Hippius S3: A Drop-in Replacement for AWS S3, Powered by Bittensor

If you use AWS S3 today, switching to Hippius takes less than 5 minutes. No SDK changes. No new libraries. Just point your existing code at a different endpoint.

This post covers how it works and why you might want to.

Why decentralized storage matters for developers

AWS S3 is convenient, but it's also a single company controlling your data. That means outages, price hikes, account suspensions, and regional restrictions are all risks you absorb.

Hippius provides the same S3-compatible API, backed by a decentralized network of 459+ independent storage nodes on Bittensor. Your data is split into shards across the network using Reed-Solomon erasure coding. No single node holds your file. No single company controls your access.

The practical result: S3-compatible storage that's censorship-resistant by design, with no vendor lock-in.

Get started in 5 minutes

1. Create an account

Sign up at console.hippius.com using your Google or GitHub account.

Add credits via Console → Billing. You can pay with a credit card (Stripe) or TAO.

2. Create S3 credentials

Go to Console → S3 Storage → Create Master Token.

Save your credentials. Your Access Key ID starts with hip_, and you'll also receive a Secret Key.

3. Configure your S3 client

Use the following connection details: endpoint https://s3.hippius.com, region decentralized, AWS Signature V4, and path addressing style.

Code examples

Everything that works with AWS S3 works with Hippius. Here are the most common setups:

AWS CLI

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="hip_your_key"
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="your_secret"
export AWS_DEFAULT_REGION="decentralized"

# Create a bucket
aws s3 mb s3://my-bucket --endpoint-url https://s3.hippius.com

# Upload a file
aws s3 cp file.txt s3://my-bucket/file.txt --endpoint-url https://s3.hippius.com

# Download a file
aws s3 cp s3://my-bucket/file.txt ./file.txt --endpoint-url https://s3.hippius.com

# List objects
aws s3 ls s3://my-bucket/ --endpoint-url https://s3.hippius.com

# Generate a presigned URL (1 hour)
aws s3 presign s3://my-bucket/file.txt \
  --endpoint-url https://s3.hippius.com \
  --expires-in 3600

Python (boto3)

import boto3
from botocore.config import Config

s3 = boto3.client(
    "s3",
    endpoint_url="https://s3.hippius.com",
    aws_access_key_id="hip_your_key",
    aws_secret_access_key="your_secret",
    region_name="decentralized",
    config=Config(
        signature_version="s3v4",
        s3={"addressing_style": "path"}
    ),
)

# Upload
s3.upload_file("local_file.txt", "my-bucket", "remote_file.txt")

# Download
s3.download_file("my-bucket", "remote_file.txt", "local_copy.txt")

Python (minio)

from minio import Minio

client = Minio(
    "s3.hippius.com",
    access_key="hip_your_key",
    secret_key="your_secret",
    secure=True,
    region="decentralized",
)

JavaScript / Node.js (minio)

const Minio = require("minio");

const client = new Minio.Client({
  endPoint: "s3.hippius.com",
  port: 443,
  useSSL: true,
  accessKey: "hip_your_key",
  secretKey: "your_secret",
  region: "decentralized",
});

What's supported

Hippius supports the full set of S3 operations you actually use:

Not supported (yet): bucket versioning, cross-region replication, S3 Select.

Rate limits and pricing

The rate limit is 100 requests per minute per account. See hippius.com/pricing for current pricing. Payment is accepted via credit card (Stripe) or TAO.

What's happening under the hood

When you upload a file to Hippius S3, it doesn't go to a single server. Under the hood, Arion, our custom distributed storage engine, splits your file into 30 shards (10 data + 20 parity) and distributes them across independent miners on the Bittensor network.

To retrieve your file, any 10 of those 30 shards are enough. That means the network can lose 66% of its nodes and your data remains 100% intact.

From your application's perspective, it's just S3.

Get started

1. Create account: console.hippius.com
2. Read the docs: docs.hippius.com
3. Check pricing: hippius.com/pricing

Questions? Join the community at community.hippius.com or reach us on Discord.