Sia Tech wants to speed up the development of “free Internet” and has raised $3 million in seed funding to do just that.
Dubbed Skynet, the free internet or content distribution network (CDN) would be able to serve content on the decentralized Sia network. It would allow developers to deploy applications “in just minutes”.
David Vorick, lead developer of Skynet and CEO of Nebulous (the startup behind Sia and Skynet, which has now rebranded to Skynet Labs), believes this will create an “unstoppable force”.
“Ten years from now, using centralized applications instead of decentralized applications will feel like using a fax machine instead of email,” he said in a recent interview.
Vorick said there are more than 100 applications and 10 web portals already using Skynet as a decentralized storage alternative, including the popular exchange Uniswap. Skynet launched in February 2020.
Paradigm partner Dan Robinson said in a press statement he’s keen to see decentralized storage lead to social networking without distinct silos, like YouTube and Twitter.
This rebrand comes nearly one year after the startup reached a $225,000 settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an unregistered token sale in 2014.
The seed funding round was led by Paradigm, with participation from Bain Capital Ventures and Dragonfly Capital Partners, among others.
Skynet was initially announced in February. The project team believes that the next generation of Twitter, Medium, TikTok will be built on Skynet.
Sia is among the leading decentralized cloud storage platforms and leverages blockchain technology to create a data storage marketplace that is among the most affordable in the market.
On average, Sia’s decentralized cloud storage costs 90% less than incumbent cloud storage providers. Storing 1TB of files on Sia costs about $1-2 per month.
Photo by Leon Seibert on Unsplash
