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current progress
In the past two months, the Filecoin project has made significant progress, the highlights are as follows:
1. Highlights of the testnet
Testnet Phase 2. According to the "plan 2" time suggested by the core implementation team and the community, we launched the second phase of the Filecoin testnet on May 14. Major milestones include two interoperable Filecoin implementations (go-filecoin and lotus), WinningPoSth and WindowPoSt (we use two forms of Filecoin space-time proofs in the protocol) and Drand (a distributed random beacon network) for consensus The external beacon source for . Testnet Phase 2 also includes major improvements to our participants and storage markets, as well as the refinement of our cryptoeconomic model. Please refer to our latest documentation on how to testnet.
The second stage of the Filecoin test network reached 9PB storage. The second phase of the test network reached 9PB of data in nearly a month, which is almost double the high water mark we set before. We reset the testnet last week to use the latest Lotus and proof structure optimizations. So far, we have seen more than 6PB of data landed with the network at a speed of 15GB/s, almost 1.2PB per day. Check out the latest stats on our dashboard.
Testnet rewards. Earlier this month, we announced the rules and hardware recommendations for testnet rewards. The 3-week cooperative competition aims to stress test the network, encourage friends from all over the world to participate, and provide miners with the opportunity to test on the testnet before the mainnet launch. Miners need to successfully complete real storage and retrieval transactions, and perform the entire life cycle of the sector - creating committed capacity sectors, upgrading and storing real data, and termination to be rewarded.
2. Key points of Filecoin implementation plan
Performance and reliability improvements. Since the start of Testnet Phase 2, our focus has been on enhancing and improving the efficiency of our core implementation subsystems. We fixed an issue related to encapsulation that appeared shortly after launching Testnet Phase 2. We also drastically reduce sync times by doing PoRep verification, allowing parallel execution. Now, if the sync is interrupted before reaching the target altitude, it will continue where it left off instead of starting from the beginning at the genesis block. Thanks to the community members who participated in the testnet for finding bugs and helping to fix them - special thanks to @hayeah for the sync improvements!
Hardware specifications and proof of replication at mainnet launch. Filecoin will use the SDR proof-of-replication algorithm for our testnet rewards and mainnet launch. Please note: Miners should be aware that Filecoin will periodically upgrade its proofs after mainnet launch. Although the Filecoin team does not make any specific recommendations on hardware specifications, we have shared some configurations that we used during various tests. But in fact, there are more and more efficient configuration solutions, so we strongly recommend miners to test and experiment to find the best combination.
Filecoin's encrypted economic model. We have made significant progress in defining and solidifying the Filecoin cryptoeconomic model to ensure that the network can meet the long-term needs of users and establish a solid foundation for Filecoin's mainnet launch. While we are still doing extensive modeling and testing to determine final parameters, this overview describes how the Filecoin cryptoeconomic model will create a public chain backed by an easy-to-use network, reliable cloud storage services, and a thriving distributed economy .
Offline data transfer. For petabyte-scale data transfers or larger, the most sensible solutions involve hard disk transfers. Filecoin's offline data transfer feature allows users with large datasets to complete data transfers offline (for example by shipping hard drives from users to storage miners) and perform on-chain storage and retrieval transactions as originally planned.
Proven validity and memory utilization improvements. We have made improvements to the way data is packed, resulting in significant improvements in memory usage and packing performance. Similarly, Neptune (our Rust implementation of the Poseidon hash function for Filecoin) now allows building merkle trees on GPUs. These performance improvements make Filecoin more efficient and accessible to more miners.
The second stage is the trusted configuration link. The trusted configuration of the second phase of the testnet has started in the first set of logic circuits, and more participants will join in the next few weeks. In preparation, we have significantly reduced the required memory for "big circuits", which allows small hardware to participate in the second phase of the testnet's trusted configuration.
3. Ecological Highlights
Filecoin Discover. The purpose of Filecoin Discover is to help Filecoin become a gathering place for important information datasets of human society and accessible to others. Datasets include: ENCODE, 1000 Genomes, Project Gutenberg, Berkeley's self-driving data, and more. Since May 7, Filecoin miners have registered to store tens of petabytes of important data.
Textile Powergate. Textile Powergate and Buckets are easy-to-use tools for building on Filecoin as the hackathon continues. Last week's tutorial covered how to use Powergate behind the scenes to create save sets and store data on the Filecoin network. If you want to build applications on Powergate, you can also refer to the JS user tutorial to learn. Textile Hub, which hosts IPFS, Filecoin and ThreadsDB nodes and makes it easy for developers to land nodes on Textile, in addition, it will also add support for Filecoin in the next few weeks.
Showcase of storage development projects. On June 23, members of the Filecoin community held the second "project presentation" dialogue for storage developers. Teams developing projects in the Filecoin ecosystem gathered together to demonstrate their projects and communicate with each other. The demo team included Fleek, Open Work Labs, and Textile. It's great to see these teams building tools that make Filecoin even easier to use!
Filecoin community online meetup. On Thursday, June 16th, the Filecoin team held its first online community meetup! Our community meetups are a great opportunity to meet the contributors who are building tools and creating projects in the Filecoin ecosystem. If you missed this one, you can find an informative recap of the meetup in the blog recap here. Hope to see you at the next online meetup on July 14th!
Miner community call. We held the second call for the Filecoin miner community at the end of May. This call covered our growing miner ecosystem, verified users, Filecoin Discover, and testnet rewards.
Hosting support. Token custodians Gemini, Coinbase, and Anchorage have all announced support for Filecoin token custody when the mainnet launches. Anchorage will also support unlocking Filecoin contracts at launch.
Filecoin's third batch of developer grants. We received a great response from community members to the third batch of RFPs including 44 proposals (an additional 48 proposals were received for the petabyte miner testing proposal alone). Recipients are being notified and a full list of recipients will be published soon. Proposals receiving funding for the third batch include a MetaMask SNAP plugin for Filecoin, user research for professional archivists at museums and related institutions, a data CID status viewer and storage oracle, Filecoin cloud storage for images, support for data forwarding usage Scenario proxy re-encryption service and multi-chain API linking other projects. The fourth batch of Filecoin developer grants will end on July 1st!
Filecoin Community Highlights Series. The Filecoin blog introduces some Filecoin applications and developers who build important tools and services on the Filecoin network. We hope these stories inspire others to join our mission of building world-class tools for the distributed web. Our latest highlights include Small Data Industries and Open Work Labs.
next step
next step
We are moving quickly towards the mainnet roadmap, where we will highlight upcoming milestones.
1. Go-Filecoin will be maintained by the community
As we explained previously, the use of multiple independent Filecoin protocol implementations is important to the long-term security and stability of the Filecoin network. All 4 Filecoin implementations have come a long way in the past few months:
In April, we released our first network with nodes interoperable on lotus and go-filecoin. Shortly thereafter, we launched Testnet Phase 2, which includes an interoperable implementation and an updated Proof of Spacetime.
Fuhon, a C++ version of Filecoin implemented by Soramitsu, has been working on adding full interoperability. The team is making good progress and joining the testnet in the next few weeks.
Forest, the Rust version implementation of Filecoin completed by ChainSafe, has recently updated proofs and market participants and actively carried out chain synchronization and data transmission - including the Rust version implementation of IPFS's data synchronization algorithm Bitswap.
Now that we are moving towards the mainnet launch, it is great that go-filecoin will be maintained by the community. Having different teams manage and improve the 4 implementations of Filecoin gives each team the focus and independence to meet the long-term decentralization and security needs of our growing Filecoin network.
This concludes our fourth Developer Grant RFP for teams interested in maintaining go-filecoin development. go-filecoin is almost fully functional. After the main network is launched, it will create many opportunities for the team maintaining this project in the future. For example, after being highly optimized, it will become an excellent product for miners, and go-filecoin will become the preferred implementation solution for most people in the Filecoin community.
In addition, accumulating deep expertise in understanding and building Filecoin nodes can unlock other businesses, such as node hosting services or building Layer 2 products and creating solutions for a better Filecoin ecosystem. Get in touch with us on GitHub if you're interested!
As the main network approaches, the functions of the four implementations of Filecoin are becoming more and more perfect. Here is a snapshot of progress on major parts of the Filecoin protocol:
2. Filecoin Ignite
To help the rapidly growing Filecoin ecosystem, we are pleased to release Filecoin Ignite to bring the community together for a series of hackathons and learning events. Currently we have 6 main events including: SpaceRace - a global competition for Filecoin miners and HackFS - a 30-day online hackathon in partnership with ETHGlobal starting on July 6th. We also participated in the Spark University Hackathon - an 8-week online Filecoin-based competition that brought together developers from universities around the world.
If you'd like to host an Ignite event, please get in touch! With up to 4 million FIL and $250,000 in rewards spread across campaigns, now is a great time to start developing on Filecoin! 🚀
3. Trusted configuration link
The trusted configuration link of the second stage of our testnet - where participants from all over the world contribute their resources to help generate the security parameters of the Filecoin network and public proofs that can be verified by anyone, are currently in the first set of logic started on the circuit. Over the next few weeks, more participants will be added, with community engagement starting on June 29th. If you would like to get involved please fill out this form and join the #fil-trustedsetup channel on Slack, where we will coordinate with participants. thank you for your support!
4. Testnet Incentive Program
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The last moment of mainnet launch
As Filecoin is approaching the launch of the mainnet, the entire project is also flourishing. Our roadmap is now at the end of the mainnet launch window. As before, we'll be updating the project's public roadmap Gantt with the latest estimates for upcoming milestones, including Filecoin Ignite, SpaceRace (our testnet competition), and Trusted Configuration sessions. Note that these dates are still optimistic estimates that the community is asking us to do our best.
We constantly remind ourselves that building a blockchain is like building a software rocket, it is fundamentally difficult, and we have to take extra care to ensure that what we publish is safe and secure. We will try our best to do our best. There are more and more opportunities to get involved in the ecosystem every day, feel free to help and get in touch with the community by joining the community on our forums or on Slack! We are very grateful for your continued company and attention.
