Small Grant: Lume Web - LBRY Integration (Revised)

Grants Approved
1

Introduction

Project Name: Lume Web - LBRY Integration

Name of the organization or individual submitting the proposal: Hammer Technologies LLC

Describe your project.

LBRY is a peer-to-peer content sharing platform where files are shared among users. A significant challenge with this model is that content can become unavailable and permanently lost if no one is actively sharing it. This project will address this issue by integrating LBRY with the Sia network through the Lume Web portal. This integration will enable the Sia network to function as a decentralized and persistent storage layer for LBRY content, ensuring files remain consistently available for download, even when no peers are online.

It’s important to note that this integration focuses solely on storing the LBRY file data itself. It does not involve any interaction with the LBRY blockchain, thereby adhering to the grant guidelines that prohibit integration with non-Sia blockchains.

Project Background & The Opportunity for Sia

This section directly addresses the Committee’s feedback: “Given the uncertainty of LBRY’s active development, with the original project having moved to Arweave, the Committee would like more detail on how integrating with LBRY will be valuable to the Sia ecosystem.”

This feedback stems from a common but critical misconception regarding the LBRY ecosystem. The reality is:

  1. LBRY, the protocol, has not moved to Arweave. Odysee, a single application built on LBRY, was acquired by Arweave. The core open-source LBRY protocol and its community, guided by the LBRY Foundation, remain independent and are actively rebuilding.
  2. LBRY’s fundamental need for persistent storage remains unsolved. The protocol has always relied on peer-to-peer seeding, which lacks long-term data persistence. The separation from the Odysee application simply underscores that the core LBRY protocol currently has no integrated decentralized storage partner. This leaves a clear and unfilled need for a storage layer—an opportunity Sia is perfectly positioned to capture.

This project’s value to the Sia ecosystem is therefore direct and substantial: it onboards a mature creator economy with immediate, large-scale storage needs. Collaboration with the LBRY Foundation has quantified this opportunity:

  • Total Network Storage: Approximately 8,400 TiB of media content exists across all creator channels.
  • Top Creator Storage: The top 100 channels alone account for ~630 TiB of this data.

By providing the critical storage infrastructure LBRY currently lacks, this project positions Sia as the primary decentralized storage solution for this established data footprint, creating a clear and direct pathway to increased network utilization.

How does the projected outcome serve the Foundation’s mission of user-owned data?

True data ownership requires that your files are safe from being lost. Currently, LBRY creators risk their content disappearing, which undermines their control and ownership.

This project solves this by using Sia to ensure LBRY content remains persistent and reliably available. This provides LBRY creators with a complete solution for data ownership while bringing their entire creator economy and its storage needs to the Sia network.

Why Sia?

Sia was chosen for this integration because its core features provide a direct and robust solution to the specific challenges faced by the LBRY ecosystem.

  • Decentralized Redundancy: Sia’s architecture, which uses erasure coding to distribute encrypted file pieces across a global network of hosts, is the ideal technical solution for LBRY’s content permanence problem. It ensures high availability and durability without a single point of failure.
  • Cost-Effectiveness: The competitive marketplace for storage on Sia makes it significantly more affordable for independent LBRY creators than traditional centralized alternatives, making persistent storage economically practical.
  • Data Ownership and Censorship Resistance: Sia’s permissionless, user-controlled design aligns perfectly with the ethos of LBRY creators. It ensures that their data remains their own, free from censorship or de-platforming risks, directly fulfilling the Foundation’s mission.

Onboarding the LBRY Community & Enabling Future Growth

Bringing the LBRY creator economy to Sia will be achieved through a multi-faceted approach focused on direct support and enabling future, widespread adoption:

  1. Direct Onboarding Assistance: As the primary developer and a long-standing collaborator within the LBRY community, I will provide direct, hands-on assistance to any LBRY creators and community members looking to back up their content to Sia through the Lume Web portal. This personalized support ensures a smooth adoption process.

  2. Enabling Native Desktop App Integration: The LBRY leadership plans to add a feature to their official desktop application allowing users to back up content to reflector-compatible services.

    This grant will add the necessary reflector-compatibility to the existing Lume Web portal (operating at pinner.xyz). This positions the portal to be an immediate and practical storage destination for LBRY’s desktop user base, creating a direct pathway for their data to be stored on the Sia network.

We cannot provide grants to residents of jurisdictions under increased FATF monitoring, those that have active OFAC sanctions, or those that fail our bank compliance tests. We also cannot provide grants if your payment bank account is located in those same locations. Please review the following list.

Are you a resident of any jurisdiction on that list? No

Will your payment bank account be located in any jurisdiction on that list? No

Grant Specifics

Amount of money requested and justification with a reasonable breakdown of expenses: $10,000

  • $9,330 - 2 months Developer fees for Derrick Hammer
  • $670 - R&D Infrastructure

What are the goals of this small grant? Please provide a general timeline for completion.

  • Month 1 (November, due 12/2/25): Build the protocol integration and the API
    • Tasks:
      • A new go library will need to be made based off the guts of GitHub - LBRYFoundation/reflector.go that will act as the foundation of the protocol backend support
      • A portal plugin portal-plugin-lbry will be made
      • Testing of the protocol integration and the various ways to pin data
    • Validations for this milestone will include:
      • Being able to pin a blob from the network over REST API
      • Being able to unpin a blob from the network over REST API
      • Being able to upload a small file as a blob and access it with LBRY CLI tools
      • Being able to upload a large file as a blob and access it with LBRY CLI tools
      • Being able to use LBRY tools to upload a blob to the portal using the LBRY native reflector protocol. This will require supporting device (IP based) whitelisting in the API (and GUI in Month 2).
    • All validations will be presented in the form of a CLI-based demo repo with instructions on testing each validation.
  • Month 2 (December, due 1/2/26): Build the frontend integration
    • Tasks:
      • Add LBRY as support for uploading data in the upload manager as a storage option
      • Add a pinning interface support for LBRY blobs
      • Add an approved device list interface support so that LBRY blobs can be uploaded via the reflector protocol and correctly associated to an account.
      • Testing functions and no obvious UX problems
    • Validations for this milestone will include (UI focused):
      • Being able to pin a blob
      • Being able to unpin a blob
      • Being able to upload a small file (post upload, defaults to max 100 MB)
      • Being able to upload a large file
      • Being able to use LBRY tools to upload a blob and see it show up in the blob list. Instructions for this validation will be provided in a demo repo.
  • All milestones will be testable at/against pinner.xyz

Potential risks that will affect the outcome of the project:

  • Any unexpected technical issues with the reflector protocol or other foundational LBRY P2P components.

    • Mitigation: My close working relationship with the LBRY Foundation’s leadership provides a direct line to the core community contributors best equipped to troubleshoot any protocol-level issues that may arise.

  • Any potential governance issues around cooperation with LBRY and the LBRY Foundation (lbry.org).

    • Mitigation: This risk is minimal. I have been actively collaborating with the LBRY Foundation leadership for over a year. They have been consulted on every aspect of this project, have formally approved the proposed integration, and view its completion as a key step forward for their ecosystem. This grant solidifies an already strong and established partnership.

Development Information

Will all of your project’s code be open-source? Yes

Leave a link where code will be accessible for review.

Do you agree to submit monthly progress reports? Yes

Contact info

Email: [email protected]

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Thanks for your proposal to The Sia Foundation Grants Program.

After review, the Committee has decided to approve your proposal. Congratulations! They’re excited to see what you can accomplish with this grant.

We’ll reach out to your provided email address for onboarding. This shouldn’t take long unless your info has changed from last time, but you may still need to adjust your timelines.

Note: you will need to update your milestones to match the revised 25th of the month reporting expectation, but we will resolve this during onboarding.