README
¶
v0.2.3 (Rye)
Hyperspace is a new decentralized cloud storage platform that radically alters the landscape of cloud storage. By leveraging smart contracts, client-side encryption, and sophisticated redundancy (via Reed-Solomon codes), Hyperspace allows users to safely store their data with hosts that they do not know or trust. The result is a cloud storage marketplace where hosts compete to offer the best service at the lowest price. And since there is no barrier to entry for hosts, anyone with spare storage capacity can join the network and start making money.
Traditional cloud storage has a number of shortcomings. Users are limited to a few big-name offerings: Google, Microsoft, Amazon. These companies have little incentive to encrypt your data or make it easy to switch services later. Their code is closed-source, and they can lock you out of your account at any time.
We believe that users should own their data. Hyperspace achieves this by replacing the traditional monolithic cloud storage provider with a blockchain and a swarm of hosts, each of which stores an encrypted fragment of your data. Since the fragments are redundant, no single host can hold your data hostage: if they jack up their price or go offline, you can simply download from a different host. In other words, trust is removed from the equation, and switching to a different host is painless. Stripped of these unfair advantages, hosts must compete solely on the quality and price of the storage they provide.
Hyperspace can serve as a replacement for personal backups, bulk archiving, content distribution, and more. For developers, Hyperspace is a low-cost alternative to Amazon S3. Storage on Hyperspace is a full order of magnitude cheaper than on S3, with comparable bandwidth, latency, and durability. Hyperspace works best for static content, especially media like videos, music, and photos.
Distributing data across many hosts automatically confers several advantages. The most obvious is that, just like BitTorrent, uploads and downloads are highly parallel. Given enough hosts, Hyperspace can saturate your bandwidth. Another advantage is that your data is spread across a wide geographic area, reducing latency and safeguarding your data against a range of attacks.
It is important to note that users have full control over which hosts they use. You can tailor your host set for minimum latency, lowest price, widest geographic coverage, or even a strict whitelist of IP addresses or public keys.
At the core of Hyperspace is a blockchain that closely resembles Bitcoin. Transactions are conducted in Hyperspacecoin, a cryptocurrency. The blockchain is what allows Hyperspace to enforce its smart contracts without relying on centralized authority.
Usage
Hyperspace is ready for use with small sums of money and non-critical files, but until the network has a more proven track record, we advise against using it as a sole means of storing important data.
This release comes with 2 binaries, hsd and hsc. hsd is a background service, or "daemon," that runs the Hyperspace protocol and exposes an HTTP API on port 5580. hsc is a command-line client that can be used to interact with hsd in a user-friendly way. There is also a graphical client, Hyperspace.app, which is the preferred way of using Hyperspace for most users. For interested developers, the hsd API is documented here.
hsd and hsc are run via command prompt. On Windows, you can just double-
click hsd.exe if you don't need to specify any command-line arguments.
Otherwise, navigate to its containing folder and click File->Open command
prompt. Then, start the hsd service by entering hsd and pressing Enter.
The command prompt may appear to freeze; this means hsd is waiting for
requests. Windows users may see a warning from the Windows Firewall; be sure
to check both boxes ("Private networks" and "Public networks") and click
"Allow access." You can now run hsc (in a separate command prompt) or Hyperspace-
UI to interact with hsd. From here, you can send money, upload and download
files, and advertise yourself as a host.
Building From Source
To build from source, Go 1.10 must be installed
on the system. Make sure your $GOPATH is set, and then simply use go get:
go get -u github.com/HyperspaceApp/Hyperspace/...
This will download the Hyperspace repo to your $GOPATH/src folder and install the
hsd and hsc binaries in your $GOPATH/bin folder.
To stay up-to-date, run the previous go get command again. Alternatively, you
can use the Makefile provided in this repo. Run git pull origin master to
pull the latest changes, and make release to build the new binaries. You
can also run make test and make test-long to run the short and full test
suites, respectively. Finally, make cover will generate code coverage reports
for each package; they are stored in the cover folder and can be viewed in
your browser.
Directories
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| Path | Synopsis |
|---|---|
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cmd
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Package compatibility contains a bunch of tests to make sure that compatibility has been preserved with previous versions.
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Package compatibility contains a bunch of tests to make sure that compatibility has been preserved with previous versions. |
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Package encoding converts arbitrary objects into byte slices, and vis versa.
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Package encoding converts arbitrary objects into byte slices, and vis versa. |
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blockcf
Package blockcf provides functions for building committed filters for blocks using Golomb-coded sets in a way that is useful for light clients such as SPV wallets.
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Package blockcf provides functions for building committed filters for blocks using Golomb-coded sets in a way that is useful for light clients such as SPV wallets. |
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Package modules contains definitions for all of the major modules of Sia, as well as some helper functions for performing actions that are common to multiple modules.
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Package modules contains definitions for all of the major modules of Sia, as well as some helper functions for performing actions that are common to multiple modules. |
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explorer
Package explorer provides a glimpse into what the Sia network currently looks like.
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Package explorer provides a glimpse into what the Sia network currently looks like. |
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gateway
Package gateway connects a Sia node to the Sia flood network.
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Package gateway connects a Sia node to the Sia flood network. |
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host
Package host is an implementation of the host module, and is responsible for participating in the storage ecosystem, turning available disk space an internet bandwidth into profit for the user.
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Package host is an implementation of the host module, and is responsible for participating in the storage ecosystem, turning available disk space an internet bandwidth into profit for the user. |
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miner
Package miner is responsible for creating and submitting siacoin blocks
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Package miner is responsible for creating and submitting siacoin blocks |
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miningpool
Package pool is an implementation of the pool module, and is responsible for creating a mining pool, accepting incoming potential block solutions and rewarding the submitters proportionally for their shares.
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Package pool is an implementation of the pool module, and is responsible for creating a mining pool, accepting incoming potential block solutions and rewarding the submitters proportionally for their shares. |
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renter
Package renter is responsible for uploading and downloading files on the sia network.
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Package renter is responsible for uploading and downloading files on the sia network. |
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renter/contractor
Package contractor is responsible for forming and renewing file contracts with hosts.
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Package contractor is responsible for forming and renewing file contracts with hosts. |
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renter/hostdb
Package hostdb provides a HostDB object that implements the renter.hostDB interface.
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Package hostdb provides a HostDB object that implements the renter.hostDB interface. |
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stratumminer
Package stratumminer provides some utilities and common code for specific client implementations Package stratumminer is responsible for finding valid block headers and submitting them to a stratum server Package stratumminer implements the basic stratum protocol.
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Package stratumminer provides some utilities and common code for specific client implementations Package stratumminer is responsible for finding valid block headers and submitting them to a stratum server Package stratumminer implements the basic stratum protocol. |
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Package node provides tooling for creating a Sia node.
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Package node provides tooling for creating a Sia node. |
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api/server
Package server provides a server that can wrap a node and serve an http api for interacting with the node.
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Package server provides a server that can wrap a node and serve an http api for interacting with the node. |