Sia: Another Solid Brick in the Decented Revolution

I am annoying. I look around and see all of the ways that an intelligent person could manipulate their way to, if not "the top" at least a nice cushy part out of the belly of The Machine (cue ominous music). I'm an American, so I already am in a cushier part. I'm also good at math, and have access to huge populations of cheap labor thanks to U.S. foreign policy, so I ask myself why I don't just quietly move numbers around until I have more of them and hide out in my nice cushy spot on this planet? The answer is simple and it is the same answer that smart-humans-of-the-past always come too: when you are part of a whole, the health of that whole IS YOUR HEALTH. And you can't hide out from yourself.

Most revolutions look like this: kill all the people at the top, create another fresh clean slate (of varying degrees) and then start accidentally rebuilding in the same manner. Society, of course, slowly gets 'bad' again, and we rinse and repeat.

All existential or moral high ground aside, it is not logical. It doesn't work.

I like things that work. I like solutions that solve problems because I like to relax and enjoy my life. And did I mention I don't like to fight? I don't like to fight with bad guys or neighbors or political war machines. I don't want another violent revolution, I want solutions that restore balance as quickly and non-violently as possible. So, here I am in CryptoLand poking around to see what is good.

The annoying part is that I won't talk about a project without that preamble in some form, BUT, I make up for it by kicking tires and trying to be an honest translator of what I find. Sia has caught my eye as a project after my own heart, so here is my simple assessment .

The project is decentralized cloud storage. Regular cloud storage is where you pay a company to hold your files, either as a back up or because you don't really need to keep them on hand, but may want them in the future. Pretty simple. This means a single company has a few servers that they keep all of the data on. The problems with this set up are:

1. Hacks have large single points of attack, a breach can mean a large loss of data, along with many people's private data being destroyed or used without consent.
2. Many of these companies have already used your private data in ways you would never think, either directly accessing it, gathering analytics to be used in targeted marketing or even more nefarious ways that I will not get into ( you can go down that rabbit hole yourself if you choose).
3. It consolidates money and data into large single corporations.

If you are not already in agreeance that the 'behemoth corporation' model is not a healthy sustainable one, we leave that for another day and just say: absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Sia solves all of these:

1. There are storage servers on every continent. Your data is encrypted, then broken up into pieces and different pieces are sent to different servers all over the world. Oh, and multiple copies of the pieces are distributed to multiple different servers. Even if an entire continent goes off the grid, your data is still accessible. Pretty cool , huh?

2. Not only is there no single point of attack, and all of your data encrypted, BUT no single company has any amount of your data worth anything. Even if they could crack the encryption, nobody can use your personal data for their own gain, and this is a huge win. As we become increasingly aware of privacy issues in our society, encryption and decentralization are going to help citizens and businesses regain their personal power. This makes me really happy.

3. Sia breaks up the consolidation of money because this is also sort of a peer to peer. Sia coin runs the storage trade, and anyone who is dependable can participate. I say 'sort of peer to peer' because in a traditional peer to peer, I might contact you and say "Hey will you hold on to back ups of my storage, and I 'll pay you x amount per month". Sia facilitates the encryption and distribution, along with the creation of smart contracts that automatically fulfill , so you don't have to worry. Its more like peer to peer & peer & peer ...

As far as the simple left brained question "Will this coin make me rich or rekt?", I'm leaning towards the former. This project solves a problem elegantly. It gives people and businesses a safe, fair priced way to back up and store data and it offers others an opportunity to participate in the cloud economy. That's checking all the right boxes in my book.

Here is their website for more in-depth information:

https://sia.tech/