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Can someone ELI5 why you need a blockchain for this? Another startup could make a non-blockchain version of this that uses similar syncing technology to GDrive

Can someone ELI5 why you need a blockchain for this? Another startup could make a non-blockchain version of this that uses similar syncing technology to GDrive / Dropbox file sync that just syncs other people's stuff instead of yours and pays you monthly.

hanniabu 7y ago
Non-reliant on central services or entities.
- snarf21 7y ago
  This also cuts both ways. Your business needs a file but your customer can't connect to that node because of some political blocking of internet connections. Who can you rely on? What central service can you call to get this fixed asap?
  - buildzr 7y ago
    The idea with Sia is you upload to not one, but several people, you pick the level of redundancy you want and if you can't get the file you want from any given one of them, they pay the price and you get it from someone else.
  - ukd1 7y ago
    It's kinda designed to expect that; you end up paying for more redundancy over more hosts, which is a win. Yes some will / may be down, but a) they're penalized financially, b) you can (by default do) have redundancy
- idlewords 7y ago
  Except for the software developers.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    So exhausting watching people argue that trust is no longer necessary when they're simply pushing the trust around. You have to trust someone at the end of the day, and it's more practical to use the law to trust them (and enforce that trust) than cryptography. If I want to decentralize my storage, I would replicate data between multiple cloud object stores (Backblaze, S3, Wasabi, etc, a library to abstract PUTs and GETs) and pay them for their service. I trust them, but can verify each is holding up their end of their commercial agreement (similar to RAID block scans, but with object hash verifications). They aren't randomly going to yank their storage node of the network like a home NAS device or other consumer level storage device, because it's their business to be available. A superior solution has yet to present itself. Sidenote: The blog post is holding cloud provider data egress fees up as an example of exorbitant bandwidth pricing; this is true, but only from cloud providers. You can get bandwidth extremely cheap from non-cloud providers or through other means[1]. [1] https://www.cloudflare.com/bandwidth-alliance/ https://www.cloudflare.com/bandwidth-alliance/ (random example picked from Google search)
    - buildzr 7y ago
      > or less costly They're definitely less costly. I could host over 10x the amount on Sia for what I pay for B2 at the moment, B2 is already one of the cheapest providers, plus that's just in storage, ignoring all bandwidth costs. I'm really curious what the numbers will look like in terms of reliability here. Theoretically you can figure out how often storage contracts try to retrieve and fail and the host has to pay a fee by looking at the block chain, anyone done the analysis on this yet?
      - toomuchtodo 7y ago
        But do you have the same level of durability and availability of your data? Do you trust the storage nodes to not be making copies of your data? Can you pay with dollars instead of bitcoin? I'm paying for trust, and it is a hard sell that a distributed storage system spanning worldwide jurisdictions is inherently more trustworthy (although it is possible that it can be as durable and reliable as traditional storage systems, but the proof is in the data). I would like to be proven wrong.
wmf 7y ago
There are a lot of details such as finding servers with available space, paying for storage, posting bonds, collecting bonds with fraud proofs, and doing all of that in a decentralized way. You pretty much need a blockchain for the decentralization.
idlewords 7y ago
You need the blockchain to secure venture capital investment and a vocal online community.
Taek 7y ago
Founder here. The blockchain gets you a couple of things. The key thing in our blockchain is the storage contract, which is something like a blockchain-SLA. The host has an obligation to store some data, and the host also puts up money out of pocket as a promise that the data will be stored faithfully. The blockchain will occasionally challenge the host, and if the host cannot create a proof that the data is still being stored, the host's collateral is forfeit. The renter also puts money into the file contract, this money is used to pay the host if the host is honest/keeps the data, and the money is destroyed if the host is dishonest or loses the data. The money gets destroyed so that the renter has no reason to interfere with the host, nothing to gain from seeing the host fail or working to make the host fail. Thanks to the blockchain, the host has a guaranteed payment if they store the data, regardless of whether the renter sticks around for the duration of the contract or not. And also thanks to the blockchain, the renter knows that the host will not get paid until the end of the contract, and that they will actually lose some of their own money if they lose the data. There's another great benefit though to cryptocurrency, which is that payments are super low friction. Every time you upload data to the Sia network or download data from the Sia network, you make hundreds to thousands of tiny payments to the various parties over state channels. This wouldn't be feasible using more traditional payment systems, we'd have to track everything in a centralized database, and that actually doesn't scale very well. Sia is both low cost and high speed, but these are side benefits over the primary goal of uncompromising decentralization. Storage just happens to be an application where the decentralized version is actually highly competitive to the centralized versions. I'm glossing over a fair amount here, if there's anything that doesn't make sense or seems off feel free to ask, I'm happy to clarify.
- SimianLogic2 7y ago
  How do renewals work? With S3 I upload something and then pay for it + bandwidth until I delete it. Would I need to know how long I need storage for ahead of time? Estimated bandwidth? I run a video rendering service that currently uploads previews (call it 5-10mb) to S3 for ~3 days and then deletes them. Finished renders (~50-200mb) are stored for 2 weeks. I upload 500-1000 new files a day. Amazon just bills me for this once a month. Would I need to load up a wallet and prepay each of these contracts individually? How would I send out a download link or play a video in a browser?
rolltiide 7y ago
> that just syncs other people's stuff instead of yours and pays you monthly. with VC money? with a fickle settlement system that requires 5 layers of financial institutions before you get a REST API? where you probably still need 50+ money services licenses and compliance department anyway? where any of those financial institutions can still cut you off for any reason? to maintain operations in a single country? why do all that when you can just print money, or more accurately create a scarce digital asset of value to the market you create, available internationally on day one you don't have to agree with it, but the pendulum has swung waaay in this other direction and thats the answer for "why" before you even get into the implementation that the founder wrote.

hanniabu 7y ago

Non-reliant on central services or entities.

snarf21 7y ago
This also cuts both ways. Your business needs a file but your customer can't connect to that node because of some political blocking of internet connections. Who can you rely on? What central service can you call to get this fixed asap?
- buildzr 7y ago
  The idea with Sia is you upload to not one, but several people, you pick the level of redundancy you want and if you can't get the file you want from any given one of them, they pay the price and you get it from someone else.
- ukd1 7y ago
  It's kinda designed to expect that; you end up paying for more redundancy over more hosts, which is a win. Yes some will / may be down, but a) they're penalized financially, b) you can (by default do) have redundancy
idlewords 7y ago
Except for the software developers.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  So exhausting watching people argue that trust is no longer necessary when they're simply pushing the trust around. You have to trust someone at the end of the day, and it's more practical to use the law to trust them (and enforce that trust) than cryptography. If I want to decentralize my storage, I would replicate data between multiple cloud object stores (Backblaze, S3, Wasabi, etc, a library to abstract PUTs and GETs) and pay them for their service. I trust them, but can verify each is holding up their end of their commercial agreement (similar to RAID block scans, but with object hash verifications). They aren't randomly going to yank their storage node of the network like a home NAS device or other consumer level storage device, because it's their business to be available. A superior solution has yet to present itself. Sidenote: The blog post is holding cloud provider data egress fees up as an example of exorbitant bandwidth pricing; this is true, but only from cloud providers. You can get bandwidth extremely cheap from non-cloud providers or through other means[1]. [1] https://www.cloudflare.com/bandwidth-alliance/ https://www.cloudflare.com/bandwidth-alliance/ (random example picked from Google search)
  - buildzr 7y ago
    > or less costly They're definitely less costly. I could host over 10x the amount on Sia for what I pay for B2 at the moment, B2 is already one of the cheapest providers, plus that's just in storage, ignoring all bandwidth costs. I'm really curious what the numbers will look like in terms of reliability here. Theoretically you can figure out how often storage contracts try to retrieve and fail and the host has to pay a fee by looking at the block chain, anyone done the analysis on this yet?
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      But do you have the same level of durability and availability of your data? Do you trust the storage nodes to not be making copies of your data? Can you pay with dollars instead of bitcoin? I'm paying for trust, and it is a hard sell that a distributed storage system spanning worldwide jurisdictions is inherently more trustworthy (although it is possible that it can be as durable and reliable as traditional storage systems, but the proof is in the data). I would like to be proven wrong.

wmf 7y ago

There are a lot of details such as finding servers with available space, paying for storage, posting bonds, collecting bonds with fraud proofs, and doing all of that in a decentralized way. You pretty much need a blockchain for the decentralization.

idlewords 7y ago

You need the blockchain to secure venture capital investment and a vocal online community.

Taek 7y ago

Founder here. The blockchain gets you a couple of things. The key thing in our blockchain is the storage contract, which is something like a blockchain-SLA. The host has an obligation to store some data, and the host also puts up money out of pocket as a promise that the data will be stored faithfully. The blockchain will occasionally challenge the host, and if the host cannot create a proof that the data is still being stored, the host's collateral is forfeit. The renter also puts money into the file contract, this money is used to pay the host if the host is honest/keeps the data, and the money is destroyed if the host is dishonest or loses the data. The money gets destroyed so that the renter has no reason to interfere with the host, nothing to gain from seeing the host fail or working to make the host fail. Thanks to the blockchain, the host has a guaranteed payment if they store the data, regardless of whether the renter sticks around for the duration of the contract or not. And also thanks to the blockchain, the renter knows that the host will not get paid until the end of the contract, and that they will actually lose some of their own money if they lose the data. There's another great benefit though to cryptocurrency, which is that payments are super low friction. Every time you upload data to the Sia network or download data from the Sia network, you make hundreds to thousands of tiny payments to the various parties over state channels. This wouldn't be feasible using more traditional payment systems, we'd have to track everything in a centralized database, and that actually doesn't scale very well. Sia is both low cost and high speed, but these are side benefits over the primary goal of uncompromising decentralization. Storage just happens to be an application where the decentralized version is actually highly competitive to the centralized versions. I'm glossing over a fair amount here, if there's anything that doesn't make sense or seems off feel free to ask, I'm happy to clarify.

SimianLogic2 7y ago
How do renewals work? With S3 I upload something and then pay for it + bandwidth until I delete it. Would I need to know how long I need storage for ahead of time? Estimated bandwidth? I run a video rendering service that currently uploads previews (call it 5-10mb) to S3 for ~3 days and then deletes them. Finished renders (~50-200mb) are stored for 2 weeks. I upload 500-1000 new files a day. Amazon just bills me for this once a month. Would I need to load up a wallet and prepay each of these contracts individually? How would I send out a download link or play a video in a browser?

rolltiide 7y ago

> that just syncs other people's stuff instead of yours and pays you monthly. with VC money? with a fickle settlement system that requires 5 layers of financial institutions before you get a REST API? where you probably still need 50+ money services licenses and compliance department anyway? where any of those financial institutions can still cut you off for any reason? to maintain operations in a single country? why do all that when you can just print money, or more accurately create a scarce digital asset of value to the market you create, available internationally on day one you don't have to agree with it, but the pendulum has swung waaay in this other direction and thats the answer for "why" before you even get into the implementation that the founder wrote.