siastream

SiaStream

SiaStream lets you store your entire media library in the cloud. It stores your files on providers all around the world to give you unparalleled speed, privacy, and security. It's the gateway to the new Internet - one that you control.

SiaStream takes your terabytes and puts them onto Sia, a global cloud storage network.

About Sia

Sia is a decentralized storage network that allows users to rent out cloud storage at low, competitive prices. As a permissionless network and open marketplace, it offers some key advantages that makes it a compelling offering to home media server operators like fast streaming speeds.

Sia is one of the few blockchain products that delivers a real product with real value, and our network has been live for years. It can do all this, and you can take advantage of it for less money than using a traditional cloud storage platform.

Low Costs

Storing a TB of media on SiaStream costs $3.99 per month, and includes both storage and bandwidth. That buys you an awful lot. You can relieve a home server of its media, or use SiaStream as a cloud backup. The data you upload is split apart and encrypted before even leaving your machine, so storage hosts can never see your files. And your files can't be pulled from the network just because your cloud provider changes their mind.

SiaStream uses the Sia marketplace, storage prices can sometimes temporarily exceed $3.99 per month.

No Deplatforming

Any experienced Plex user that has tried hosting their data on Amazon Drive Unlimited or Google Drive Unlimited know that both companies have since changed their policies to remove their unlimited offerings. Users have even been banned by centralized cloud-storage companies due to violations in their policy.

Since Sia is fully decentralized, it means no single authority can deny you access to storing and streaming files from SiaStream. In fact, even if SiaStream's parent company shuttered its doors today, the network would continue to function independently. It's built with stability from the ground up.

Learn more about SiaStream and Sia at the Support Center.

Installation

There are currently 3 ways to run SiaStream:

• Homebrew
  1. first you will need brew installed - follow the instructions on the official website
  2. add our tap to your homebrew environment

     brew tap NebulousLabs/siastream https://gitlab.com/NebulousLabs/siastream.git

  3. install SiaStream

     brew install siastream

  4. once installed, you will be able to run it

     siastream

• NPM
  1. first you will need to install node which will also install npm cli for you
  2. then install SiaStream globally

     npm i -g siastream

  3. once installed, you will be able to run it

     siastream

• download precompiled binaries from the official website

Updating to new version

Every so often we will release an update with new functionalities, bug fixes or other improvements. Depending on the way you have installed your SiaStream there are different ways of updating to new version:

• if you downloaded precompiled binaries: download new version from official website and overwrite old files with the new ones
• if you installed through homebrew: run brew update and then brew upgrade siastream
• if you installed through npm: run npm i -g siastream

Remember to restart SiaStream process after upgrading to a new version.

Development

Prerequisites

• required: node (preferably version 12+)
  • macos: brew install node with brew
  • linux: node installation docs
• required: yarn
  • macos: brew install yarn with brew
  • linux: yarn installation docs

FUSE

SiaStream uses FUSE to mount uploaded data from Sia network to your local directory. Depending on your setup you might need to:

• macos only: FUSE for mac
• linux only: if you're running as a non root user, you need to edit /etc/fuse.conf and include user_allow_other directive example

Starting development build

• make sure that you meet all the prerequisites
• yarn - installs dependencies
• yarn start - starts app on localhost:3000

Building distribution package

• make sure that you meet all the prerequisites
• yarn - installs dependencies
• depending on your target environment
  • yarn package linux - for linux
  • yarn package macos - for macos
• package will be available in dist directory under a directory specific to the target platform ex. dist/siastream-macos-x64 and will contain:
  • siastream file - application executable
  • node_modules directory - has to be shipped alongside the executable (contains native addons and libraries that could not be bundled in the executable)