Summer is drawing down, and Fall is closing in. In case you missed the Triannual Update or didn’t catch me in Discord — I’m Steve, the new Community Manager for Sia. I’ll use this space to get everyone up to speed on new Sia community developments, highlight stand-out projects from our users, and share my thoughts on what’s next for us.

We care about you and what you have to say. We care about making a product that changes the face (or at least foundation) of storage. Those two things are inextricably linked. That’s what we try to keep in mind each day.

Anyway, on with the show.

Discord

One of the fastest growing communities in the crypto space

Many of you are well aware that we’ve moved our community’s central base of operations to Discord, so I won’t drag this topic out too far. What’s worth mentioning though is how smooth the experience has been for our users. With almost 4,000 members and a channel selection bot developed by community members @Aleks, @eddiewang, and @rudi, the Sia Discord server is a great place to call home.

We have channels dedicated to Spanish, French, Russian, and German speakers (ask a mod to join), channels for discussing renting and hosting, and many others. We have the all important #help channel, the best place to get your questions answered.

Discord will grow with us, and become better with us. It’s equipped to handle the needs of one of the fastest growing communities in the crypto space.

Join Discord now.

Class is in session

Nebulous/Sia CEO David Vorick led a nearly six hour long discussion in Discord regarding Sia development, blockchain design, and industry issues. Users were welcome to submit questions and join in on the conversation, and we’ll soon have a link to the full archive on our website.

David also did a user Q and A with The Next Web recently. They were gracious hosts, turnout was great, and you can read it all here.

Sia Bounties

Sia Bounties allow us to reward our contributors for building integrations between Sia and popular apps and platforms. Our second bounty was for a Duplicati integration and was completed in two days by user @fuffenz. Duplicati has gone on to merge the code, and it is currently available here for testing. We hope the finished integration will be available soon.

View the initial Bounty post here.

Contributor Spotlight

Good companies attract great users. Great users make the companies they care about better. Sia delivers an amazing service that has brought some of the best users in the blockchain space to our community, and we want to highlight their creative work that has turned Sia into more than it was before. We’ll start off with Siaberry.

Siaberry allows you to run a Linux-based Sia hosting and renting platform built on Rasberry Pi 3. Developed by user @kete, Siaberry is one of the cheapest ways to get a Sia rig up and running. In Discord, ask a moderator to add you to #siaberry to join the discussion and get links to the necessary equipment!

Learn more about Siaberry here.

Obelisk

Obelisk is the first ASIC miner for Sia, built to strengthen and secure the best decentralized storage platform available.

We know you want Obelisk updates. A proper update email will be sent to those who have already pre-ordered soon in the next couple weeks. Expect good things!

If you haven’t pre-ordered yet, here’s the place to do it.

Let’s…

In closing, I want to get your feedback. Open lines of communication are crucial to maintaining the kind of positive relationship that has brought you all here. I’ve got a short survey that I’d love for you to fill out.

Take the survey.

Feel free to contact me anytime via the info below. I’ll respond whenever I’m not changing diapers or making sure my dog doesn’t eat another entire stick of butter.

Steve