Editor's Note: This article comes fromDeep tide TechFlow (ID: Tech-Flow)Editor's Note: This article comes from

Deep tide TechFlow (ID: Tech-Flow)

Deep tide TechFlow (ID: Tech-Flow)

, Author: Ari, reproduced by Odaily with authorization.

Finally, another project called Blockchain 3.0 appeared.

The last one called blockchain 3.0 was EOS. In 2018, EOS was a well-deserved star project. Its secondary market value once rushed to 5 billion US dollars, ranking fourth in the market value of cryptocurrencies.

Today, EOS is falling behind, and IPFS is yet to be tested.

"IPFS will be launched on the mainnet this year, and the 100 times currency depends on FIL!" Bao Erye peddled his "faith" on Weibo again.

Capital, mining machine manufacturers, investors... have not yet launched, but a complete and tight industrial chain has emerged as the times require, blowing up the market value of 30 billion U.S. dollars.

Behind the $30 billion market value, who is hyping Filecoin? Who is organizing Filecoin? And who is eager for Filecoin?

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Bounced many times

The Chinese name of IPFS is the Interplanetary File System, which was initiated by American Juan Benet in May 2014 to subvert the HTTP protocol.

From the application level, its core focuses on cloud storage services, which have been launched as early as May 2015.

Filecoin is the incentive layer of the interstellar file system IPFS, which has high hopes and expectations from the market. Before the main network is launched, it has been hyped by gimmicks such as "pre-sale", "pre-mining", and "double-mining".

In September 2017, Filecoin launched a public offering at a price of US$5, and raised US$257 million in just 30 minutes. It was the blockchain project with the highest fundraising amount at that time. Investors included Y Combinator, Sequoia Capital and many other star capitals .

Finally, after its test network and main network encountered successive bounces, IPFS finally announced on May 19 the launch time of the Filecoin main network: July 20 to August 20.

In order to meet the upcoming mainnet launch, various Filecoin mining machine manufacturers/pools, and capital are gearing up and starting practice competitions.

The investment direction of Filecoin is mainly in the two directions of buying the token FIL and mining. In the early days, FIL was mainly generated by mining.

Unlike Bitcoin PoW (Proof of Work) mining, Filecoin is Proof of Effective Storage. Therefore, the Filecoin mining machine does not mean that the larger the hard disk, the greater the computing power, but the more data stored, the greater the computing power.

FIlecoin has been blown higher and higher, all for the so-called "top mine" or "top mine".

"Anyone who has ever dug up bitcoins knows the head mine bonus." Hu Yue introduced that early bitcoin miners used computers to dig out thousands of bitcoins, which are now worth nearly 100 million yuan.

"This is the next investment opportunity at the Ethereum level." Big names in the currency circle Bao Erye and Shenyu said one after another.

And can Filecoin create this miracle?

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crazy miner

"We now sell two products, one is 10T computing power with a price of 19,800 yuan, and the right to use it for two years, and the other is a 22T complete machine with a freehold price of 43,800." In early June this year, a leading Filecoin mining machine manufacturer Hu The key told the author.

"We can accept orders of 200 million yuan." Hu Yue said that the price of the 192T mining machine that will be launched soon will be more than 250,000 yuan.

Half a month later, the price of the 192T mining machine that Hu Yue mentioned has reached 382,080 yuan, which has increased by 52.8% before delivery.

The product Hu Yue mentioned is the Filecoin mining machine, known as the wealth-creating machine of the blockchain in 2020.

"Filecoin sold 11 billion US dollars in mining machines alone." Bao Erye said this appalling figure, but no one asked for confirmation.

According to the data of BlockVC, there are at least 200 to 300 domestic Filecoin mining machine sellers, and the sales of several leading manufacturers even exceeded 1 billion.

"At the beginning, the cost of a mining machine was several thousand yuan, and later it was 10,000 to 20,000 yuan. Now the cost of a mining machine is about 100,000 yuan."

There is no difficulty in supplying the Filecoin mining machine. It is composed of CPU, motherboard, memory, hard disk, graphics card and other parts. All accessories can be purchased in the market.

The concept of Filecoin is in full swing, and the prices of related accessories have also risen accordingly.

"The price of the motherboard has increased by 2-2.6 times. The graphics card has increased by 32%; the memory has increased by 56%; the CPU has increased by 20-30%." Hu Yue revealed that since this year, the epidemic has caused global hardware shortages, and hardware manufacturers have set prices on the ground. "The hardware ordered now will not be delivered until September."

This forced Filecoin mining machine manufacturers to raise prices. One mining machine manufacturer raised the price twice in a month, and 1 T rose to 3,580 yuan.

On the other hand, Li Wenxing, an IPFS miner, told Shenchao TechFlow that it will take years and months to get back the cost of a 100,000 machine.

According to the prediction of miners mining on the testnet, Filecoin mining machines produce about 0.3 FIL per T of computing power per day. Based on the average price of FIL of 112 yuan on July 3, the daily income per T of computing power is about 33.6 yuan. The 10T machine that Hu Yue has the right to use for two years can pay back the cost in about two months.

Payback in two months. Compared with most Bitcoin mining machines and graphics card mining machines, IPFS mining machines are full of fatal temptation.

But in fact, there are three uncertainties.

First, after the Filecoin mainnet is launched, the computing power of the entire network will definitely soar, and the mining efficiency will decrease. It is reported that some leading mining machine manufacturers and mining pools did not participate in this test.

The second is mine configuration. If you build your own mine, you need to pay for construction, operation and maintenance, electricity, etc. The construction cost of a 10,000 kWh mine is about 3 million yuan. 30% service fee will be charged by the other party.

The third is the uncertainty of the currency price. The current futures price is full of expectations, and how the price will go after the opening is also confusing.

Li Wenxing's prediction is that "retail investors currently participating in Filecoin mining will definitely lose money." In addition, the price of a mining machine that can easily cost 100,000 yuan can also persuade a wave of people to quit.

"These large mining machine manufacturers and mining pools have paid a lot of research and development costs and technical service fees. In order to pay back the cost in advance, they have adopted the popular cloud computing power model." Li Wenxing said that cloud computing power is to transfer risks from mining machine manufacturers to investors.

Filecoin mining equipment has gone through several iterations.

At the end of last year, Filecoin officially announced that mining requires a GPU, and the hardware standard has been raised all the way to 128 GiB memory, multi-core CPU and a 2080Ti graphics card from NVIDIA. The mining machine had to iterate again.

Li Wenxing revealed that Xi'an Lingdong spent a lot of money to develop a blade hard disk before, but because of the official parameter modification, it had to give up. This results in a lot of waste.

"All the waste must be allocated to the investors of Filecoin mining machines." Li Wenxing said, "These mining machine manufacturers and the capital behind them are all waiting to go online to recover the cost."

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Grab the Head Mine

Looking around, the FIL currency has not yet been issued. Except for the mining machine first, cloud computing power and futures currency follow closely, and a tens of billions of industrial chain has been formed.

Golden Hashrate Cloud, Mars Cloud Mine, Bee Exchange, Hufu, BKEX, HomiEx, HyperPay, Cloud Management Hashrate... IPFS cloud computing power sales platforms have sprung up like mushrooms after rain.

Li Wenxing revealed that some projects in Shenzhen that were originally MLM projects have transformed into Filecoin cloud computing platforms.

Their slogan is unified: Grab the first mine!

The so-called cloud computing power means that the mine packs and sells machine computing power, labor costs, electricity costs, etc. to users, and settles the mined coins to users.

Compared with physical mining machines, the IPFS cloud computing power model does not require you to buy a whole mining machine, but sells it according to the size of the computing power capacity, so the investment threshold is lower.

Different from ASIC mining, the Matthew effect of Filecoin mining is obvious. The testnet data shows that the coin production efficiency of the top 5 mining pools is more than 4 times that of the 6-10 mining pools.

Under the rules of Filecoin, the top mining pools control the absolute initiative, and small and medium-sized retail investors must rely on them. The most important way to invest is to buy their cloud computing power.

For the Filecoin cloud computing platform, scale is efficiency.

Industry insiders told Shenchao TechFlow that the investment method of cloud computing power is simple, but there are many pitfalls.

Li Wenxing said that if these platforms cannot hand over the equipment and coins after they go online, criminal cases may be triggered.

Although cloud computing power is convenient and convenient, it contains a high premium. Jiang Zhuoer, the founder of the Litecoin mining pool, once said, "Cloud computing power is basically 30% to 80% more expensive than the price of mining machines."

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A cloud computing power product on the market with few sales

Secondly, whether the purchase of computing power can be paid back depends on two points, whether the currency can be received all the time; whether the price of FIL can continue to rise after it goes online. If FIL does not perform well on the line, then the payback may be far away.

This is essentially a gamble, betting that FIL will become the next hundred times currency, the next BTC.

But for those who sell cloud computing power, this is not a big problem. What they do is pay for it and deliver it.

"Some cloud computing power platforms have already recovered their costs before the Filecoin mainnet goes live." Li Wenxing said.

A cloud computing power salesperson told Shenchao TechFlow that he sold a share of cloud computing power with a commission rate of about 20%, which was directly paid to USDT.

In the Filcoin industry chain, apart from mining machine manufacturers and mining pools, another giant is the exchange. They not only sell cloud computing power, but also launch the Filecoin future currency to stimulate market sentiment in advance.

Officials clearly responded that it is fake, Filecoin cannot be bought and sold before the mainnet goes online, and investors are strongly advised to stay away from any exchanges or entities that claim to buy, sell or trade Filecoin or IPFS SAFTS, tokens or derivatives.

That is to say, the current internal market futures listed on the exchange are essentially an air or a promise, which needs to be purchased and redeemed after FIL is launched. The ultimate source is Coinlist.

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Flowering outside the wall and incense inside the wall

On the IPFS table, there are all kinds of big names in the domestic currency circle. They come and go with chips in hand.

Du Jun, the founder of Node Capital, who was once dubbed the "banker", revealed in the WeChat group: "We have invested nearly 5 million US dollars in IPFS, and now the team is tense every day."

And Guo Hongcai, the master of the ICO white paper and the platform scene, said: FIL is the basis for the 100 times currency.

He even made a judgment: If Filecoin tokens skyrocket and drive up the prices of ETH and BTC, then it will show a stronger upward trend.

Different from Bao Erye who peddled his reputation to call orders and pull orders, Wang Feng, the founder of Mars Finance, participated in IPFS with practical actions.

In addition to investing in Interstellar Bit Mining Machine Company, Wang Feng's Consensus Lab also launched Filecoin computing power.

In addition, Fenbushi Capital is also an early investor in Filecoin, and also invested in IPFS mining pool 1475.

Capital, especially capital in the currency circle, the logic of investing in a project is often growth. As for the 100-fold increase in what Bao Erye said, who will pay for it?

The hustle and bustle of IPFS belongs to China, while overseas is deserted.

Just looking at the Twitter of Filecoin founder Juan Benet, there are only 26,000 followers. In contrast, the Twitter of TRON founder Justin Sun has 2 million followers, and the founder of Binance Zhao Changpeng has 570,000 followers.

Google Trends shows that in the past three months worldwide, the keyword searches for "IPFS" and "Filecoin" have not increased much, which is almost negligible compared with the popularity of mainstream cryptocurrencies such as BTC and ETH.

Divided by keyword search popularity area, China has become the largest search source for IPFS keywords.

This can't help but remind people of another overseas project that has become popular in China - EOS.

Flowers bloom outside the wall and fragrance inside the wall, Sino Global Capital CEO Matthew Graham analyzed the possible reasons to Deep Tide TechFlow:

Protocol Labs cares about the Chinese market; the power center of the mining world is in China, and abroad, miners are divided into different scattered communities, which lack the scale of the Chinese miner community."Second, Filecoin investors are eager to replicate the miracle that ICO once did."Regarding the popularity of IPFS in China, Matthew reminded investors to be extra cautious.

"The best investments are often

Investment, Filecoin is already a project that has attracted much attention, and the expected value may have deviated greatly from reality. Given the popularity of the project, there will inevitably be scammers haunting and plundering wealth. "

"China's Internet security laws are stricter than most other countries and may regard an immutable, open file sharing agreement as a national security threat." Matthew revealed.

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"I only make money for the first three months"

"What is the future prospect of IPFS and Filecoin?"

On the lips of people who sell mining machines and cloud computing power, you will always hear "IPFS is the next generation of the Internet, Filcoin is the next Bitcoin, and the next 100 times currency".

Outside the interest chain, there are many people in the industry who are pouring cold water.

I am not particularly optimistic about the development of IPFS or storage blockchain projects. Decentralized storage is a false demand. Decentralized storage greatly increases costs and reduces efficiency, and storage is extremely sensitive to both cost and efficiency. The blockchain is essentially a database system with low capacity and efficiency and high cost. It is only suitable for storing some ledger data, and it is not suitable for putting everything on the chain.

Yang Haipo, the founder of ViaBTC and CoinEx, compared IPFS to EOS, thinking that EOS is a failure case, but he also said that CoinEX will still launch FIL in the future.

"EOS tried to build an enterprise-level public chain, but the result was filled with junk data. Fewer and fewer people run its nodes, and there are fewer and fewer services to provide EOS data and wallets, and it will eventually be overwhelmed."

Jiang Zhuoer, the founder of Leibit Mining Pool, gave his own more "simple and rough" judgment standard: "Try whether IPFS can store small movies, if you can't save them, don't care about them."

In the middle of 2019, Li Wenxing came into contact with Filecoin, "Initially called for everyone to mine, and household idle broadband can mine."

"But now due to several iterations, it has turned into cluster mining. Without professionals, ordinary people can't participate at all." Li Wenxing feels that Filecoin is not as good as the previous investment in Wankeyun. Resold and sold, and Filecoin can be invested in tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands at every turn."

Xu Yingkai, founder of BlockVC, also said: "It is rare for Wankeyun's economic model to be so self-consistent, and it is rare for Filecoin's economic model to be so different."

If "Whether IPFS can succeed" is still a debate of truth, then many IPFS concept peddlers have already jumped out of the standard of right and wrong and established another set of judgment logic.

"IPFS is awesome, but if I can't make money, what does it have to do with me? As long as I can make money, even if it turns out to be a false demand, I will be happy." Pan Feng is not a blockchain practitioner. I have no belief in Bitcoin and blockchain, and simply regard IPFS as a "money-making opportunity".

He is full of confidence in the price of FIL after its official launch, and believes that the economic model of FIL has its own "capital disk model", and the initial price increase is not a problem.

"Different from mining Bitcoin, which only needs a mining machine, IPFS has added the link of pledge. Subsequent miners need to pledge FIL for mining. The larger the storage capacity, the more they need to pay. If the rules are violated, the pledged coins may be all or Partially confiscated."

"When the market opened, the circulation market was small, and miners had the demand to pledge to buy coins, and the price would be pulled up. When the price was high, the demand for mining and buying coins would increase, until a bubble critical point."

In addition, Pan Feng also firmly believes that there is a mysterious force that will support the price of FIL currency - the IPFS mining machine scam.

"After 2017, at least tens of billions of IPFS mining machines have been sold in the market, most of which are fake. Those who sell mining machines either run away and get rights protection, or buy some coins to pay for the investment in buying mining machines Or, at least in the short term, they will come to take the deal.”

Based on this logic, Pan Feng resolutely all in IPFS, buying coins, selling cloud computing power, selling mining machines... Whenever there is room for profit, he wants to step in, "I only earn money for the first three months", Pan Feng It is not intended to fight for a long time in the field of IPFS.

This may also represent the mentality of most investors. "What is IPFS? What is the future of IPFS?" They don't care at all.