I got the inside scoop on the discord!
After chatting with them for a few minutes and expressing my interest in certain technical aspects. I was direct messaged by the founder himself, David Vorick or Taek#6798 on Discord.
He mentioned that they have a draft article for the release and invited me to review. I must say that I was thoroughly impressed by the concept.
Let me explain why this is so significant.
It takes a lot of work to manage and maintain a database. In fact they have a profession dedicated to that practice that is your database administrator or DBA. It can be quite a chore to ensure the confidentiality, integrity as well as availability of data and security is paramount especially with personal identifiable information (PII) or likewise data with financial implications.
What if blockchain could be leveraged to bridge this knowledge gap?
This is what SkyDB provides which effectively lowers the barrier to entry for dApp creators by providing a web accessible database secured using blockchain cryptography.
Potential Use Cases
- Shared organizational databases
- Whitelists / Blacklists users
- Player Stats for a Game
The possibilities are nearly endless but I still have a few questions. The article was more conceptual than technical so these are the things I would specifically like to know:
Input / Output (IO) Performance of the SkyDB database versus traditional relational databases (MySql, Oracle, Microsoft SQL, PostGRE)
Permission Models - Will authorization be based on public key alone or will it be robust enough to assign role based access controls via security groups.
Best practice for user management is to assign permissions implicitly vs explicitly. Rather than say this user can do x thing, instead say this group can do x things and then make the user member of that group.
This prevents potential for permission creep by making the process of stripping permissions from out-processing users as easy as removing them from the group.
I look forward to the technical documentation release so I can get a better idea of the specifications and also will be doing my own tinkering. I have a SiaCoin host currently up and plan to set it us as a test SkyNet Web Portal but whitelisting only my own renter until I have a viable cost solution in place.
In any case, you should probably be keeping your eye on SiaCoin this Thursday for the official release. Rumor is that FileCoin, their competitor, will also have an announcement as well.
I've reviewed FileCoin in the past and quite frankly it seemed lackly. Particularly, in that there is not much of an assurance mechanism for hosts to retain your data.
SiaCoin solved this through the use of storage contracts with collateral that will be lost if your host is unable to provide the storage proof which as I understand it is a cryptographic checksum of the data. Much like a Cyclic Redundancy Check that is used to ensure data is intact across networks.
Do I think SiaCoin has much potential for growth through real world utility?
Why Yes I do
Is this financial advice? No, it's not.
Are there plays to be made?... Maybe
But in any case, I wanted to give yall a heads up. Expect a meme war to commence and as a long time Sia Community member, I will be participating.