According to the platform’s lead developer, David Vorick, blockchain technology is going to be the future of online data storage. Today, just a few big firms are holding the largest share of this market. Everyone knows about Dropbox, Microsoft Azure, Amazon S3, and Google Cloud Storage, and although some other cloud storage services do exist, they have never been able to reach even a fraction of the profits made by those giants.
The biggest complaint that many users came up with, the lack of data security, has not been addressed by anyone yet. All the data uploaded to the cloud is held by the company itself, and policies on private information can be unclear. Database leaks, sudden privacy policy changes, and even mischievous sales to third parties caused many users to lose their trust in these companies. And there is where Sia comes in. The new software allows the user to encrypt the content with industrial-grade algorithms before it’s sent to the various hosts, so no privacy violations are possible anymore. The user is the only one who has control of his data safety, and it can be accessed by other people only when a smart contract is filed and the money (the Siacoins) is funded in escrow.
Sia wants to build a decentralized network of many data centers that would be much smaller in size than the usual gigantic storages used by the current dominating firms. Not only that would help make the information stored more secure and efficient, but it would also significantly increase the speed at which it is accessed. Also, a larger number of smaller data centers would be helpful to reduce the economic barrier required to compete in this market, further lowering the overall price for the average user. Many people with a cheap source of storage can make some money out of this new technology, thanks also to the safety of the cryptocurrency itself. The developers also hope to reach a point where even massive services such as Netflix and YouTube will use their software to improve customer’s experience.
Although the new software has been in operational beta since June 2015, the developers announced that a fully operative 1.0 version of Sia will be released on June 28, 2016.
