Hippius Drive is officially live: a home for your everyday files, your documents, photos, and work files, encrypted and always yours. You use it the way you'd use Dropbox or Google Drive: folders, drag-and-drop, everything synced across your devices. It's built for people managing their own files, not developers building something on top of it, so there's nothing technical to figure out before you get started.
What's new
Open a folder, drop in a file, find it again later on a completely different device. Hippius Drive works the way you'd expect a modern cloud drive to work.
The difference is what's happening underneath. Every file is encrypted on your device before it ever reaches the network, and it's stored across Hippius's distributed infrastructure rather than a single company's data center. You get the convenience of a mainstream cloud drive, minus the trade-off of handing your files to a provider you have to trust blindly.
You can read the full technical walkthrough in our docs. This post is the quick version: what launched, and what it means for how you'll actually use it day to day.
Uploading and browsing, without the learning curve
In the web console, Drive looks and behaves like any file manager: folders, a search bar, sorting by name or date, filters for file type and size. Storage used and file count sit right at the top so you always know where you stand.
Uploading is as simple as it looks: click + New File, drag a file in, and it's encrypted and on its way. The console handles files up to 100 MB comfortably, drag-and-drop included.
For anything bigger, that's exactly what the desktop app is for. Point it at a folder on your machine (even a large one, 200 GB and up) and Hippius syncs it straight from your computer in the background, no separate upload step, no size cap.
Why encryption happens before your files leave your device
It's worth pausing on why the encryption step matters, because it's easy to skim past. With most mainstream cloud storage, your files are encrypted once they arrive at the provider's servers, which means the provider technically holds the keys and can, in principle, read what's inside. Hippius encrypts on your device first, before anything is transmitted, so only you can unlock your files, whichever surface you're using.
Practically, that means an unlock password (set up the first time you use the desktop app) is what decrypts your files each session, alongside a 12-word recovery phrase as backup. Neither can be recovered by Hippius if lost, which is the trade-off of true encryption: nobody, including us, holds a spare key.
Combine that with zero egress fees, a detail that's increasingly under scrutiny as more cloud users run into surprise charges for simply accessing their own data, and Drive ends up being one of the more straightforward ways to store files: encrypted by default, and never taxed for pulling your own data back out.
Sharing links work the same way. When you create a share link for a file, Hippius generates a fresh encrypted copy with a brand new key, right on your device, so even shared files stay outside our reach. You're in control of setting a password (or leaving it open) and how long the link is valid for. Recipients don't need a Hippius account, and you can revoke a share link at any time.
Available everywhere: console, desktop, and soon mobile
Wherever you access Drive, it's the same account and the same files. The web console is also home to the rest of the platform (S3 buckets, the Hub registry, billing, and more), and it just went through a refresh if it's been a while since you last logged in.
For most people, the desktop app is where Drive fits into your everyday routine: sync a folder once, and every file in it stays backed up and available everywhere else on your account. Add a file on your laptop before you leave the house, open it from the console when you get to the office, and soon, from your phone on the train, mobile is on the way.
Try it today
Hippius Drive is live now in the web console and the desktop app, with mobile on the way. Upload a file from the console, or point the desktop app at a folder, and check that it's already waiting for you on the other side.
About Hippius
Hippius is a distributed cloud platform built to give users a verifiable alternative to providers like AWS and Google Cloud. Files are encrypted and distributed across an independent network rather than held in a single provider's data center. Every storage claim, payment, and miner action is recorded on Hippius's own blockchain, so instead of asking users to trust the platform, Hippius lets them check it for themselves. On top of that foundation sits a full product suite: personal cloud storage, S3-compatible object storage with no egress fees, confidential computing on secure hardware, and a container and model registry for AI. Hippius runs as Subnet 75 on Bittensor and was built by The Nerve Lab.
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