The State of Sia, February 2026

After months of groundwork, February brought the final push toward the first Beacon-only release of the Sia Storage platform and mobile app, marking the transition from internal testing towards the final preparations for a soft launch in April.

With plans to hard launch the Sia Storage app for mobile in May, our marketing team jump-started key planning and strategy for the release at Consensus Miami. The Sia Storage App will be the first fully decentralized cloud storage app on mobile for everyday consumers—championed by the web3 community for the rest of the world.

The Foundation has also shared the 2025 Grants Program Review Summary and introduced Community Badges, including a “Supported by a Sia Foundation Grant” badge and a “Built on Sia” badge for current or past projects successfully completed through the Grants Program.

Development Updates

Sia Storage App: Rapid Iteration Toward a Better Consumer Storage Experience

The Sia Storage App for mobile devices had one of the busiest months across the ecosystem, shipping seven releases from v1.1.0 through v1.7.0. The app gained major usability improvements around organization, search, uploads, syncing, and debugging, while the broader Sia Storage App effort moved from Beacon launch toward a soft launch target in early April.

Shipped seven releases over the course of the month.
Added tags and favorites that sync across devices.
Added folders and a configurable photo import folder.
Added a dedicated search screen with tag filtering and keyboard navigation.
Reworked the library into a three-tab Files, Tags, and Media layout.
Rewrote uploads to batch files into slabs more efficiently, improving throughput.
Improved photo sync with periodic background re-scans.
Added structured logging with exportable JSONL output.
Restructured the app into a monorepo with a shared core package to prepare for desktop support.

The UI saw especially notable progress this month, including the new three-tab library layout, tag-based organization, improved search and navigation, and a more polished file-browsing experience backed by numerous bug fixes for carousel navigation, Android sharing, download loops, and performance.

indexd: Stronger Developer Ergonomics and Quota Management

Development on indexd was primarily focused on reducing complexity and improving developer usability. Improvements to the API and data model allowed for better contract cleanup, stronger OpenAPI validation, and expanded quota and connect-key management.

Added an endpoint to delete a contract and all associated sectors.
Reduced duplication in host usability query logic.
Added a method to decrypt a SealedObject for better consistency with the Rust SDK.
Added a host stat for the number of hosts with active contracts.
Validated the OpenAPI spec and fixed minor issues.
Added quota types, quota management, and updated connect keys to reference quotas.

renterd: Safer Syncing and a New Release

renterd continued to see improvements in reliability for both everyday storage users and developers building on Sia. Highlights include fixes to instant sync behavior and transaction retry safety, while the latest release renterd v2.9.0 shipped with a Go 1.26.0 update and fully retry-safe store methods.

Fixed instant sync so renters joining an existing network properly reset the chain state and do not miss contract or file data.
Improved database retry safety to prevent duplicate side effects when transient errors trigger transaction retries.
Shipped renterd v2.9.0 with Go 1.26.0 and coreutils 0.21.1.
Ensured all store methods are retry-safe in the latest release.

hostd: Leaner Storage Operations for Hosts

Work on hostd focused on improving host operational efficiency and reliability. The biggest highlight was the release of hostd v2.7.0, which introduced experimental consensus pruning, potentially reducing disk usage by limiting the number of stored blocks, while also improving performance for backups and contract state handling.

Added experimental consensus pruning, allowing hosts to reduce consensus database size on disk.
Updated to Go 1.26.0.
Added an option to disable the Merkle proof cache for low-resource systems.
Fixed an issue where revisions and resolutions in the same block could cause contracts to appear active forever.
Dramatically sped up database backups by removing the vacuum step and improving backup handling.

walletd: Better Wallet Visibility and Faster Sync Options

walletd was also the recipient of meaningful quality-of-life improvements in the latest v2.12.0 release. The headline addition was UTXO source tracking, giving users and integrators better visibility into the origin of wallet funds, alongside new tooling for instant sync and transaction construction.

Added UTXO source tracking to allow wallets to distinguish between mining rewards, contract payouts, and standard transfers.
Added a --checkpoint CLI flag for instant-syncing to a given chain index.
Added inputSigHash to the /wallets/:id/construct/v2/transaction response.
Added Siacoin input origin to consensus/block.

explored: Better Search and More Visibility Into Chain Activity

explored focused on making blockchain data easier to navigate and inspect. February’s updates improved both discoverability and observability, giving users better ways to search contract activity and identify slow API behavior.

Added pagination for contract searches by pubkey.
Added support for searching unconfirmed transactions.
Added warnings when API response time exceeds 10 seconds.

coreutils: Consensus Hardening and Reliability Improvements

coreutils continued to serve as an important foundation for the broader Sia stack, with February updates focused on stability, validation, and sync reliability. Two releases landed during the month, along with important fixes that improve behavior under difficult edge cases.

Released coreutils v0.21.0 and v0.21.1.
Fixed a race condition in block pruning that could affect slow subscribers.
Fixed WebTransport serving after an upstream library requirement change.
Fixed parallel sync getting stuck when all sync workers hit errors at once.
Added validation for malformed fund account requests.
Reached 100% test coverage for consensus validation.

Grant Program Updates

Progress Reports from Ongoing Grants

Vup Vault - Personal Backup: Vup Vault made substantial progress on its personal backup workflow, including a new s5_compression crate with zstd compression and optional dictionary support, an index-only import mode for efficiently tracking local files without uploading blob data, and the first vup_cli scaffold with commands for configuration, indexing, status checks, and future backup support. The project also introduced persistent config storage and is now moving toward snapshot creation, restore flows, and resumable backups.
Chi-Voice Pilot: Chi-Voice completed initial S5 integration work by setting up an S5 node, running a renterd instance, and successfully testing uploads and downloads through S5 with returned CIDs. Its next milestone is the development of a public REST API.
SMB - Indexer Support: Support for SMB dialects 3.0.2 and 3.1.1 were added, and a public test server was deployed for community feedback. Next steps include incorporating feedback, implementing a metadata store, and improving query behavior to better match SMB protocol expectations.

Final Thoughts

February was a month of progress on multiple fronts: improving the reliability of its core infrastructure, sharpening the developer experience, and rapidly iterating on the consumer-facing storage app ahead of its next launch milestone. From renterd, hostd, and walletd releases to the fast-paced iteration of the Sia Storage App and the continued execution across the Grants Program, the month reflected steady movement toward a more consumer-friendly and accessible Sia ecosystem.

That’s all, folks!

Thanks for your continued support and dedication as we build the foundation of the decentralized future.

Take care, and see you next month.

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