Sia v1.2.0

This is a minor release that incorporates major changes to the host and wallet modules. The host's storage backend has been completely rewritten to improve performance and scalability. Admin privileges are also no longer required to be a host on Windows. The wallet has (finally!) moved to an on-disk database, meaning that it will unlock instantly after the database is synced to the blockchain. The wallet also now supports creating a new wallet from an existing seed, and "sweeping" the coins in an existing seed into another wallet. Finally, addressing a frequent need of new users, the wallet can be recreated with a new seed, meaning users no longer have to manually delete their wallet folder.

NOTE: Upgrading an existing host can take quite a long time. Please be patient. Similarly, the first time you unlock the new wallet, it will take a long time because it's initializing the database. This only needs to occur once.

This release marks a huge uptick in the number of contributors to Sia! 🎉
The following people contributed to v1.2.0:

• @RNabel added bash completions for siac and a command that lists contract details. Power users will definitely appreciate this!
• @GlenDC documented the gateway RPC protocol and started tackling numerous gateway issues. Look out for him in the next release!
• @VoidingWarranties fixed a gateway bug. Couldn't stay away, huh? :)
• @S-anasol cleaned up some host code.
• @poiuty updated our Go dependency in the readme.

If you want to contribute to Sia, drop by our Slack. It's a big project and we can always use more help!

Sia v1.1.2

This is a patch release that adds a new asynchronous download endpoint (/renter/downloadasync) and fixes a bug that interfered with host storage proof submission. Hosts are strongly encouraged to upgrade before their proof windows end.

Sia v1.1.1

This is a patch release focusing on the renter and hostdb. The renter would previously slow down considerably after about 100 GB of data total had been uploaded, but now will maintain high speeds for much longer than that. While the total amount of data can now easily reach multiple TB, individual files are advised to stay below 100 GB. The hostdb is smarter about scanning and ranking hosts, and you can see more in-depth output using the siac hostdb -v command.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Unfortunately, our upgrades to the Renter require a full rescan of the blockchain. As a result, if you are upgrading from an older version, siad may take a long time to load the first time you run it. On an HDD, this may take up to an hour. On an SSD it should take closer to 10 minutes.

You should be able to upgrade to v1.1.1 by running siac update. If something goes wrong, you can always update manually -- but please file a bug report or get in touch on our Slack.

Thanks as always to our contributors, users, and fans, and a special shout-out to @lolsteve who submitted a PR to this release!

Sia v1.1.0

This is a minor release that improves renter performance and adds "defrag" behavior to the wallet. Previously, we have had issues with the wallet accumulating too many small outputs and thus being unable to fund large transactions. This isn't an issue for most users, but it can affect high-volume wallets, notably exchanges. The new wallet will regularly consolidate small outputs into one larger output.

Thanks to the new renter algorithm designed by @DavidVorick, we are seeing upload/download speeds that saturate most residential connections! This is a huge improvement over the previous algorithm. However, memory usage may be substantially higher than before. We are working to reduce memory usage in the next release without compromising speed.

As before, you should be able to upgrade to v1.1.0 by running siac update. If something goes wrong, you can always update manually -- but please file a bug report or get in touch on our Slack.

Thanks as always to our contributors, users, and fans, and a special shout-out to @BitcoinErrorLog who submitted a PR to this release!

Sia v1.0.4

This is a patch release that splits the standard release line from the LTS release line. See the previous release notes for more details.

Sia v1.0.3

This is a patch release that improves the stability and performance of the renter, in addition to many other minor bug fixes and miscellaneous tweaks. Our goal for this release was to make Sia viable for real-world use, even if only on a small scale. Only time will tell if we achieved that goal, but we are optimistic.

Much of the work that went into this release was aided by our new testing framework, the Ant Farm.

Our next targeted release is v1.1.0, which will introduce some long-awaited features (such as instant wallet unlocking) as well as considerable performance upgrades for the renter and host.

You should be able to upgrade to v1.0.3 by running siac update. If something goes wrong, you can always update manually -- but please file a bug report or get in touch on our Slack.

Thanks as always to our contributors, users, and fans!

Sia v1.0.1

This is a patch release that addresses some minor bugs in the v1.0.0 release:

• Restricted API address to localhost
• Fixed renter/host desynchronization
• Fixed host silently refusing new contracts

You should be able to upgrade to this release by running siac update. If not, it's probably my fault and it'll be fixed in the next release. 😬 Of course, if siac update fails, you can always upgrade manually in the usual way.
If your siac binary is not in the same directory as your siad binary, it will not be upgraded (and you will see a warning), but siad will be updated.

As a reminder, all release binaries are now signed. You can manually verify the signatures with the command:

openssl dgst -sha256 -verify sia.pem -signature siad.sig siad

You can find our public key here. Save it as sia.pem for the above command to work.

Sia v1.0.0

Today we are releasing version 1.0 of Sia.

In accordance with SemVer, v1.0.0 will be our first stable release. Practically speaking, what this means is that the siad API will maintain backwards compatibility until v2.0.0. We will continue to add new routes and fields to the API, but we will not remove or modify existing routes or fields. Note that this "compatibility promise" does not extend to data stored on disk (such as the blockchain), but we intend to make future updates compatible with these files.

v1.0.0 (re)introduces automatic updates. When we release a new version, you may automatically update your siad and siac binaries by running siac update (although you should run siac update check first). All releases will be signed with the Sia developer key. In addition, all release tags will be signed by a core developer.

A big thanks to everyone who reported issues and submitted pull requests -- especially @david60, who has reported several important issues and suggested possible fixes for them. Thanks David!

Going forward, we hope to see more people contributing to the development of Sia. If you are interested in contributing, check out our new guide, written by @mnsl.

Sia v0.6.0

At long last, we are ready to release Sia v0.6.0. We've made over 500 commits since our last release!
As noted in the README, this version introduces significant changes to the renter and host. Renters must now set an allowance before uploading, and hosts must add storage folders.

To set an allowance, use siac renter setallowance [funds] [period]. The period is in weeks; 1 week is approx. 1000 blocks. You will not be able to set the allowance until a minimum of 12 hosts are online. You can see the host list with siac hostdb. Finally, to view the contracts you have formed, use siac renter contracts.

Importantly, file contracts are not automatically renewed in this release. That means that your files can only be stored for a finite amount of time. After that, you'll need to reupload them. As such, we encourage beta testers to form short contracts and not upload critical data. We are working on automatic renewals now, and hope to include them in the next patch release (v0.6.1).

v0.6.0 is largely incompatible with v0.5.2. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Sia v0.5.2

This is a patch release that improves network performance. It also contains some siac tweaks.