Topic: [ANN] Sia - Decentralized Storage - page 374. (Read 1382190 times)

The explorer worked yesterday, latest commit is from 5 days : there is not much to worry yet.
PS : https://github.com/NebulousLabs/Sia/pull/850 : latest comment from dev 2 days ago.
I prefer them being more active on github than on bitcointalk!

When trying to access the http://explore.sia.tech/ gives me this: Get http://localhost:9000/explorer/status: dial tcp 127.0.0.1:9000: connection refused
Does anyone know what happened?
@Taek has long not been seen here! Is there reason to believe that the coin dies!

I recently tried Sia for the first time, I'll describe my experience with it as a user, maybe this feedback will have you to improve the product.

I found Sia via a reddit ad (I think it was a promoted link, although not completely sure), I got really excited because I'm actually looking for cloud storage for backup purposes, and other projects like maidsafe and storj don't seem to be ready, and I haven't heard about Sia before (even though I'm following news).

I am myself a Bitcoin user (and a developer) for 4+ years so I'm not easily scared with bad UX.

1. I downloaded Sia UI and launched it in a VM with 32-bit Ubuntu precise. Initial experience was quite good, it was easy to launch the app and UI looks great.
2. Block download is kinda slow, but i have fairly slow networking over here, so that was a part of the problem.
3. I bought some siacoins on an exchange and decided to transfer them to the wallet while it's downloading the blockhain.
4. So, create wallet experience... 29 word mnemonic, WTF? Most Bitcoin wallets have 12-14 words. 128 bits of entropy should be enough, maybe 160 bits if you want to err on safe side, but 512 bits are an overkill. You should read up on key size recommendations. (See below.)
5. Now to generate password I need to "unlock wallet", and it asks for password. What password? I thought there is a password separate from that huge-ass mnemonic as is the case with BIP-39, and the form field looked like one should type a small password into it, but having no other password (I first tried an empty one) I pasted this 29-word phrase and it worked. Well, it was unlocking it for like a minute, so it might be that KDF you're using is also an overkill, haven't seen anything like that in Bitcoin world.
6. I finally got an address and sent coins to it.
7. I noticed that UI is constantly using CPU even when nothing happens. `top` shows ~5 Sia processes besides siad, each eating 10-20% CPU, WTF? This might be because it's a VM without graphic acceleration, I dunno, but that's still kinda WTFish. Processes go away when I close UI and get back when I launch it again. CPU usage is really annoying as I'm using laptop and it makes fan noise when Sia is running.
8. siad got stuck with blockchain download at a certain point and I restarted it, this helped.
9. After siad restart wallet is locked again, so I needed to unlock it. It doesn't even show addresses before wallet is unlocked, why?
10. So I need to enter the large passphrase again. This is a major security/crypto fail. There is no way user will actually remember 20+ words, so he will have them in a file on his computer. So unless it's stored in password manager, it is as secure as just storing seed in Sia database. I recommend to look into how Bitcoin wallets work, they actually have pretty decent UX.
11. Also if you want Sia to be used outside of Bitcoin community, it needs to be even friendlier than Bitcoin wallets. Ideally no passphrase should be necessary just to try it out, it should appear only when user is serious.
12. siad got stuck at block 21664, no restarts help. Also it managed to download 2+ GB of data, while consensus.db is only ~100MB.

So this project looks very interesting, but I'm afraid it will take a while until it's usable by people other than devout fans.

A bit on key sizes: DJB recently posted a blog on key sizes: http://blog.cr.yp.to/20151120-batchattacks.html
Short summary is that 128-bit equivalent security should be enough for now, unless there is some weakness and/or attacker is able to attack many keys at once. 128-bit AES is not good, but if you're using a decent KDF 128-bit passphrase is OK. Otherwise, it probably doesn't make sense to use crypto stronger than 128 bits for keys if you use EC cryptography which is only 128-bit strong. Using 512-bit passphrase is kinda like this: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/96/01/bb/9601bb26d756a9a18ae5cee170fa1188.jpg

You may see :
https://github.com/NebulousLabs/Sia.
Dev are active on this project.

For a big rise, we may wait for some months until a more user friendly storage gui and some android / ios app.

One week nobody wrote! What's wrong with this innovative coin?
Hash rate (last 25 blocks) grow, Size of active file contracts grows and ... the price and interest fall!
Taek, will there be some upgrade, improvement or something ..... soon?\

Regards!

I have 4 -10 S transactions in my wallet and then I tried again another day and now transactions are going through (with I'm assuming the 10S).  But they are appearing as the whole number that I sent.  Not sure how I could have had 4 transactions as only fees go through or maybe it's just a minor GUI error.  Either way it's only 40 S And it seems to be working fine now.

You can quit it, it only gets dropped from your local transaction pool, but everyone else will have the transaction. If you restart siad though, then you might run into issues.

It sounds like the coins went through. I'm not sure what's indicating to you that the send was unsuccessful, but if you paid the transaction fee you are probably safe.



If you have a negative number of addresses remaining, it means that you've exceeded the deprecated limit of 2500 addresses per wallet seed. That's probably because you've uploaded a ton of files. Right now Sia is very inefficient with its address management, but you don't need to worry too much (though, startup is probably slow). The GUI is being unresponsive on the wallet page when you try to load the transactions and the addresses because there are too many of them. It should eventually finish loading but may take 10+ minutes =/. We're planning on adding pagination at some point soon. Also, the number of transactions and addresses created by the wallet during file uploading will be drastically reduced.

Sorry for the rough usability experience. For the most part, just ignoring the transactions and the addresses is probably sufficient for now.

Question in regards to siac (CLI)

siac wallet seeds

This command shows me my seed information ( i.e. password)  It also shows an indicator for Addresses Remaining,  What exactly is this telling me. 

My current Address Remaining = -90074,  Any reason why it is negative?

The GUI for 0.4.8 has been acting rather sluggish for me, hence why I started looking at the CLI.  When I use siac wallet addresses I get a list of addresses that goes past my scroll buffer.  I have had a few transactions with Poloniex and I have uploaded a few files to the cloud but I didn't think I had that many transactions.  The siac wallet transactions shows me all of the transactions and based on the block explorer they appear to be related to the files I uploaded.

When I navigate the Sia GUI the wallet section is unresponsive.  I cannot get the UI to show me a new address or list any of my transactions.  It looks like the long list of transactions and addresses I have is chocking the GUI, everything looks to be working fine on the CLI.  Every other section in the GUI works fine.

Kubuntu 14.04
Sia 0.4.8

Thank You

So I can't quit siad until the transaction is confirmed? Generally how long does it take for it to stop saying pending -110S?

And about the fees, I have four transactions that are just -10S with none of the money I sent going through.  Then today another transaction appeared that's -110 so one did work.  The address listed is not the one I sent to though which is strange.  Maybe some fees went through without the transaction because I was quitting siad? Didn't realize I had to wait for all the confirmations before I could close the wallet.

And yes I'm trying to send coins to myself does that change how I should do things? Thanks!

http://github.com/NebulousLabs/Sia-UI

This is a fantastic idea and a very sensible use case, congratulations to the developers!
According the Electron web site at https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome-electron you the Sia app use Electron and NodeJs. Is the Electron base application source open and available?

It will say pending until the transaction gets confirmed. If you restart siad, the transactions will get dropped from the transaction pool. We're planning on adding persistence for that at some point. If the transaction fees are going through, it means the money is also going through, the two are happening in the same transaction. Are you trying to send coins to yourself?

Yes Edit: After locking and closing the 0.4.8 wallet and killing siad in activity monitor I reopened the wallet and unlocked it and saw all my coins are there.  I've noticed actually for most things to take affect in the UI you need to lock the wallet and kill siad before reopening it.

I also am having trouble sending coins.  Lets say I had 500 coins and tried to send 100.  After confirming the transaction balance will still read 500 coins and pending balance will be -110.  I waited a while and nothing happened.  Also tried locking, closing the wallet, killing sia, and reopening the wallet.  Then my balance is back to 500 and pending balance is back to 0.  There is nothing appearing in my list of transactions either.

Anyone know what's up?


Edit again: Today I tried to send coins again and it said balance 200 and pending balance -210.  I looked at my transaction list and noticed for every transaction I tried to send it yesterday it has -10 so it looks like my transaction fees were going through (and are only now appearing) but I can't send any actual money.  Anyone know what I should do? Thanks!

Did you remember to restart siad after loading the legacy wallets?

Hey everyone.  Having a problem here if anyone could help out that would be great!

I used the load legacy wallet in 0.4.3 but didn't send my coins to a new address.  So I realized they are not backed up by that seed but instead still in one of my wallet.dat files.

I downloaded the new 0.4.8 wallet and hit load legacy wallet.  I have a ton of wallet.dat files (really need to be better organized) on my computer and have loaded all of them into the 0.4.8 wallet but my balance still reads 0.  I want the coins to appear so I can hit new address and send them all to the new address, that way all my coins will be backed up by the seed.

Did I somehow mess up by using the load legacy wallet for 0.4.3 with my wallet.dat and now am trying to do it again with this version? My coins did appear in 0.4.3 so I know one of my wallet.dat files worked for me to get the coins.  But now all my 0.4.3 versions and under just show 0 peers and 0 sia and also don't work.  So I'm not sure what to do to hopefully get my coins back or why I don't at least still see them in the 0.4.3 version as they were there at some point.  Worried I somehow lost them all in the update.

I did save multiple wallet.dat backups and saved them all over my computer because of the problem with the backups being overwritten.  So I don't see how I could have lost all my coins

Thanks!



Edit: After locking and closing the 0.4.8 wallet and killing siad in activity monitor I reopened the wallet and unlocked it and saw all my coins are there.  I've noticed actually for most things to take affect in the UI you need to lock the wallet and kill siad before reopening it.

I also am having trouble sending coins.  Lets say I had 500 coins and tried to send 100.  After confirming the transaction balance will still read 500 coins and pending balance will be -100.  I waited a while and nothing happened.  Also tried locking, closing the wallet, killing sia, and reopening the wallet.  Then my balance is back to 500 and pending balance is back to 0.  There is nothing appearing in my list of transactions either.

Anyone know what's up?

perfect.

I wasn't even aware of ZapChain, nice concept. Some nice Q&A in that discussion, I'd recommend people check it out for sure.

strange : I have done successfully the following :
- download the new UI, synchronise
- create a new wallet with a password generated (of course you need to note this one)
- upload legacy wallet (if asked, give the previous password, even if you legacy wallet is not password protected).
- done : after a few seconds, the balance of the legacy wallet appears.

Remark  : you need to use the latest wallet.dat of you legacy wallet (previous saved ones may not include latest adresses used by latest transaction : this is the same for bitcoin).

The Siacoin faucet at SiaPulse.tech is open. You first need to install Sia, and announce your computer as a host. Then, wait an hour or so, and head over to the faucet for some complimentary Siacoins to upload your own files to the Sia network!

wow I like!