SiaCoin: Sia team briefing and roadmap for May 2016

We have updated the forums. Since May 1st, the forum registration feature was broken and no longer sent confirmation emails. This has been fixed and I deeply apologize to those who did not receive the confirmation email and were unable to use the forums. There is now a button to resend the confirmation email and you will receive it this time.

I am very happy to announce that we now have a Chinese cryptocurrency exchange listed, Yunbi Exchange. We are looking forward to further engaging the Chinese cryptocurrency community and this is a big step in that direction. It is also a big step towards further decentralizing Sia as there are more ways to buy and sell Siacoins. Siacoins are now traded on Yunbi, Polonies, Cryptomic, and Bitsquare.

We have not released V0.6.0 yet, and are behind schedule. V0.6.0 will be a huge step forward for SiaCoin, in which the host-renter protocol and scheme will be finalized and completed. Several important features will be added to V0.6.0, including subsidies for renters, support for multiple file additions in hosts, and significantly improved upload capabilities and performance. Due to a series of software bugs, we missed the original release date. We always put quality first, and we would rather delay a release than give you something that is not ready. Therefore, we will not release V0.6.0 until the fixed V0.6.0 candidate has been tested for a few days and we want to ensure that our fixes have not introduced new vulnerabilities. The new plan is to release V0.6.0 this Friday. I apologize for the delay, but V0.6.0 is a huge step forward for Sia, and I am proud of the effort and work we put into it. Compared to the improvements and enhancements Sia has received, this delay is really nothing. It's worth the wait, and it will be there soon.

Now, we still plan to release SiaCoin V1.0 on June 7th. The main difference between V0.6.0 and V1.0 is that V1.0 will finalize the API. When Sia was in testing, we reminded other developers that we would reserve the right to make major changes to the API that connected their applications. Obviously, this slowed down the speed at which third parties developed applications on Sia. Starting with V1.0, we guarantee that no major changes will be made to the API, which means that applications developed on V1.0 will continue to be used on V1.0.x or in the next few years, and can take full advantage of all future upgrades and generations.

We have added a new full-time employee who will be responsible for the UI wallet. He just started a few days ago. I have said in the past few weeks that, unfortunately, we no longer support the UI wallet. In the next few weeks, we will continue to do so, and we are not far away from supporting the UI wallet again. If we are lucky, the SiaCoin V1.0 release will have a fully functional, fully supported UI wallet. If the UI wallet is not ready by June 7th, we will release the wallet with only the command bar, and then release the wallet with the UI in a few weeks.

Earlier this month we held our first official Sia meetup in New York City. Six or seven members of the Sai community showed up, and it was great to meet everyone. I hope there will be more Sia meetups in the future, and I look forward to meeting community members from all over the world.