New cryptocurrency-based cloud storage Sia attempts to take on giant Dropbox

Siacoin is a data storage platform based on cryptocurrency technology launched by Nebulous Labs. It aims to beat current cloud storage giants such as Dropbox and Amazon S3.

According to David Vorick, the leader of the platform's developers, blockchain technology will be the future of online data storage. Today, the huge market is occupied by only a few companies. Everyone knows Dropbox, Microsoft Azure, Amazon S3, and Google Cloud Storage. Compared to these cloud storage giants, other cloud storage service companies only have a small market share.

Many users are most concerned about data security, but this has not been well resolved. The files uploaded by users are owned by cloud storage companies, and the privacy information policy is not very clear. Data leaks, sudden changes in privacy policies, and even inappropriate third-party mergers will make users lose trust in cloud storage companies. This is why Sia is needed. In the cloud storage software provided by Sia, users are allowed to encrypt files using industrial-grade encryption algorithms and then distribute them to numerous hosts, so that there is no possibility of privacy leakage. Users are the only subjects responsible for the security of their data. Other users can only extract data if they have the user's smart contract and sufficient Siacoin.

Sia attempts to build a decentralized data center that is smaller than the data centers of current cloud storage companies. It not only makes data storage more secure and efficient, but also increases the speed of file access. More small data centers are conducive to market competition and bring cheaper storage services to users. Users with cheap data storage services can make profits through this new technology, thanks to the security of cryptocurrency. Developers also hope that large companies, such as Netflix and YouTube, can also use their new software to improve user experience.

The Beta version was released in June 2015, but the developer announced that the full 1.0 version will be released on June 28, 2016. Stay tuned!