The more and more buzz over FileCoin...What will filecoin provide that Sia doesn't?
Is this going to be Sia killer?
Many times heard Filecoin is the next big thing to BTC and ETH...hmmm
FileCoin is not even at early development status, it hasn't started yet.
I have no idea where you heard of the thing that FileCoin is a treat to sia, but it has nothing to do against sia at the moment.
Filecoin: A Decentralized Storage Network
SIA: Your decentralized private cloud
Same-Same (but different)
Well, starting with the most obvious thing: They have no product yet available. No, client, no network, just an ICO they'll launch in a few days. I don't say it is an scam, because Juan Benet (dev leader) is a really brilliant guy and I assume the rest of his team too, but they are right now at the point where Nebulous (the company of Sia devs) was 3 years ago, so they'll have a long, long road to reach the maturity of the development Sia has. Moreover, they have not completed yet the theory development of their consensus mechanism
Both are going to be a decentralized storage networks, right, but in my modest opinion, while Filecoin has good ideas as the filesystem, proof of replication, proof of space-time and so, they lack the trustless features of Sia.
Because one thing is encouraging hosts to keep the data, and another different is discouraging hosts to not drop their data. Both things look similar but let's see the tricky differences:
- In Filecoin and StorJ, hosts are just encouraged to keep the data because if they do it, they will get a reward. In the case of Filecoin, mined new coins. So if you stop mining, you lose future profits
- In Sia, hosts are encouraged to keep the data too because they'll lose future profits, but at the same time they are heavily discouraged to drop the data because they'll lose as well a huge amount of Sia in collateral, normally several times more Siacoins than the reward for storing data.
In Sia, hosts are punished for dropping the files. Neither Filecoin nor StorJ have the concept of collateral
At the same, while in Sia miners and hosts are two different entities with different motivations and different economy parameters that affect if they stay or they leave the network, in Filecoin the miners and the hosts are the same single entity. In any coin, it is very normal that a large fraction of miners leave a coin if the value of the coin drops: if the market value of Filecoin drops to half (something totally normal in altcoins, specially in their first years) it would be perfectly normal that half of the miners jump out and start mining other thing more profitable: Burst, Sia, Storj or any other coin that comes in the future. They have the incentive to do it because they'll get more gains and no punishment. But being the miners the hosts as well,
if half of these miners-hosts leave the Filecoin network, files will become inaccessible. And for a storage network, this is a huge problem.