Produced | CoinVoice
Produced | CoinVoice
Text | Looking West
At 6:10 on May 15th, the much-anticipated second phase of the Filecoin testnet was launched as scheduled. There are also 1 million FIL rewards on the testnet this time, and major media and mining machine manufacturers are eager to move in various channels for a while.
Looking back at the development history of the Filecoin project, Filecoin, an IPFS-based blockchain project, came out in 2017. "The extremely fast and huge financing of US$200 million in one hour" and "the support of many top investment celebrities" have also added a lot of popularity to the project. However, multiple mainnet delays also cast a shadow over the project.
The latest second-stage test network can be said to be a "finishing kick" before the main network goes live. In the latest AMA on May 19, the founder Juan Benet was also pleased to list the distribution of Filecoin's global miners at the end of the question and answer and said, "How great this looks."
After 5 years of ups and downs, Filecoin, the most anticipated blockchain project in 2020, will finally launch its mainnet. What variables will there be before the Filecoin mainnet goes live? Can the mainnet become the next outlet after the halving? How do ordinary users get on the bus? Mining or investing? Let's sort them out one by one.
The five-year long march, the last ten miles
First, let’s take a look at the latest mainnet roadmap. As shown in the figure, if the current progress is followed, the mainnet will be launched in July-August. The current progress is actively testing in the second phase of the testnet.
We must know that the second phase of the test network will actually be tested in February this year. However, due to the impact of the epidemic in China, Filecoin officially issued a fifth postponement notice for network security and readjusted the project progress. At that time, some Filecoin mining machine manufacturers joked: Filecoin mining machines have been sold for several rounds, and the mainnet launch is still far away.
Li Yandong, the founder of Interstellar, commented: The Filecoin team has a perfectionist plot. They not only pursue the perfection of the code, but also pursue the actual business use of this system when it is launched. From the current point of view, the basic elements of the launch are all available, but this perfectionism There may be a slight change in the launch time of the mainnet. In the face of the last round of testing, even if it changes, it will not change much. But for such a serious system that has been developed for 5 years, this is only a thousand miles. The last ten miles of the Long March.
As the real star project of the blockchain, the magical Filecoin has always been the focus of everyone's attention since its birth. The mission of Filecoin is to lay a distributed, efficient and powerful foundation for the information of human society. To achieve this goal a distributed storage network was created that allows anyone in the world to store or retrieve files.
In fact, the IPFS protocol has been developed. Although some projects or companies have used this protocol to store information, due to the lack of incentive mechanism, most of the storage nodes are individual enthusiasts, and their storage scale and stability are subject to many restrictions. Filecoin can be regarded as an incentive layer project in the IPFS protocol, and rewards miners who provide stable storage space through the token FIL, thereby solving the aforementioned application problems of IPFS.
However, the Filecoin reward mechanism is different from most blockchain projects. It is not based on data distribution such as computing power, token size, and voting ratio, but is determined based on the scale of storage and retrieval services provided by contributors. If it is simply understood, it is to provide idle hard disk space to get paid.
Since the end of 2017, Filecoin has formed many large-scale communities in China, revolving around the popularization of Filecoin and the sale of mining machines. Contributors can only participate in the storage work of the protocol by purchasing dedicated storage equipment, the so-called Filecoin mining machine.
It is amazing that although IPFS has not yet landed, there are many applications built on its basis; although the main network has not yet been launched, more than 10 exchanges, large and small, have launched FIL futures. Although the Filecoin token has not yet been produced, the off-site IPFS mining machines are selling very hotly, and the scammer gang has changed several times.
Do you want to get in the car?
Back in August 2017, Filecoin completed a fundraising of 257 million US dollars. It set a record for the financing of early global blockchain projects at that time, and attracted the attention of countless people. It also set off a wave of panic buying of IPFS mining machines in the market.
Even though Filecoin has the halo of the next 100 billion-level gold mine, but because the main network has not yet been launched, there are currently only two ways to invest in the Filecoin project: 1. Obtain FIL through mining. 2. Purchase FIL futures and obtain FIL through trading. As can be seen from the figure below, since the launch of FIL futures on December 4, 2017, it has soared as high as $28, and the lowest fell to $2.8 between January and February 2019, falling from the high point. 90%. Now in the process of slowly climbing. At the end of the chart above we see that as the price rose to $6.71 in recent days.
But the futures price and not the spot price. In the traditional market, when we buy futures, if the futures expire, both parties will be subject to legal sanctions if they fail to deliver; while the FIL futures currently traded on the exchange are purely delivered by the two parties based on the relationship of trust, so before the mainnet goes live, if It is still necessary to be cautious about getting on the car through FIL futures, and after the mainnet is launched, the competition to get on the car through mining has just begun.
Is the first mine fragrant?
The certificate of the Filecoin network is FIL, which is the certificate of the Filecoin network and is used to pay for storage, retrieval and transaction costs in the network. Customers pay FIL to find nodes to store their own data, and miners receive FIL rewards by hosting and storing customer data. The retrieval and matching of orders and the generation of data blocks will all involve FIL. Therefore, FIL is the only certificate for transaction circulation between users and customers in the Filecoin distributed storage network.
Investors who are optimistic about Filecoin have already begun to prepare for the "head mine" during the test network stage. The so-called "head mine" is actually a popular term, referring to the FIL coins mined when the Filecoin mainnet goes online or shortly after it goes online (such as half a year). If you have deployed IPFS mining machines in advance, you must have heard the temptation of some mining machine manufacturers: "Now that the Filecoin mainnet is not online, the earliest participants are like those who participated in Bitcoin mining in 2009 and 2010. You have to choose Missed out on the first mine bonus?
According to the official statement, the total issuance of FIL coins is constant, totaling 2 billion. Decrement every week, halve in 6 years. FIL is mainly distributed to 4 main participants. 70% will be rewarded to Filecoin miners; 15% will be given to Protocol Labs for research and development; 10% will be given to investors for support such as partnerships. 5% to the foundation for long-term network governance, community building, etc.
The craziest of these is that Filecoin miners account for 70% of FIL, that is to say, 1.4 billion are used to reward miners. Few blockchain networks give such a high percentage of miners. Obviously, Filecoin mining is undoubtedly more attractive than buying coins. Therefore, mining has become the first choice of investors. Is it really so important to grab the "first mine"? .
As we all know, although the amount of Filecoin is huge, 30% of the amount is locked for as long as 6 years, and 70% of it needs to be obtained after the mainnet goes online. There are relatively few Filecoins circulating in the market in a short period of time. Filecoin's block rewards are set on the basis of the half-life of elements, and the amount of coins released in each round of blocks is decreasing compared to the previous round, until the halving is completed in 6 years.
Therefore, the FIL coins released per unit time are the most in the initial stage after the mainnet goes live, and the FIL coins released in the later unit time are less. Therefore, the sooner you join the Filecoin network, the more FIL coins you can get, and the better the cost-benefit, so the "head mine" can be called a must for miners.
Muscular ranking?
In the second phase of the test, the big miners in the top are trying their best to show their muscles in the rankings, while the small miners are looking for various excuses to talk about it, and the mining machine manufacturers are also using the data of the test network to complete user education, but Is the storage capacity data visible to the naked eye really that important?
In this regard, Li Haotian, CEO of Diancun Technology, said: Strictly speaking, Filecoin is not mining. Unlike Bitcoin’s probability calculation, Filecoin’s consensus algorithm clearly defines the proportion of storage power in the entire network and the rewards it deserves. It is more like a a leasing behavior.
At present, all mining pools are striving for the "fastest block generation" and simulated ranking in the second phase of the Filecoin test. However, Li Haotian reminded all miners that the two items that determine the mining income are "single machine efficiency" and "number of machines". You should not only pay attention to the ranking list of storage power, it is difficult to reflect the proportion of the two. Before the mainnet goes online, there are still many doubts about the data of each mining machine.
The Laughter and Tears of the Great Miner
Some people in the mining circle once said: "As a non-POW public chain in the mining industry, Filecoin is expected to bring industrial changes and technological leaps for global data storage and security based on multiple consensuses such as PoSt consensus, PoRep consensus, and EC consensus. Development has become the most noteworthy focus of the mining circle in 2020.
Compared with the well-known Bitcoin mining machines, Filecoin mining machines do not have a computing power indicator to measure the performance of a stand-alone machine like Bitcoin mining machines. In Bitcoin mining, the mining income directly depends on the strength of the computing power. weak. But now the Filecoin main network has not yet launched, it can be said that the current Filecoin mining machine market is mixed
The biggest difference between Filecoin and other public chain systems is that it is a decentralized storage network, in which data security is the primary consideration. How the network encourages the protection of user data is mortgage. When a miner cannot prove that he continues to own the user data he promised to save, the mortgage will be confiscated.
At the same time, Filecoin mining is more complicated than the mining of almost all existing blockchain projects. It is not impossible for individuals to mine. As long as they have the ability to maintain it, it is completely feasible to have content resources. But the input cost is relatively high. The early Filecoin network also required more large and medium-sized miners to be able to enter the network and maintain nodes with large computing power. It is difficult to start and participate in the low allocation in the early stage.
Therefore, if FileCoin wants to obtain good returns, it not only needs a large storage space, but also mortgages the corresponding collateral; secondly, it needs a low price to obtain more storage opportunities; and finally, it needs more storage to grab the opportunity to generate blocks.
Therefore, in the mining of Filecoin, the level of mining income depends not only on the strength of the computing power, but also on the service quality of the miners to users. The more stable and faster the service provided by the miners, the higher the income of the miners. And the bigger the miners are, the more advantages they have in this regard. What is certain is that in the later stage of development, a pattern like the Bitcoin mining pool will definitely be formed: a few major miners monopolize the vast majority of the entire computing power.
On the other hand, Filecoin officially announced the "big miner test plan" that will start the second phase of the test and called on the majority of miners to actively participate. The proposal mentioned that miners with 5PB and higher computing power are welcome to join the test. In order to reward participating miners, Filecoin said that it will provide different forms of rewards to test participants.
However, the mainnet launch has repeatedly skipped tickets, and the mining configuration is constantly changing. However, for large miners, the cost of silence continues to increase. .
Little miner's "roller coaster"
In the early morning of May 8, 2020, when the second phase of the Filecoin test is imminent, the official launched the Filecoin Discover project, selling 8T hard drives for $265. As soon as this matter came out, it affected the hearts of many small miners, and the mining machine manufacturer even said that "after years of hard work by the Filecoin team, it has finally transformed into a seller..."
Faced with a hard drive of only 1,800 yuan, some small miners feel that the cost is very low, and they can buy and join the IPFS mining army, skipping expensive IPFS mining machine manufacturers. But in fact, the original intention of the official hard drive is to allow miners to store more useful data in the system. The data sets contained in the Filecoin Discover hard drive are available in five types: literature, artificial intelligence, weather, and history.
Therefore, the official store valuable and public data in the hard disk for sale, and 1800 is only the cost of 8T hard disk capacity and data integration and packaging, and these data are not pre-sealed, miners must seal the data to complete the storage transaction, and the sealed The data requires hardware, and the number of days of sealing depends on the miner's hardware configuration.
A small miner expressed his unwillingness to give up on this, and asked in the official community: "After purchasing a hard disk, connect it to an ordinary personal computer, configure the software, and then start mining FIL?" Official members of Filecoin answered It is not that mining requires a fairly specific type of machine. Therefore, it can be seen that it is impossible for small miners to dig out FIL with ordinary computers.
At the same time, selling hard drives will face many problems, such as later maintenance, customs clearance, tariffs, and sensitivity of stored data. Filecoin's official goodwill may not be able to do good things, but it will increase a lot of risks. In the AMA on May 19th, some community users mentioned: "Some of the orders purchased by Chinese miners have been returned, will they continue to sell hard drives in the future?
The official release on May 19 reassured the miners. The official said: Filecoin Discover is an early verification client, but it is by no means the only source, nor should it be the main source of miner verification data or hard drives. We also want to ensure that miners are not disadvantaged if they choose not to participate.
There is a famous saying in the circle: "One day in the currency circle, ten years in the world". In just a few years, the money-circling projects have changed wave after wave, and there are very few people who are really "delayed" like Filecoin. The mainnet launch speed is slow, but Filecoin is still the back wave of the "replacement http protocol", and there is no slight change. What do you think about Filecoin, please leave a message to exchange.
