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Skynet Tech - Coggle Diagram
Skynet Tech
Basics
- Built on top of Sia blockchain, which first launched in 2015
- Sia like AirBnB for storage (check the other mind map about Sia for more details)
What Sia can or cannot do?
- Great for isolated data storage
- Not great for sharing data. What if you wanted to share a file with a friend or host a website? With Sia alone you cannot do that. Enter Skynet!
Skynet
- Built to make the benefits of Sia available across the Web
- It let's users store and access data without worrying about Siacoins or blockchains
Analogy?
- TCP/IP is a protocol for transferring data from source to destination.
- Users don't need to understand TCP/IP. They can just access the data using http from a browser.
- Can we say Skynet is HTTP equivalent and portal is browser equivalent?
Behind the scenes, a skynet portal is a Sia renter that rents & stores data for its users and can retrieve files from storage being rented by other portals
A real use-case
- Upload & download a file to/from a portal
- Once it's uploaded, it's instantly accessible across the globe, anywhere on the globe
- You can later trust that the file hasn't changed or been tampered with
- Even you, the original uploader, can't delete the file! If one portal blocks the skyfile (or someone blocks your access to the portal), you can still access your files through other portals
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Web Portals On Skynet
What are portals?
- Fundamental to Skynet. They are the piece/abstraction/interface that communicates & interacts with the Sia network, and they allow users to access Skynet from any device with an Internet connection
- Otherwise, you need to participate in the Sia blockchain directly by installing specialised Sia clients
Public Web Portals
- To access skapps at URls like https://skynet-send.hns.siasky.net through a normal Internet Connection, with no special software
- Acts as a renter on the Sia network
- Can upload on one portal, which is O&O by Skynet labs and instantly download the same file from any other portal on Skynet
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Beyond File Upload
Skylinks
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How Skylinks are generated?
- When a file is put on Skynet, it's data is hashed using a cryptographic function. This hash, along with some additional info, is used to generate the Skylink
- This ensures that the Skylink portal can always confirm that your data has not been tampered with. Because if it's tampered, it's hash will change
- And this is the reason, we can't edit the file as well. Since editing the file leads to change in hash
Skylink limitations
- You don't always want cryptic URLs for data you can't edit
- Sometimes you want your data to be "mutable" or URLs that are human readable
- Enter SkyDB & Handshake!