Effective Q4 2023, Luke Champine has assumed the new role of Blockchain Researcher at the Sia Foundation. Luke will also retain his seat on the Foundation board.

Luke served as the President of the Foundation since its inception in late 2020 and guided it through its often-turbulent first years. He handled the company’s incorporation, managed the treasury, personally interviewed and onboarded the initial team, helped integrate ecosystem partners, and more — all while working tirelessly to overhaul Sia’s entire tech stack, from low-level consensus algorithms to user-facing apps and services. In his new position, Luke will be able to focus his energies on that last item, with a specific emphasis on the v2 hardfork and other long-term research efforts, to ensure that Sia remains ahead of the curve in the decentralized storage space.

Following a thorough selection process, we are excited to announce Nate Maninger as The Sia Foundation’s new President. Nate will also be joining The Foundation’s board of directors. The Foundation’s board issued this statement:

Nate has repeatedly demonstrated a level of commitment to Sia that few others can match. A long-standing member of the community, his work on SiaCentral proved both his technical chops and his alignment with the Foundation’s open-source ethos. Upon joining the Foundation, Nate’s willingness to take initiative, combined with his levelheaded disposition and deep technical understanding, quickly marked him as a natural candidate for leadership. Our trust in him was rewarded time and again as he established the first Sia testnet, restarted the monthly community calls, took charge of our hiring process, and more. We endorse him unreservedly as President and we eagerly anticipate the coming year under his leadership.

In concert with these role changes, we are pleased to announce that Chris Schinnerl has been promoted to Director of Engineering. Chris has been deeply involved with Sia since 2017 and has made key contributions to every aspect of the system. At the Foundation, he took charge of the renterd project, leveraging his broad technical expertise to design and implement a next-generation Sia renter. As Director of Engineering, Chris will oversee all Foundation engineering efforts, execute and maintain our technical roadmap, manage the engineering team and sprints, and ensure the timely completion of our technical goals.

From the President

I am deeply grateful to the Foundation board and employees for placing their trust in me. This is a big change for the Foundation and the Sia ecosystem. Under Luke’s leadership, the Foundation has achieved remarkable milestones. His role in key projects, like renterd, hostd, walletd, and spearheading the upcoming v2 hardfork, set a solid foundation for our future growth.

Building on the groundwork laid by Luke, our immediate focus remains on enhancing Sia’s technical capabilities and utility. We are committed to developing an ecosystem where Sia emerges as the go-to solution for developers, entrepreneurs, and others seeking advanced cloud storage solutions. That begins with the successful launch of the v2 hardfork, a critical step in modernizing Sia’s technology and improving its usability and performance.

Looking ahead, our strategy involves forging strong partnerships in markets aligned with our mission. We will continue refining Sia’s technological capabilities to better align with the challenges faced by storage consumers to enure we are delivering practical value for those building and scaling on Sia. To begin elevating Sia’s presence, we will focus on expanding our team, particularly in the areas of marketing and business development. This expansion will enable us to better onboard and educate new builders, accelerate Sia’s adoption, and integrate with more ecosystems.

I am excited to lead the Sia ecosystem and continue to push toward our vision where users own their data and developers and businesses have robust tools to build applications backed by Sia’s decentralized storage network. I look forward to the ideas and contributions of our community as we embark on this exciting journey together.

An Announcement & A New Chapter was originally published in The Sia Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Since its launch in 2014, the Sia network has been at the forefront of the decentralized storage space, offering private and cost-effective storage. Throughout its life, the primary software, siad, has been the cornerstone for both uploading files and providing storage. While significant advancements were made to the renter module, the host module remained relatively stagnant, limiting the network’s potential. The architecture of siad's host posed challenges for detecting issues and increasing performance. But now, with the beta release of hostd, storage providers can take advantage of a comprehensive set of enhancements and features that are fully compatible with the existing network.

With enhanced stability, faster upload and download speeds, improved resource management, and a user-friendly interface, hostd empowers storage providers to optimize their nodes and maximize their efficiency. By addressing the limitations of its predecessor, hostd enables providers to deliver a superior experience for consumers and drive the growth of the Sia network.

Performance & Stability

With hostd, the Sia network takes a leap forward in performance and stability. This new software has been designed to address and fix many of the performance-related issues and system lockups that were associated with the previous host software, siad. Major optimizations to the host’s hot path provides significantly increased performance and reduced system resource usage. Hosts should immediately notice much smoother operation and fewer interruptions in service.

The improvements in performance are evident when we compare average RPC times, expressed in milliseconds. Renters and hosts interact through Sia’s renter-host protocol. The append sector RPC is used to upload and store one 4MiB sector on the host, whereas the read sector RPC sends a sector from the host to the renter. Each RPC is now significantly faster, contributing to the performance boost.

As illustrated in the Performance Comparison graph, we observed significant improvements in both egress and ingress speeds. Specifically, egress speed (the speed at which the host sends data to renters) nearly doubled, and ingress speed (the speed at which the host receives and stores data) increased more than 16 times. These optimizations lead to a substantial acceleration in data processing, which in turn yields a more efficient and responsive network.

Data Integrity

hostd introduces new data integrity tools, which empowers users to verify the completeness and accuracy of their stored data. These tools allow hosts to identify signs of data corruption early. A proactive approach enables timely resolution of issues, preventing them from escalating or affecting a wider range of data.

These tools not only increase the resilience of individual hosts, but also enhances the robustness and reliability of the whole Sia network. As we continue to refine and expand these tools, hosts can look forward to even more effective ways to manage and protect their data.

Overhauled UI

In the past, siad was accessed via a command-line interface, siac. For a more user-friendly experience, desktop users could utilize Sia-UI and Sia Central’s Host Manager. However, there were no options available for server-based users to manage their hosts. With hostd, this concern has been addressed by including an embedded web interface. This web-based dashboard allows both local and remote management of hosts, making it easier for users to interact with and manage their storage nodes from anywhere.

Metrics

When accessing the new UI, storage providers are immediately presented with various metric graphs, which enables users to track the performance of their host over time. These visualizations offer an easy-to-understand overview of how the host is performing.

The metric graphs present various crucial data points, such as bandwidth usage, data storage, pricing, among others. Providers can observe trends and patterns to identify areas where their host excels and where there may be room for improvement.

Volume Management

The volume management capabilities in hostd have been redesigned to provide greater control and convenience for storage providers. These features help manage how data is stored and transferred within the host system.

First, hostd introduces a feature to mark volumes as read-only. This means storage providers can designate certain volumes where new data cannot be written, allowing for more control over where data is being migrated within the software.

Second, hostd addresses issues with data migration that were present in siad. Specifically, hostd has resolved the issue of lockups that occurred when moving data from one volume to another. Now, storage providers can add, remove, or resize volumes without the system becoming unresponsive.

Wallet

hostd uses a new hot wallet using standard BIP-39 12-word seeds. By migrating all of our new apps to BIP-39, users can enjoy the convenience and interoperability provided by this widely accepted standard for mnemonic phrases.

In addition, we’ve introduced a comprehensive transaction list, a feature highly requested by hosts. Unlike in siad, where host contract payouts were not visible, hostd ensures these payouts are included in the transaction list. This feature improves the transparency of the wallet, enabling hosts to accurately track and audit their earnings over time.

The introduction of hostd is a major step forward for the Sia network, marking the beginning of a new era in performance and usability. By addressing the limitations of its predecessor, hostd not only optimizes the experience for storage providers — it also significantly contributes to the robustness of the network. With an ongoing commitment to further optimizing hostd and renterd, the Sia Foundation continues to push the boundaries of decentralized storage. As we continue to add and improve features, we look forward to seeing how our community of storage providers will leverage these advancements to deliver superior services and drive the future of decentralized storage.

You can find the latest software at https://sia.tech/software/hostd

We conducted performance tests for this article on both siad and hostd to compare their capabilities. These tests were carried out on the same server running Ubuntu 20.04. In this setup, both softwares used the most common setup for Sia hosts: an NVMe drive to store metadata and a SATA HDD for data storage.

The benchmarking process consisted of ten tests for each software, uploading and downloading 1GiB of data in each test. For those interested in replicating these tests, the benchmarking utility is available on our GitHub: https://github.com/SiaFoundation/host-bench.

Introducing hostd was originally published in The Sia Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I have never posted a comprehensive update on the state of Sia Central, but it has been a very busy month. I launched Sia Central’s first service, Host Manager, on Sia’s community discord just over a year ago. Sia Central has always been about providing useful, powerful, and simple tools for users of the Sia network. Our API and services have grown over the past year to serve over 4 million requests per month. It’s been amazing to watch these services grow from nothing and get so much positive feedback from Sia’s community.

Sia Central

You may have been affected by Sia Central’s outage this month. On the 20th at 2AM PST the boot drive for Sia Central’s dedicated server died suddenly and without warning. The server had system monitoring in place to try to detect failures early, but no alerts were triggered and a SMART test had completed with no errors a few days prior. Sia Central’s services were entirely reliant on this single point of failure. A new SSD was quickly installed by the datacenter’s customer support, but the database backups and indices took an extremely long time to rebuild.

To prevent extended downtime and outages in the future, a second server has been deployed to serve users relying on Sia Central’s services. The two servers are now load balanced with automatic failover and a new status page has been deployed to https://status.siacentral.com/. This page will update with status alerts during any future service interruptions.

Lite Wallet

Sia Central Lite Wallet

Sia Central’s lite wallet is a simple and secure browser-based cryptocurrency wallet allowing users to send and receive Siacoin without syncing the blockchain.

Wallet creation and recovery has been slightly changed. There is now a checkbox to confirm that your wallet seed has been saved to a safe location. Backing up your wallet seed is incredibly important, without your seed there is no way to recover your funds.

In addition, the lite wallet has been updated to show a wallet’s Siafund balance, and you can now export your entire transaction history, including host payouts, to CSV format.

The biggest addition to Sia Central’s lite wallet has been support for the SCPrime fork of Sia. With this, Sia and SCPrimeCoin wallets can be managed together. This is the only fork of Sia currently supported by Sia Central.

Support for sending Siafunds is currently being tested and work has started on an iOS app with file storage, but progress is slow since Host Manager v2 currently has top priority.

Host Manager

Sia Central

Host Manager is a powerful desktop app for storage hosts with tools to accurately track financials and monitor their status.

Publicly, it has been a quiet few months for Host Manager. Two new versions of Host Manager were released. The included Sia daemon was updated to v1.4.11. Electron, the framework Host Manager is built on, was updated to the latest version and a memory leak affecting larger hosts was fixed.

The long awaited Host Manager v2 is about to be released to early adopters. This is a massive upgrade for Host Manager. It includes a completely redesigned backend, better onboarding, a browser-based interface for headless servers, and remote management for hosts. The final release will be offered as a desktop app, a daemon, and a docker image.

Transak

Both Host Manager and Lite Wallet have integrated the Transak fiat-to-crypto gateway. This means you can now purchase Siacoin directly within Host Manager or Sia Central’s Lite Wallet with your debit card.

Sia Central July Update was originally published in Sia Central Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

February 2022: this guide has been updated for the Nano X. You can also refer to the official support doc here: https://support.sia.tech/sia-integrations/using-the-sia-ledger-nano-app-sia-central

What is a Ledger Nano?

The Ledger Nano X and Ledger Nano S are hardware wallets created by Ledger. A hardware wallet stores the private keys to cryptocurrency on a separate device, making it harder for malicious parties to steal them. In addition, the private keys never leave the hardware wallet, so they will remain secure even if the device is connected to a compromised computer. As a result, an attacker can’t steal your funds as long as you follow best practices when using your hardware wallet.

Hardware wallets are an essential part of the crypto ecosystem, and they’re one of the best ways to secure your coins. So we’re happy to be working with Ledger to offer our official Sia app for use on both the Ledger Nano X and Ledger Nano S.

To send and receive Siacoin on a Ledger device, we will be using Sia Central’s web wallet through the latest version of the Google Chrome browser. Sia Central’s web wallet only supports Siacoin; sending and claiming Siafund dividends are not yet supported. Users should always access the web wallet from https://wallet.siacentral.com. This article will be using a Ledger Nano X with Bluetooth, but the steps are similar for USB or the Ledger Nano S.

Things you’ll need

Using Sia on a Ledger device requires a few things. You will need:

• Your Ledger device
• The Sia app installed on your device
• A desktop browser to access Sia Central’s web wallet

Supported browsers

The web wallet only supports Ledger wallets on some desktop browsers:

Set up your device

Let’s make sure your hardware wallet is ready to use.

Ledger Nano X

1. Initialize your Ledger Nano X. This gets the hardware wallet set up and ready to use.
2. Download Ledger Live Desktop onto your computer. Ledger Live is the app you use to manage your Ledger device.
3. Install the latest firmware on your Nano X. This ensures compatibility with the Sia app.

Ledger Nano S

1. Initialize your Ledger Nano S. This gets the hardware wallet set up and ready to use.

2. Download Ledger Live onto your computer. Ledger Live is the app you use to manage your Ledger device.

3. Install the latest firmware on your Nano S. This ensures compatibility with the Sia app.

At this point, you’re ready to install apps on your Ledger device. Remember to store your 24-word recovery phrase in a safe place because you’ll need it to recover your funds if your device is lost or damaged.

Install the Sia Ledger app

Now, we’ll install the Sia app onto your Ledger hardware wallet.

1. Open the Manager in Ledger Live.

2. Connect and unlock your Ledger device via USB. You will be prompted on the device to allow the manager.

3. Search for Sia in the app catalog.

4. Click the Install button. Your device will display “Processing…”

5. When the main menu reappears, the Sia app has been successfully installed.

Wallet Setup

Sia Central’s web wallet is a lite, non-custodial wallet that allows you to send and receive Siacoin without downloading the blockchain. After the Ledger wallet is imported, you can view your balance almost immediately.

1. Access the wallet at https://wallet.siacentral.com

2. If you have never used the wallet before, you will be prompted to set a password. This password is used to encrypt your data and is required to unlock your wallets in the future.

3. Create a new wallet

4. Click Ledger Wallet to add a new Ledger wallet.

You will now need to connect your device and import an address to send Siacoins. You can choose either USB or Bluetooth when connecting, depending on your browser’s support.

6. Connect and unlock your device, then open the Sia app.

7. Click the green Connect button in the wallet. The status should change to “Connected.”

If you have never connected your device to this computer before, you may need to confirm the pairing on the device.

8. Click the Add Address button. Confirm that you want to generate the address on your device by pressing the right button once. The screen should now read “Approve.” Press both buttons together to confirm.

9. The address is now imported. Verify that the address in the box matches the address displayed on the device. If you have used this device before, your balance will update.

10. Optionally, you can add additional addresses by clicking the Add Address button again and confirming on the device.

11. After you have imported your addresses, click the Done button at the bottom. You will now have a new wallet in your dashboard.

Receiving Siacoin

After the initial setup is complete, you can send Siacoin to your wallet. First, select your wallet from the list on the right, then click the *Receive* button right under the balance.

Before sending Siacoin to an address, it is essential to verify that it belongs to your wallet.

1. Connect your Ledger Nano, unlock it, and open the Sia app.
2. Click the green *Connect* button above the QR code.
3. Click the green *Verify* button next to your address.
4. Confirm that you want to generate the address on your device.
5. Manually check that the address displayed on the device matches the address in the text box.

After verifying the address, you can send Siacoin to this address. If this is the first time you have sent Siacoin to a hardware wallet, try a small amount first to make sure everything is set up correctly. When you receive Siacoin, it will be marked as an unconfirmed transaction for 10 minutes to an hour. You will have to wait for at least one confirmation before you can spend your Siacoin.

Checking balance

You can view your wallet’s balance and last 500 transactions at any time by selecting the wallet from the list on the left of the dashboard. You do not need your Ledger to view your balance, only to verify addresses or send transactions.

Sending Siacoin

To send a transaction, you will need your device. Select your wallet from the list on the left; click Send. A dialog will pop up, allowing you to input the recipient’s address and the amount of Siacoin to send them. You can enter the amount in your display currency or Siacoin.

Once you have entered the address and amount, click the Send button. You will now need to verify the transaction and sign it with your device.

1. Connect your Ledger device, unlock it, and open the Sia app.
2. Press the green Connect button; the Sign button should enable.

3. Click the green Sign button.

4. You will now need to confirm the transaction details on your device.

5. Verify that the “SC Output #1” displayed on your device matches your intended recipient. To confirm on the device: scroll to page 2 by pressing the right button, then press both buttons simultaneously.

6. Next, the device will display the send amount; verify it matches the amount you wish to send. Then confirm by pressing both buttons at the same time.

7. Verify that “Miner Fee #1” matches the amount displayed on the screen. Confirm by pressing both buttons at the same time.

8. After confirming the transaction details are correct, sign the transaction. Press the right button once; the device should now say “Approve.” Next, press both buttons at the same time to confirm the signature.

9. The Send button should appear in the lite wallet. To broadcast your transaction and send your Siacoin, press Send. The amount will be deducted from your balance and sent to your recipient.

Be very careful when sending Siacoin, transactions are nonreversible.

If the transaction broadcasts successfully, you should now have a new unconfirmed transaction in your transaction list, deducting the amount and transaction fee from your wallet. Your recipient will have to wait between 10 minutes to an hour to confirm the transaction. Depending on how many UTXOs are in your wallet, you may have to wait for at least one confirmation before being able to send another transaction.

Additional help

If you’re having trouble, we’re here to help: join the Sia Discord server and post in the #help channel.

Sending Siacoins with the Ledger Nano S was originally published in Sia Central Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Some users just want to exchange Siacoin, no mess, no fuss. Sending and receiving Siacoin needs to be as simple and painless as possible. With the Sia Central Lite Wallet, you can send and receive Siacoins quickly and securely. No need to sync the blockchain or trust an unknown service or exchange with your all-important recovery seed.

You can access the wallet at https://wallet.siacentral.com

To report issues or feedback please create an issue on GitHub

Primary Features

• Secure — Keep control of your seeds. All sensitive information is stored and encrypted locally, never leaving your device.
• No blockchain download — Instantly create a new wallet. Recover an existing wallet in under 2 minutes.
• Ledger Nano S — The first Sia wallet with Ledger Nano S support.
• Multiple Wallets — Create any number of separate wallets. Easily track host or renter wallets and top them up from a Ledger wallet.
• Compatible — Fully compatible with the official Sia wallets. Recover wallets using 29 word Sia seeds.
• Multilingual— Supports English and Chinese. Additional languages can be easily added by the community.
• Multiplatform — Works on modern desktop browsers, iOS and Android

Setting Up

There are only two steps a user must complete before they can get started with the Sia Central Lite Wallet. First, a secure unlock password must be set. All wallets stored on the device will be encrypted using this unlock password when not in use.

Wallet Types

Sia Central Lite Wallet supports three main wallet types.

29 Word Seed Wallets

29 word seed wallets are fully compatible with the official Sia wallets. A new unique wallet seed can be generated or an existing wallet can be recovered.

Ledger Nano S Wallets

Sia has an official Ledger Nano S app. The Sia Central Lite Wallet can interact with the Ledger device to securely sign and send transactions. This is the most secure way to store Siacoins. The Ledger Nano S will need to be plugged in and unlocked to send transactions.

To enable Ledger support, you need to be on a recent Chromium based browser (Chrome, Brave, Opera) and enable “Experimental Web Platform Features.” Read the full Guide.

Watch-Only Wallets

A receive-only wallet. Addresses to watch must be added manually. Balance and transaction data is retrieved, but transactions cannot be sent.

The Wallet Dashboard

After a wallet has been created, it will appear in the wallet dashboard with transaction and balance data. For recovering wallets, the wallet will need to complete an initial scan before transactions can be shown. Switching between wallets is easy, just select the wallet from the column on the left.

Sending Siacoins

To Send Siacoins, click “Send” right under the wallet’s balance. Enter the receiver’s address and the amount of Siacoin to send.

After clicking “Send” the transaction will need to be verified before being broadcast to the network. Make sure the correct amounts and recipient are shown before sending the transaction. Transactions cannot be stopped once sent.

Once the transaction has been broadcast the wallet will show a new “Unconfirmed” transaction in the transactions list. Transactions on the Sia blockchain take about 10 minutes to confirm. After confirmation, the funds will be available to the recipient.

Introducing Sia Central Lite Wallet was originally published in Sia Central Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Running a host on the Sia network continues to become easier and easier thanks to constant updates from the Sia core team, improved benchmarking and tracking from SiaStats, and now Sia Host Manager. With the recent influx of stored data on the Sia network more users are beginning to question if hosting is a profitable way to earn Siacoin.

To provide more data to the community and make the hosting ecosystem more transparent my personal Sia node’s revenue, utilization and contracts will be published and updated every hour at https://hostrevenue.siacentral.com

As more snapshots are taken, monthly and yearly charts will be added.

How I set my Host’s prices

The average pricing on the network is currently very low. 80 hosts are storing data for less than $0.10 USD/TB/month. Rather than follow the network in a race to the bottom, I have chosen to set my rates to what I believe to be competitive with traditional storage providers. BackBlaze B2 is one of the cheapest traditional cloud storage services at $5 USD/TB/month. A terabyte of data can be downloaded for $10.00 USD.

Renters on the Sia network store at least 3 copies of their data to provide redundancy and availability comparable to traditional storage providers. Unfortunately, that means the price per TB of Sia host’s needs to be about 1/3 the price of competing providers. That sets an upper bound just under $2 USD/TB/month to remain competitive with BackBlaze B2.

The pricing for B2, S3, and Azure reflects a heavy tax on data leaving their services. Sia seems to be used primarily for offsite cold storage now, but as more tools and services build on top of the network and more features such as file sharing are released by the core team data egress has the potential to be a much more lucrative revenue stream for hosts.

Average Pricing:

• Storage: $0.40 USD/TB/month
• Upload: $0.094 USD/TB
• Download: $0.22 USD/TB

My Pricing:

• Storage: $1.00 USD/TB/month
• Upload: $0.25/TB
• Download: $3.00/TB

Just how much can a new host expect to earn?

Currently, hosting on the Sia network is not profitable. Especially not when factoring in things like electricity in most nations. Most hosts are hosting at a loss for the good of the network. The most data stored on a single host is 12 TB. That host is charging about $0.15 USD/TB/month. That’s just under $2 USD/month. Too low to make hosting lucrative.

Even with higher pricing, new hosts should not expect any income at all for the first 3 months of hosting. Renters will be less likely to form contracts with a host until it has proven it is active and accessible by staying online.

In addition, Sia only pays hosts at the end of a storage contract. If the host goes offline or fails to submit proof that it has stored the data any revenue and collateral is lost. My host has failed 8 contracts for various reasons. Luckily it totals only $0.25 USD, but still a loss.

Even after 3 months, income will only begin to trickle in. Sia has a large supply of storage available but very low demand. Usage has been steadily increasing over the past few months as more people explore and test the Sia network. Very promising for future profits as a host. Nearly 100 TB of data was added to the network in the past 30 days.

As an active Sia host, I am not expecting to earn much in return, yet. My pricing reflects what I believe to be a reasonable price for storing data on my server. Hopefully publishing snapshots of my host’s financials will help bring more transparency to hosting on the Sia network.

Profitability of a Sia Host was originally published in Sia Central Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hosting is not for everyone. It’s not a fast way to earn Siacoin; it’s a commitment of both time and storage space. Hosts should be monitored and checked daily to reduce contract failure. Renters need to be able to access their data at any time.

Historically, hosting has not been profitable due to low network utilization. However, as utilization increases, older hosts are prioritized for their reputation and availability when renters request contracts.

Installing Host Manager

The first step in hosting with Host Manager is to, well, install Host Manager. You can find the latest release at https://siacentral.com/host-manager/download

Once you’ve downloaded the proper release for your operating system, install and start it.

Host Manager will remain running even if you close the window. You can always find it in the tray. You can close Host Manager by clicking Exit from the tray menu.

Initial Setup

Host Manager needs to run through a basic setup to get a feel for how you want to run your host.

For basic hosting needs click “Get Started.”

At first, you will be asked where you want to store the Sia blockchain. By default, Host Manager will store the blockchain in the same location it is installed.

The next step will ask if you would like to bootstrap the Sia blockchain. This can help decrease the total amount of time it will take for the initial blockchain sync by downloading a full snapshot of the blockchain from Sia Central’s servers.

Syncing from scratch is more secure, but it can also take a significant amount of time depending on your hardware.

The next step starts the Sia node. If you chose to bootstrap the blockchain, this can take a while as Sia has to process the entire chain before loading.

After that, you will be asked to create a new Sia wallet or recover from a seed. All new hosts will need to create a wallet. You can only recover from a seed after the entire blockchain has been synced.

You will need to provide a strong wallet unlock password and choose whether Host Manager should automatically unlock your wallet. Hosts need to have their wallets unlocked at all times to form new contracts and submit storage proof transactions to the blockchain.

Your seed will be displayed after the wallet is created. Store this somewhere safe! Your seed will allow your Siacoin to be recovered at any time. https://support.sia.tech/article/XvZBzuh2eu-the-importance-of-keeping-your-seed-safe

Acquiring Siacoin

After setup you will need to top-off your new wallet with Siacoin. The easiest way to acquire Siacoin is to go to one of the preferred exchanges listed on the Sia website: https://sia.tech/get-siacoin

After buying Siacoin, you can transfer it to your host wallet by clicking the “Receive Siacoin” button on the top right corner of the dashboard and copying the address. Your wallet balance will not update until the entire blockchain is synced. You will have to wait until the wallet icon turns green to start hosting.

Forwarding Ports

Sia hosts need to have two ports forwarded for renters to upload and download data from them. By default these ports are 9981 and 9982. Hosts will need to open these ports on their router and firewall in order to be connected. You can check your connectivity and port forwarding by clicking on the wifi icon in the navigation bar. This will open a browser window and run a diagnostic on your connection. Refreshing the page will rerun the diagnostic.

Adding Storage

Click the Storage menu item in the navigation bar. Your host will have no storage folders. By clicking Add Folder in the top right corner, you can add a new folder to your host. You will need to set the path to where renter data will be stored and determine the size of the folder.

Setting Prices

By clicking on the Configuration menu item in the navigation bar, you can change and update the host’s pricing. There are helpful explanations of all of the different options. The most important of these are Storage Price, Download Price, Upload Price, Collateral and Collateral Budget. These will affect how much your host is payed for storage and how much collateral your host locks when storing data.

Announcing the Host

Once you are happy with your configuration and the blockchain is fully synced, you can announce your host to the network. From the Configuration menu item, click the Announce button in the top right corner. This will send a transaction to the network advertising that you are available to rent storage. A small amount of Siacoin will be deducted to pay for the transaction.

For most hosts, the automatic configuration is fine. This will use your automatically detected IP address and host port. If your IP address changes, renters will no longer be able to access their data. Simply re-announcing will fix this.

An alternative is to use a dynamic DNS service. This will allow you to announce a custom address and keep your IP up to date, without having to announce every time your IP changes.

If the announcement is successful: congratulations! You’re now hosting on the Sia network.

Viewing Contracts

When hosting, contracts with renters will form and start automatically. Information on formed and completed contracts can be found by clicking the Contracts menu item in the navigation bar.

When a contract is about to expire, it is very important that the host is available. The host will need to submit a storage proof shortly after the contract expires in order to receive payment. Avoid downtime when contracts are close to expiration.

Keep in mind, it can take some time for renters to start forming contracts with your host. They prioritize hosts with a long history of availability when storing data.

Keeping a Host Happy and Healthy

Periodically check Host Manager for any alerts. To check alerts, click the Bell icon in the navigation bar. A panel will slide out on the right listing any current problems with your host. These will not go away until Host Manager detects the problem is fixed.

Sometimes Sia needs a restart. It is recommended to restart Sia weekly.

Additional Features: Price Pinning

Sia Host Manager has the ability to pin your storage price to the exchange rate of your preferred Fiat or Cryptocurrency. This will automatically update your prices using the latest Siacoin exchange rate. This allows a host to set prices once and be insulated from fluctuations in the market.

You will still be payed in Siacoin, but all financial values and pricing will be displayed in the selected currency.

To enable price pinning you must first change your display currency from Siacoin to another currency. Click the Settings icon in the navigation bar and set the Currency.

After that, go to the host’s Configuration. Some options will have a checkbox in the top right corner. When checked, Host Manager will periodically pull the latest exchange rate for the selected currency and update pricing if necessary.

Now your host should be set up. Eventually you will start forming contracts with renters and slowly start seeing income. If you would like a look into what a host can earn, we have started publishing the revenue of one of our host nodes on the network at https://hostrevenue.siacentral.com/. Data is updated from the node every hour.

Sia Host Manager from 0 to 100 was originally published in Sia Central Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

tl;dr; Try out the awesome new UI just for Sia hosts

The command line interface to Sia is very powerful. There are quite a few configuration options, most of which go entirely unnoticed. With the command line it’s very easy to see individual contracts, which contracts are using your storage, or how much revenue you’re going to earn. With all this data it becomes possible to tweak and optimize pricing.

With Sia v1.4.0 came a sleek, responsive and stunning new wallet. The one thing that has always separated the command line from the UI for hosts is control. The UI does not give you access to many of the host configuration options or financials. There’s just not enough space.

Announcing the Sia Host Manager by Sia Central. An open-source desktop application dedicated to managing your host on the Sia network.

Sia Host Manager provides quick and easy access to all the data and configuration relevant to Sia hosts. It combines data from your Sia node with data from Sia Central to provide a more accurate view of your hosts financials and health. This allows the host to focus on what matters most. Completing contracts and managing pricing.

You can find the source code for Sia Host Manager on GitHub and releases at Sia Central.

Better Together

Sia Host Manager is capable of working completely independently or together with Sia-UI to get access to all of the other great features that Sia has to offer, such as renting storage or sending Siacoin.

Sia-UI and Sia Host Manager can share the same wallet so your data will always be synced across the two applications. However, to avoid syncing issues it’s best to use Sia Host Manager to make all changes to your host instead of the Host tab of Sia-UI.

Getting Started

Setting up and getting started with the Sia Host Manager is quick and easy, just like setting up Sia-UI. First, head to the download page and download the latest release for your operating system. 64-bit Windows, macOS, and Linux are supported.

Once you’ve downloaded and run the installer, you will be greeted with a short setup. If you are installing Sia for the first time you will have to create a new wallet or recover from a seed. Otherwise you can import existing data automatically.

Looking Around

After setup, you will be on the Dashboard page. Looking at the navigation pane on the left, the first thing you see is the connectivity status. If you are having connection issues, clicking on the icon will open the Sia Central Host Troubleshooter and run through some common diagnostics and provide helpful troubleshooting tips.

You can see any alerts by clicking on the bell icon. This can include connection issues, contract failures, available collateral, available storage space, or configuration issues.

By clicking on the cog icon, you can access app configuration options such as setting your display currency. You can display your financials and configuration in many different Fiat and cryptocurrencies such as USD, GBP, EUR, BTC, or ETH.

Adding Storage

Now that you have gone through the basic set up, you can start thinking about storing data. This can be done by clicking the Storage menu item in the navigation pane.

Clicking the Add Folder button will allow you to select the the location and size of a new storage folder. Once you have added a folder you can resize or remove it by clicking one of the icons in the list of your storage folders.

Topping Up

To start hosting on the Sia Network, you need to fill your host wallet. Estimate how much Siacoin you will need using total amount of storage * collateral per terabyte. To send money to your new wallet, click the wallet icon in the navigation pane or Receive Siacoin on the Dashboard.

Setting Prices

Each host on the Sia network gets to set their own pricing. All host settings are available on the Configuration page along with helpful descriptions and the average value. This lets you easily compare and adjust your pricing with the network.

If you change your display currency, a checkbox will appear allowing you to pin your price. This automatically adjusts your pricing to the current exchange rate of Siacoin as listed on CoinGecko.

All of the configuration options allow you to enter values in your preferred unit:

• For durations or time you can set your value to 14 days or 2 weeks.
• When using Siacoin you can set your value to 50 KSC or 5 mSC.
• When working with data sizes you can set your value to 5 TB or 5 TiB.

Monitoring Financials

Once you’ve started forming contracts with renters, the Contracts page gives you quick access to potential revenue, earned revenue, and expiring contracts. This gives you a better overview of your host’s financial state. It automatically hides stale or unused contracts to show you the data that matters most.

Keep It Up!

Sia hosts need to be running 24/7 to give renters access to their data and complete storage contracts. Hosts should strive to be accessible at least 90% of the time.

Luckily you can close the Sia Host Manager without closing Sia. You can always find it in your system tray. When Sia Host Manager is hidden, any new alerts will be shown as desktop notifications on supported systems.

If you do need to restart Sia, click on the icon in your tray and click “Exit” from the menu.

A New Way to Host on the Sia Network was originally published in The Sia Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.