[Taek]

It's still very slow - retrieval times >30s for files that aren't cached on cloudflare or ipfs.io. Also, those two providers each have multiple periods of downtime every year.

If the files are cached and the services are up, it's plenty fast for static data but dynamic data (IPNS) is still very slow.

We've built a competitor called Skynet that is much faster (less than 200ms for files that aren't in the cache) and scales better. It's currently hosting tens of millions of files across 200+ TB of data.

We really like the vision that IPFS had and we think decentralized data is the future of the Internet. We're proud to have put in the legwork to make it practical.

https://docs.siasky.net/

[amelius]

Why do you need a blockchain to implement Skynet?

[Taek]

The blockchain gets us a decentralized marketplace for decentralized storage providers. Anyone can join as a provider and get paid, and the blockchain can act as a decentralized escrow that holds the payment until proof is provided that the storage contract was properly fulfilled.

98% of our technology is off-chain. Only a little tiny sliver (the file contract open and close) is actually posted to the blockchain.

[yawnxyz]

"Pin up to 100GB at no cost" (https://account.siasky.net/payments)

Wait, is that a typo?? That seems incredibly generous. I guess that's where decentralization comes in.

Does it also mean that if for some reason the network comes down, the files all come down as well?

[pimterry]

Do you have any documentation that compares Skynet to IPFS anywhere? From an architectural standpoint and/or features.

[Taek]

Closest we got at the moment is this: https://skynet.guide/discover/storage-chains-compared.html#f...

I'm writing a more direct comparison this week, we just recently (less than 30 days ago) hit full feature parity with ipfs, any webapp or file deployed on IPFS should work natively on Skynet now as well. The link/identifier will be different but you shouldn't need to change any code

[menmob]

Are you able to “pin” files yourself like IPFS? Or are you required to pay hosts to store it?

[Taek]

You can always run a host yourself and pin it to your own host.

The main reason we chose a host-based architecture instead of a pin based architecture is that we saw on IPFS that having people pin their own data resulted in really poor uptimes, a lot of file rot, and it also substantially reduced scalability and increased fetch times. And after all of those tradeoffs, the vast majority of accessible content on IPFS is hosted via a pinning service anyway.

[menmob]

Makes sense. I’ve just been looking at creating a distributed YT archive on IPFS, but as you said, load times are absolutely terrible, especially for big files like video. I’ve been following sia since 2016-ish, and skynet looks awesome, just worried about maturity. I will try hosting my own files as you described, thanks!

[a1369209993]

> You can always run a host yourself and pin it to your own host.

(It sounds like it, but) to clarify, can you do this completely for free, with no cooperation from a third party (eg, you don't need to pay a existing host to vouch for you)?

[Taek]

No need to pay an existing host or get any sort of external party to enable you, it's a permissionless network