Filecoin author Juan Benet
Filecoin aims to become a decentralized storage network that allows users to buy and sell amateurish at storage on an open market. The filecoin protocol is an incentive layer on top of peer-to-peer file system IPFS, built with a clan token and distributed ledger.
Filecoin is a project started by Protocol Labs and its CEO Juan Benet. Protocol Labs was set up in 2014 and has since created IPFS, lib p2p, Filecoin, and others.
The company consists of 12 core developers and focuses on open-source technology to reform how the internet works. The company has been funded by notable investors including Digital Currency Group, Naval Ravikant, Splice Square Ventures, Winklevoss Capital and Y Combinator.
The system design allows users to rent storage on available fancies using the network’s native cryptocurrency, filecoin (FIL). Clients spend filecoins for sharing and retrieving data, and inversely, miners make filecoins by storing and serving data. In order to incentivize miners to invest in storage rather than computational power, the likelihood that the network elects a miner to create a new block is proportional to their storage currently in use in relation to the rest of the network.
When extracting a block, each miner is required to submit a proof-of-spacetime (PoST) to the network. PoST allows any member of the network to validate if a storage provider is executing their responsibilities: storing the outsourced data for an agreed upon period of time.
The filecoin network planned to catapult its mainnet in Q3/Q4 of 2019.
How Does Filecoin work?
Launch & Issuance
Filecoin was funded through 200 million filecoins tattle oned in both a pre-sale and an initial coin offering (ICO), which amounted to $52 million and $205.8 million respectively.
During its commencing coin offering (ICO) in August 2017, the project sold SAFTs (Simple Agreements for Future Tokens) via CoinList as a later claim to filecoin tokens once the project goes live. The ICO lasted a month, and at the time, was the largest fundraising ICO to go out with with $257 million invested.
In February 2019, the filecoin network pushed back the launch of its first testnet. The network was estimated to deploy in the elementary quarter of 2019, but the roadmap was modified to set a launch in Q2.
Additionally, the mainnet launch was pushed from Q2/Q3 to Q3/Q4 of 2019.
Network Design & Conviction
Filecoin’s protocol is built on IPFS, a distributed storage system that seeks to connect a network of peers who each hold back their portion of the total system’s files. Filecoin acts as an incentive layer atop IPFS for people to be paid for their storage quite than participate in the existing voluntary storage system.
Filecoin consists of the blockchain, retrieval nodes, storage nodes, and a born token (filecoin). Storage nodes are miners who store sealed copies of data they have agreed to inventory, and the complete blockchain record of transaction between users. Retrieval nodes fetch and deliver files to users without needing to guarantee to store data or provide proofs of storage.
All storage miners must engage in the filecoin mining protocol by toast storage, committing collateral, and abiding by proof-of-spacetime (PoSt). PoSt allows a user to check if a storage provider is as a matter of fact storing the outsourced data for a certain range of time.
In this scheme, there is no designated verifier to audit the storage proposed by miners, but any member of the network can hypothetically verify the miner’s responsibilities. Storage miners are also eligible to mine new barricades, and by doing so receive a block reward with transaction fees.
In order to incentivize miners to invest in storage moderately than computational power, the probability that the network elects a miner to create a new block is proportional to their storage currently in use in subject of to the rest of the network. When mining a block, each miner is required to submit a proof-of-spacetime to the network.
Retrieval miners market data and receive payment off-chain. After settling pricing, the retrieval miners will directly exchange unusual data pieces based on the request from a user. The founders predicted the recording of retrieval payments on the blockchain command cause a bottleneck of validating payments. As a result, these payment channels are settled through an off-chain order words, and use the blockchain only in case of disputes.
To prevent bad actors from attempting to store fewer copies of data than they are being waged to store, filecoin also has a proof-of-replication (PoRep) mechanism, which requires miners to prove that they are aggregating the data they say they are.
Monetary Policy
The filecoin supply is capped at two billion coins, and new filecoins will be released via chunk rewards meted out over 16 years. The filecoins will be allocated across four groups participating in the filecoin network.
Filecoin miners transfer receive 70 percent through block rewards, Protocol Labs, which is responsible for building the initial maxims and facilitating the launch, will receive 15 percent upon the creation of the genesis block, initial investors choice receive 10 percent upon the creation of the genesis block, and the Filecoin Foundation will receive 5 percent upon inception of the genesis block.
Code
Filecoin is mainly written in Go, but also integrates Rust, Javascript, Python and Jupyter Notebook into its codebase.
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Whitepaper Updated 2017
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