Over the past year, Sia's market capitalization has increased from just USD 5 million to USD 2.5 billion. At the moment, SiaCoin is worth around 0.06 USD.
The last SiaCoin hardfork took place on December 6. While the amendment streamlined many aspects of the Sia platform, namely the money allocation performance, it also extended the waiting time for transactions up to 30 minutes. Meanwhile, the updated version 1.3.1 is intended to shorten the transaction time from block number 139,000. According to the report, another hardfork will probably take place in the first half of 2018.
Why SiaCoin needed a hardfork?
Sia, like many other coins, uses the PoW (Proof of Work) algorithm to secure the network and prevent double spending. PoW requires the DAZ (Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm) algorithm to regularly adjust the difficulty of digging the block and ensure that the blocks are mined every 10 minutes on average. This is especially important for Sia because the file contracts use the block height as a measure of time.
While the DAA SiaCoin algorithm has been doing a good job so far, it is not without its drawbacks. Currently, this is not a problem, but it can become a threat to network security after releasing ASiC chips, which will cause a huge hashrate jump. For this reason, there was introduced a new DAA in Sia v1.3.0, running in block 135,000. The new DAA adapts the difficulty of each block and will be able to maintain a stable network during sudden hashrate jumps.
Because SiaCoin hardfork is getting closer, many members of the cryptocurrency community are expecting an increase in the price of the token. Due to the rapid growth of cryptocurrencies in 2018, 2018 may be a good year for Siacoin.