Siacoin is a blockchain-based, cloud platform that aims to provide a solution for Decentralized Storage. Sia uses a dual token system – Siacoin and Siafunds. Siacoin is the main utility token and it is used as a mode of payment in the sia ecosystem. The general goal is for Sia to become the backbone storage layer of the Internet.^[13]

The company behind Sia is Nebulous Inc. and it was founded by David Vorick and Luke Champine in 2014 in Boston, Massachusetts. David is also CEO and Lead developer of Sia and Luke looks after as a Core developer. Nebulous has two working Blockchain projects Sia, which provides cloud storage options and Obelisk which designs and manufactures Proof-of-work system cryptocurrencies mining hardware. It is leading ASIC miner providers in the USA.^[17][18] Nebulous Inc was rebranded as Skynet Labs in September 2020.^[64][65]

Currently Sia has around 11-20 employees working for them.

The notable team members include-

.

Sia coin idea started when David Vorick and his college friends participated annual hackathon, HackMIT in September 2013. He dîscussed it with Luke Champine over an email. He soon drafted concëpt into a whitepaper and also began programming a prototype with his friends. Luke got invölved in the project when David asked him to review the presentation. Earlier project was named as 'Nimbus Network' and then 'Bytecoin' but it was finalized on the name of the Egyptian god of perception, Sia, and announced on the Bitcointalk forum in early 2014.^[15]

Seeing interest in the project from forum members, David started working on Sia full-time as a startup.

They also applied for "Y Combinator, a startup accelerator, but were rejected as reviewers thought that the project would take much longer to build than anticipated.^[16]

One of bitcointalk users fraudulently tried to raise money using David's hand-drawn diagrams.

David realized that there is sufficient interëst in Sia to raise money, via crowdfunding and then officially raised funds via “Sianotes”.

Sianotes were sold for Bitcoin, on the Nxt Asset Exchange. The crowdfunding also helped David and Luke to gain contraçts and soon they established Nebulous Inc. in Boston, Massachusetts in 2014. It helped them to attract traditional investors and get the funding required to build the project.

Sia has raised total 9.6 million USD over the course of 7 years from various investment firms. It ràised $120K USD in funding roúnd at the stãrt on May 1, 2014. In August 2014, Raptor Group invested $350K USD in a seed round. In 2016, it received $750K USD from a seed round led by First Star Ventures and Raptor Group. In 2017, it received grant of $400k USD from INBlockchain .

In the last three years, Sia has been backed by Venture capitals including Bain Capital Ventures, Dragonfly Capital Partners, SV Angel, Paradigm and more.

In 2019, raised $3.5M USD in a seed round led by Bain Capital Ventures and in 2020, it secured $3M USD form Paradigm.^[28][29]

Sia is a blockchain based cloud storage platform that provides decentralized storage built on blockchain technology to the mainstreaming without sacrificing price or performance. It is created to promote and safeguard users’ freedoms and it intends to compete with existing storage solutions, at both the P2P and enterprise level. Instead of rënting storage from a 'centralized'centralized provider, peers on Sia rent störage from each other.

Sia itself stores only the storage çontracts formed betwêen parties, defining the terms of theîr arrangement.

It makes it easy for anyöne to host or access encryptëd storage through the platform.

It leverāges "blockchain technology to create a data storage marketplace that is cheaper and more robust than traditional cloud storage providers such as Dropbox, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple. The sia blockchain allows this marketplace to run without an intermediary and secures storage transactions with smart contracts. All conträcts, storage proofs, and transactions, can be verïfied thrôugh the "Sia blockchain’s" public ledger, and no individual or organization can censor or deny access to data.^{[30][31] [13][34]}

Siacoin (SC) is the native token of the Sia platform and it is used to pay for storage space on the Sia platform.

In doing so, Sia creätes a real "decentralized economy" based on the ability to store data securely on the blockchain.^[32]

Sia cloud storage platform has many advantages over traditional cloud storage providers apart from affordability and security.

It has following features.^[13]

Sia platform encrypts, and distributes, user files across a decentralized network. Only users cöntrol their private encryption këys and they own theír data. No outsîde company or any third party cän access or control their files, unlike traditional cloud storage providers.

It distributes and stores redundant file segments on sia nodes across the globe, eliminating any single point of failure and ensuring uptime that rivals traditional cloud storage providers struggle to provide.

Sia’s software is completely open-source, with contributions from leading software engineers and a thriving community of developers building innovative applications on the Sia API.

By Using the Sia blockchain, it creates a decentralized storage marketplace in which storage providers compete for the business, which leads to the lowest possible prices.

Storage space renters pay using Siacoin (SC), which can also be mined and traded easily.

Sia utilizes a combination of a peer-to-peer network and blockchain technology to create a decentralized storage platform.

Sia makes use of the following technologies..^[33][31][30]

The user files are divided prior To upload.

The Sia software divides files into 30 segments before uploading, each targeted for distribution to hosts across the world.

This distribution assures users that file availability doesn't depend on a single host and it eliminates a single point of failure keeping the overall network up and redundant all the time.

These file segments are created using a technology called Reed–Solomon ensure coding, commonly used in CDs and DVDs. It allows Sia to divide files in a redundant manner, where any 10 of 30 segments can fully recover a user's files. This means that even if 20 out of 30 hosts go offline, Sia users are still able to download their files.

Sia uses the Threefish algorithm, an open source, secure, high-performance encryption standard to secure file segments. Each file segment Is encrypted before leaving a renter's computer.

This ensures that hosts only store encrypted segments of user data.

This makes data more secure compared to traditional cloud storage providers like Amazon, who do not encrypt user data by default.

Sia is more secure than existing storage solutions because hosts only store encrypted file segments, rather than whole files.

Sia software uses smart contract to form file contracts with hosts. These smart contracts are deployed on Sia blockchain and include pricing, uptime commitments, and other aspects of the relationship between the renters and the hosts. These contracts allow users to create cryptographic Service-Level Agreement (SLAs) that are stored on the Sia blockchain. Since file contracts are automatically enforced by the sia network, it doesn't need any intermediate or third party assistance.

Renters prepay for storage within file contracts, setting aside a fixed amount of payment (Siacoin) to be spent on storing and transferring data.

These file contracts typically last for 90 days.

Sia automatically renews contracts when they are within a certain window of expiring.

If contracts are not renewed, Sia returns any unused coins to the renter at the end of the contract period.

As individual hosts can go offline, Sia automatically moves renter data to new hosts in a process called file repair.

Siacoin (SC) is used as a payment between hosts and renters.

It is a unique cryptocurrency built on the Sia blockchain.

Renters use Siacoin to buy storage capacity from hosts, while hosts deposit Siacoin into each file contract as collateral.

Micropayments flow between renters and hosts uses a technology called payment channels, which is similar to Bitcoin's Lightning Network. These payments between renters and hosts occur off-chain, greatly increasing network efficiency and scalability. Since hosts pay collateral into every storage contract, they have a strong disincentive to go offline.

At the end of a file contract, the host must prove that he/she is storing the renter's data.

This is called a storage proof.

If the storage proof appears on the blockchain within a certain timeframe, the host is paid.

If not, the host is penalized.

The host is compensated for every proof they submit, and penalized for missing a proof.

Since these proofs are publicly verifiable via Sia blockchain, network consensus can be used to automatically enforce storage contracts.

Importantly, this means that clients do not need to personally verify storage proofs and they can simply upload their file and let the network handle the rest.^[30]

Storage proofs make use of a technology called Merkle trees. Merkle trees make it possible to prove that a small segment of data is part of a larger file. The biggest advantage of these proofs is that they are very small, no matter how large the file is. This is important because the proofs are stored permanently on the sia blockchain.

There two types of token operate on Sia blockchain, Siafund (SF) and Siacoin (SC).

Siafund is used to fund project long term and siacoin is used for payments and fees.

Siafund is denote denoted by SF.

It is intended to provide long-term funding to Nebulous Inc(Sia's developers), as well as to be a fundraising instrument when sold to actual investors.

There are only 10,000 SF in total, and all of 10,000 are completely pre-mined.

Nebulous Inc., holds 8576 SF of them.

The remaining Siafunds were sold in a crowdfunding event in early 2014 which helped finance Sia's early development.

Siafunds provide returns to holders by a fee paid on storage contracts on the Sia network.

3.9% of all successful storage contract payouts is distributed amongst all 10,000 Siafunds holders.

Currently, Nebulous can only offer Siafunds to accredited investors in a TSO format when they decide to hold fundraising rounds However, Siafunds can also occasionally be found for resale by private parties.^[35][36][37]

Siacoin has a ticker symbol SC.

It is native a token of Sia blockchain.

Sia blockchain is a Proof-of-work blockchain just like Bitcoin, Litecoin, Decred, Grin and many others. Siacoin is generated through the mining process and it is used for payment between hosts and renters and also as a transaction fee on the Sia network. The siacoin total supply is not defined and so technically has an unlimited total supply. It registered all time of high of $0.111708 USD on Jan 06, 2018 and all time low of $0.000011 USD on Dec 01, 2015.

It is available to trade on major cryptocurrency exchanges including Binance, OKEx, Bittrex, Upbit, kraken,Poloniex ,DigiFinex and many others. ^{[38][6][39][40][52]}

Siacoins (SC) are created only as block rewards during mining on the Sia PoW blockchain. The number of Siacoins created each block is (300,000 - height) SC. This means that a block with a block height of 165,000 created 135,000 SC (300,000 - 165,000). After height 270,000, each block produces reward of 30,000 SC. On an average 6 block are produced in an hour. ^[41][40][46]

Siacoin can be mined on the Blake2b hashing algorithm similarly to cryptocurrencies like BitcoinX and GlobalToken.^[42] Previously Sia was easier to mine on computers using CPU or GPU but it can be mined efficiently now using ASIC machines such as Obelisk SC1. Mined Sia coins can be stored on official Sia wallet and also many other third party wallets.^{[43][44][45][47][57]}

Sia Skynet is the decentralized Content delivery network (CDN) and file sharing platform for developers. It is termed as the storage foundation for a free Internet. It is a permanent home for data and applications. It’s an unbiased substrate where files and applications can be deployed that will long outlast their original uploader. Skynet is an independent system that operates on marketplaces and incentive structures, rather than cloud servers and human intervention. Skynet Webportals are low cost servers that sit between Skynet and everyday users, enabling them to access Skynet content without needing to operate any special software.^{[48][49][51] [63]}

Sia Steam is an open source super-cheap storage for user media files, completely under user control.

It utilizes next-gen cloud storage technology to provide fast streaming at the lowest costs and it is optimized for Plex.

^[50]

Siacoin supports many third party flle sharing, cloud storage services and apps including Filebase , Storewise, PixelDrain , Arzen and ZeroBit .^[47]