, basically because you want everyone out there to be able to store and pay for files down to single bytes.

The Siacoin should be treated solely as an intermediate to pay for storage that you use on the Sia network. You buy/mine/earn the Siacoins you need to store your own files. The Siacoin is required for payments (by design) as there is no pure decentralized way of handling payments/payouts between hosts and renters on such a decentralized network. Still, if you possess enough Siacoins at a critical juncture when user-adoption suddenly goes exponential you stand to make a good buck. But for that to happen, your timing and investment has to be just right. Gamble at your own risk.

Also, let me be clear that Siacoin is not just another shit-, aka scam-, coin. It is created (in fact, required) for a specific application, unlike the vast majority of other cryptocurrencies out there. Although it is different, you could of course profit from trading it, just as you could (theoretically...) be buying up every single hard-drive in the world and then let them trickle back out on the market at hugely inflated prices. What can not be traded?

I was hoping to learn something on this forum. I'm making my posts deliberately long, and hopefully educational, since I would you all to appreciate what Sia is and what it could enable. Without even the basic pre-requisite knowledge of what blockchains, bitcoin and Sia is, I think it would be difficult to solicit any kind of advice here. With your experience, I could figure out how to approach this in the most productive manner.

STHNSv3 contributed with some insightful thoughts about what filesharing is (or, made me think about it). It also made me think the title of this thread (Is Sia the new BitTorrent?) is terribly naive. Of course it's not! Sia will never replace BitTorrent, or other means of p2p filesharing. Sia is too inconvenient for that. For a starter, you need to procure Siacoins to finance your uploads. For now, you'll also have to deal with clients that are under-developed and lacking in features (though things are moving rapidly forward in that respect).

Sia was not developed for file-sharing per se, though it seems a perfect application for it. I think now, however, that due to issues with discoverability of files, procurement of Siacoins (and possibly other factors) Sia will not be readily adopted for file-sharing in the near-future. Still, having given this some thought, I think Sia can fill a niche, namely as a protocol for anonymous broadcasting and distribution of content. But for that to happen, other tools are required as Sia alone does not provide a method to broadcast your content to other users. The solution I have settled on is a combination of BitMessage and Sia. Briefly, BitMessage will be used for encrypted, anonymous p2p broadcasting of content (basically, 'share codes'). The BitMessage component will be running as a server (possibly as multiple nodes). Sia, via a plugin that I'm writing, will broadcast share codes to these servers via HTTPS. People that want complete obfuscation of their identities will have to either run the BitMessage server component (and BitMessage itself) locally, or connect to the BitMessage server component remotely via Tor/VPN etc. The next step is for the Sia plugin to simply connect to the BitMessage server component to retrieve lists of broadcast Sia share codes. The user then adds these share codes locally and can then download the content from the p2p Sia network, anonymously and for free.

The implementation above, I think, will provide a real alternative for file-sharers that want/need complete end-to-end encryption of content (via Sia) and the ability to hide their identies when using Sia to share files (via BitMessage). The solution is very simple, and for the end-user even simpler: they would just have to deal with the Sia client plus a plugin with a (hopefully) well-designed UI.

I have made some progress writing the BitMessage server component. Broadcasting content works, and I've set the component up as a RESTful HTTPS API (so other clients besides my plugin could connect too, e.g. web-services, trackers etcs). I still have to write up the Sia plugin and some other parts.

... has your curiosity been piqued such that you want to get involved so long as it doesn't seem a wasted effort? Those are leading questions, so I'll only accept answers askew. ... What's your goal?

There is a general crackdown on online encryption and privacy from left and right. If I can enable some positive reaction to these tendencies, and enable people to share and communicate in privacy then it has not been 'wasted effort'. I think the implementation above will achieve what I'm aiming for. Also, due to the way Sia stores file on the network (distributed + encrypted) it will be impossible for hosts to know what content they're hosting. Takedowns will become virtually impossible.

As always, feedback and questions from this community are welcome as this is still work-in-progress.

[mjmacky]

... has your curiosity been piqued such that you want to get involved so long as it doesn't seem a wasted effort? Those are leading questions, so I'll only accept answers askew. ... What's your goal?

There is a general crackdown on online encryption and privacy from left and right. If I can enable some positive reaction to these tendencies, and enable people to share and communicate in privacy then it has not been 'wasted effort'. I think the implementation above will achieve what I'm aiming for. Also, due to the way Sia stores file on the network (distributed + encrypted) it will be impossible for hosts to know what content they're hosting. Takedowns will become virtually impossible.

As always, feedback and questions from this community are welcome as this is still work-in-progress.

Mostly I aim to avoid speaking to a brick wall or aiding in a nefarious scheme. Actually, that's not completely true. I would be entirely satisfied speaking to a brick wall as long as I can hear myself. In any case, I scale my response to match your effort to clarify your intentions.

My question to you folks are:
1) Does Sia complement existing file sharing protocols?
2) Does it have the potential to replace some of the existing protocols?
3) Uploading content to Sia requires payment with Siacoins (a cryptocurrency). The cost is generally well below other cloud storage providers, like Amazon and Dropbox. Still, given that you have to *pay to play* will this be a major obstacle for Sia to be adopted by the file sharing community?

1) It's development aims to compete with centralized storage services. In its current state, it seems like a temporary alternative (short term file storage). These contracts are enforced, but I can only deduce that it's a downloading and financial enforcement strategy, and at lower price points, that wouldn't be a strong motivator to restart the client or keep it running if you aren't utilizing the service. Therefore, reliable and persistent storage would require a very healthy population of users; otherwise I can envision the departure of many uninterested users causing the deprecation of many files. In any case, it's standalone, so it wouldn't need to complement other types of storage/filesharing methods.

2) The literal question would have a moot response since replacement isn't how things have worked. It's generally a transition or shift of usage, but the older methods remain. So, I think the real question you're asking is whether or not it can attract users who utilize central storage solutions or other popular filesharing methods. In order for that to happen on the demand side, you need to create an environment that makes it easy to test. At its present stage of development, that's just not going to happen because the client is still in beta, it runs command line, and requires an initial investment. So, you'd have to build a user base from the supply side. What I mean by that an entity hosting desired content like programs or media (whether legal or pirated) would make the content only accessible through this protocol.

3) Yes, this is an obstacle. More accurately, it is a gate. Consider how many gates a user has to pass to use this method of storage, and more importantly, the complexity of each gate. With the bittorrent protocol, you need a client and a small file to access the desired content. With a data hosting service, you need a browser and a standard method of payment. In the case of Sia, you need a command line client, a conversion of currency, and a standing commitment to continued use. I'm someone who has 0.000000 bitcoins because it seemed too much of an effort to farm, earn, or buy them out of pure curiosity. So, getting past the new gate created by the Sia protocol depends on how easy it is to purchase your initial share of Siacoins. If I had to absolutely use bitcoins for something, then I'd follow through with one of the methods. This is why I mentioned a supply side approach to expanding the protocol. Sure, people are willingly dumb, but all humans are potentially resourceful, so creating a requirement could force users through the more complicated steps so long as a guide exists and there's something desirable on the other end. Growth gets a lot easier once that large pill is swallowed.

Visionary questions get visionary responses, which may have little worth, but I hope you could extract some insight.