Filecoin (FIL)

Last Updated 24/10/2021

What is Filecoin?

Founded in 2017, Filecoin (FIL) hosted an ICO token sale in which $205.8 million was raised (one of the largest token offerings of the time). The project's objectives years on remain consistent, which is to decentralise data sharing and storage to move users away from centralised organisations. The platform was created by Protocol Labs, a prominent organisation in peer-to-peer (P2P) technology. The team believe their data infrastructure could be implemented by major traditional providers such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS) as well as blockchain providers.

Filecoin (FIL) offers users the ability to sell their excess storage on an open platform. The system is designed for storing and sharing data files, with built-in economic incentives used to ensure that over a period of time, files are stored reliably. Instead of centralised servers, the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) uses hash-addressed content structures to store data, meaning that the data is decentralised. Anyone can join Filecoin, whether that be with the intention of storing files or storing other users’ files. Due to Filecoin’s decentralised nature, the price and availability of storage is not pre-determined by any centralised organisations.

Filecoin’s ultimate aim is to store data in a decentralised manner. Developers claim that this project is ‘designed to store humanity’s most important information’. Filecoin offers the ability for multiple data types to be stored, such as public datasets, videos, company files, security archives, and many more. This cryptocurrency uses both Proof-of-Replication (PoRep) and Proof-of-Spacetime (PoST) in order to secure their network. PoRep is an interactive proof system in which a miner provides a unique encoded version of the data being stored to ensure that it exists in physical storage. PoST is a consensus mechanism that shows the prover has spent a volume of time reserving an unchanged space for the users’ encoded data. These consensus mechanism help Filecoin (FIL) solve issues with large-scale storage networks made of independent parties, creating an environment where it is theoretically impossible to falsify data storage records to improve the miner rewards.

Filecoin’s Process

Chapter 1: The Global Filecoin Network

Currently, billions of users rely on centralised cloud services to store their data. These companies are granted the ability to dictate prices, jurisdictions, and who can use their services. Filecoin (FIL) is an entirely new data storage and economic model which connects the world together via blockchain technology.

Chapter 2: Storing Data with Filecoin

To store data via the Filecoin (FIL) Network, the user would view the available storage miners as well as their market prices. These miners would then compete to win the storage contract, with the client then selecting the winning miner.

Chapter 3: Proving Storage of Files

After this selection process, the client will then send the data, and the miner will store it. Proving that the miners are storing the client’s data properly is essential for the miners to receive rewards. Through the use of cryptographic proofs, the network verifies data and securely stores it. Once verified, miners earn the deal storage fee and are given the opportunity to win block mining rewards.

Chapter 4: Retrieving files from the network

Once a client wants a file retrieved, they would look for miners who may have it, the client will then decipher between available miners for who is the fastest, yet most affordable miner. Then, the client will pay the miner to retrieve the file. Filecoin also offers the ability to rehost data, the function of this is to account for more points of access when specific files become more popular and are being requested more often. This makes the data closer to users requesting it, and access is optimised as the data flows worldwide.

Team

Filecoin’s offering of participation to anyone worldwide as storage providers, has enabled them to achieve remarkable economies of scale. This token was built by Protocol Labs and conveniently provides users with the ability to sell their excess storage on a peer-to-peer, open storage network.

Protocol Labs – An open-source, fully distributed organisation with an objective to lead the charge in computing that can push humanity forward. With their ability to serve millions of people and thousands of organisations, Protocol Labs provides services to radically improve the internet and is currently focusing on decentralising storage with Filecoin (FIL). The organisation lead other innovative projects, including IPFS, libp2p, IPLD, Multiformats, and CoinList.

Juan Benet – Founder and CEO of protocol Labs. Benet is the creator of both the InterPlanetary File System and Filecoin (FIL). The IPFS Project’s objective is to re-decentralise the web and safeguard user data.

Friedel Ziegelmayer – Ziegelmayer is a research engineer as Protocol Labs, which acquires him with internal knowledge as to the relationship with Filecoin. His involvement with Filecoin includes making the network the largest zk-SNARK network deployed to date.

Matt Zumwalt – Zumwalt is a Program Manager at Protocol Labs whose current aim, through the usage of blockchain, aims to make the web decentralised. Some of his professional strengths include that of: software design, community organising, and information architecture which would be vital within a project such as Filecoin.

Jeremy Johnson – Johnson is a research engineer with expertise in distributed systems as well as cryptography. He highlights his attention into distributed system scalability and incentive mechanism design.

Roadmap

The year of 2020 saw the Filecoin (FIL) protocol mainnet launch on October 15th and has since, demonstrated continuous growth, interest and adoption.

2019

March – Devnets

June – Internal Testnet

September – Alphanet Launch

December – Public Testnet: Phase 1

2020

March – Interop Network

May – Public Testnet: Phase 2

August – Space Race Incentivised Testnet

October – Mainnet Launch

For further information on Filecoin’s Roadmap, please click here.

Where to Store Filecoin (FIL)

Trust Wallet is a mobile app (Android & IOS) that now offers the option to store Filecoin (FIL). Trust wallet is a trusted wallet provider with 1m+ active users. Trust Wallet is a mobile-app wallet and supports the Filecoin mainnet token FIL. This option is available on both Andoid and iOS and requires users to create and securely store their own recovery phrase. FIL can be stored on The Trust Wallet by using a simple 5 step process which is specified in our Wallet Guide.

Filecoin (FIL) can also be stored on the Ledger Hardware wallet devices through additional software portals. Filecoin is not directly accessible through the Ledger Live application, though can be interacted with via the Glif wallet. For advanced users, the option to manually manage your FIL funds is also avialable via the Lotus Wallet node.

Where to Buy and Sell Filecoin (FIL)

You can Buy and Sell Filecoin (FIL) here at BC Bitcoin. You can Buy Filecoin by heading over to the Buy Coins Page of our website. FIL is available on BC Bitcoin trading against major fiat currencies: GBP and EUR. Buying FIL has never been easier, simply place your order and provide your wallet address. Once your payment arrives, FIL will be sent directly to your wallet.

If you choose to Sell Filecoin (FIL), you can send us the coins and receive a payment to your bank account. Details and a live valuation can be found on the Sell Coins Page.

Filecoin (FIL) Resources

Website: https://filecoin.io/

Block Explorer: https://filfox.info/en?utm_source=cmc

Documents: https://docs.filecoin.io/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Filecoin

Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is intended for informational purposes only. It is the readers responsibility to complete their own research and due diligence.