We’re focusing on updated versions of all the core components of the Sia network - renting, hosting, and hodling. These updates will bring significant improvements to scaling, performance, and modular internal architecture to meet the needs of individuals, enterprise users, and exchange partners. Furthermore, each component will be paired with a powerful new user interface, all with the overarching goal of making core Sia software more “legible” to end users. “Legible” is the antonym of “black-box:” in a legible system, the user can easily discern why any particular decision was made, and can override those decisions as they see fit. This goal follows naturally from the Foundation’s mission of empowering users.

Project Board

The new Sia renter, replacing the current siad renter module. Drawing on what we’ve learned from siad, skyd, and us, we designed renterd from the ground up to be modular and horizontally scalable. Although the average user likely won’t notice, a renterd deployment is actually a set of interconnected services. As such, it can distribute workloads in parallel across multiple machines, and can be configured to store its metadata in any SQL backend. This flexibilty makes renterd easier to integrate with other Sia ecosystem software, such as Sia Satellite and S5, and addresses the scalability barriers that have historically hampered enterprise solutions.

April 2024

• Migrate renterd to core - In Progress

June 2024

• Add support for RHP4
• Improve upload parallelism

The new Sia host, replacing the current siad host module. The host module has been chronically neglected for years, and suffers from poor upload performance, data integrity issues, and a general lack of user-friendliness. hostd is our greenfield reimagining of the Sia hosting experience, bringing a sorely-needed refresh to our host community. Aside from addressing performance bottlenecks, hostd also offers superior metrics and monitoring tools, which will allow users to make informed decisions about storage allocations, contract parameters, pricing, and quality of service.

April 2024

• Migrate hostd to core - In Progress

June 2024

• Automate data integrity checks
• Add support for RHP4

September 2024

• Support Postgres as an alternative to SQLite
• Support additional volume types to optimize performance for distributed file systems

The new Sia wallet, replacing the current siad wallet module. walletd aims to be the go-to option for exchanges, miners, or the average hodler who needs a secure place to store their SC. Accordingly, it supports both hot and cold setups, including multi-sig schemes and hardware wallet integration. And like renterd and hostd, walletd comes packaged with a sleek, yet powerful UI, which can be securely accessed from any device.

Note: you don’t need walletd to be a renter or a host; renterd and hostd include their own built-in hot wallets.

January 2024

• Support SQLite - Done

May 2024

• Add “Indexer” mode enabling easier integration for exchanges - In Progress
• Beta Release - In Progress

The new Sia explorer, replacing and going far beyond the current siad explorer capabilities. explored will serve as both a standalone blockchain explorer with a web interface, and as a library providing powerful indexing and searching capabilities to third-party explorers (e.g. SiaStats) and “lite-client” systems like narwal. explored will be developed and launched alongside the Utreexo overhaul, making it one of the world’s first Utreexo-native block explorers.

June 2024

• Beta release

“Utreexo” is an umbrella term that refers to an upcoming radical overhaul of Sia’s consensus code. The primary change is the transition from a large, unwieldy database of UTXOs to a compact cryptographic accumulator, bringing myriad benefits to performance, scalability, and functionality. This is a big deal: it requires changing the block and transaction formats, which have been untouched since Sia’s mainnet launch back in 2014. As such, we are taking this opportunity to clean up a few other warts in Sia’s consensus code, giving the project a solid foundation for many years to come. For a more technical dive on how Utreexo works, check out Luke’s blog post here and MIT Bitcoin talk here.

May 2024

• Upgrade Zen testnet

RHP4, short for renter-host protocol 4, is the next iteration of the protocol hosts and renters use to communicate. Our goal for RHP4 is to increase the parallelism of data uploads, reduce protocol overhead, and improve download performance. A new protocol is required to enable some exciting new features to be available after the Utreexo hardfork, such as early contract termination, capacity reservation, and contract renewal fund rollover. RHP4 will also enable storage consumers to download and upload data directly in the browser without installing additional software.

February 2024

• Finalize spec
• Implement RHP4 client in coreutils

April 2024

• Test RHP4 on Anagami

May 2024

• Release experimental SiaJS SDK
• Test RHP4 on Zen

fsd is our experimental implementation of an IPFS node with specific optimizations for storing and retrieving data from the Sia network. We plan to open source it in the near future once it has stabilized more and we’ve verified that pinned content is discoverable and accessible by other IPFS nodes.

June 2024

• Release alpha

import { Hostd } from '@siafoundation/hostd-js'

export async function example() {
  const hostd = Hostd({
    api: 'http://localhost:9980/api',
    password: 'password1337',
  })
  const state = await hostd.stateHost()
  const volumes = await hostd.volumes()
  console.log(state.data, volumes.data)
}