
Text | Ratchet Pizza
Four years after the ICO, it was reported that Filecoin, a star project in the currency circle, may be about to go live on the mainnet.
In 2017, Filecoin completed a total of 257 million US dollars of ICO, setting a historical record in the currency circle. Since March, the price of the Filecoin token FIL has increased by 7 times, reaching $25. Based on this calculation, the market value of Filecoin is as high as 50 billion US dollars.
However, for this $50 billion project with a market value of $50 billion, the mainnet launch time has been pushed back and forth. It has thus been dubbed "$50 billion worth of air."
But a harvest game has already begun. Filecoin mining machines start at tens of thousands of yuan, and industry leaders have already made a lot of money.
Interestingly, although Filecoin is a foreign project, it is more popular in China. Behind its popularity, there are also domestic pushers to help.
secondary title
"Air of over $50 billion"
"After waiting for more than two years, Filecoin is finally going online." A few days ago, Jia Ming, a currency player, expressed emotion in Moments.
What is Filecoin, which has attracted much attention in the currency circle?
Things have to start with IPFS.
IPFS, the Chinese name is "Interplanetary File System", which is a decentralized network underlying protocol. Similar to Bitcoin, IPFS miners can freely join the network, contribute storage space to the IPFS network, and obtain various resources in the network.
As early as 2015, IPFS has been running online. But strictly speaking, IPFS does not use blockchain technology, nor does it issue coins, so it is not a blockchain project. But its concept of decentralization coincides with Bitcoin and blockchain.
Since then, IPFS has also launched the Filecoin plan to introduce an "incentive layer" for IPFS. Players participate in IPFS mining and contribute storage space, bandwidth and computing power to IPFS, and they can obtain FIL of Filecoin tokens.
Filecoin has been a star project in the currency circle since its exposure. In September 2017, Filecoin completed an ICO of 257 million US dollars, setting a record in the history of ICO. If Telegram, which was suspended by the US SEC, was excluded, Filecoin is still the world's largest ICO project.
However, in the past three years, the progress of Filecoin has not been smooth. Its mainnet launch plan has twists and turns, and tickets have been skipped all the way since 2018.
In June of this year, Filecoin developers announced that Filecoin will be launched on the mainnet in July this year. Hearing this news, the players went completely crazy.
"In the recent major blockchain activities, almost all IPFS & Filecoin special sessions have been set up, and the seats are basically full, and the venues are full." The miner Lao Ding told Yiben Blockchain.
Jia Ming told Yiben Blockchain that the major Filecoin mining machine manufacturers are gearing up. "A certain mining machine manufacturer placed a large order of 60 million a few days ago, and the boss directly rewarded the sale of a suite."
Exchanges such as BiKi and Gate have also launched FIL futures. Data from Gate Exchange shows that in March this year, the lowest price of FIL was $3.5. In July, FIL rose to a maximum of 25 US dollars, and the price increased by 7 times.
Based on the 2 billion circulation of Filecoin, the market value of Filecoin has reached 50 billion US dollars.
But in fact, before Filecoin was officially launched, the FIL traded on major exchanges was just a pile of air.
Despite the enthusiasm of the players, the date of the launch of the Filecoin mainnet is still being postponed.
On July 15, Filecoin officially announced that the launch of the Filecoin mainnet will be postponed again, and it is expected to be postponed to August 31-September 21.
secondary title
Mining machine hegemony
Although the launch time of the Filecoin mainnet has been pushed back and forth, the Filecoin mining machine market is booming.
"At present, there are nearly 50 known domestic IPFS mining machine manufacturers, among which Lingdong, Xianhe, Yuanli, and 1457 are relatively large." Wang Qiang, marketing director of a leading Filecoin mining machine manufacturer, told Yiben Blockchain.
The reason for the proliferation of Filecoin mining machine manufacturers is not complicated: Filecoin mining is still in its early stages, and integration and mergers have not yet started; in addition, compared with Bitcoin, the technical threshold for Filecoin mining is very low.
"There is almost no core technology in Filecoin mining machines, and the main components, such as CPU, motherboard, memory, hard disk, and graphics card, can be purchased directly in the market." Wang Qiang said, "The work done by mining machine manufacturers is more like supplying chain integration."
The profits of mining machine manufacturers also come from this. In 2019, the cost of assembling a mining machine with a hard disk capacity of 96TB is about 35,000 yuan. However, the pricing of mining machine manufacturers is around 80,000 yuan.
Huge profits and extremely low barriers to entry have attracted a large number of mining machine manufacturers.
"Even many manufacturers didn't even understand the most basic concepts of IPFS and Filecoin, so they started to find OEMs to sell mining machines." Wang Qiang told Yiben Blockchain.
image description
Filecoin mining machine advertisements released by mining machine manufacturers
Players are pursuing Filecoin mining machines for a simple reason: Filecoin has a very short book return period.
Taking the 1475 mining machine as an example, its official website data shows that the price of the 1475 Pro supercomputer version mining machine with a hard disk capacity of 144TB is , and the average cost per T is 1722 yuan.
"According to the current testnet data, Filecoin mining machines produce an average of 0.2 coins per T of memory per day." Wang Qiang said.
On July 15th, the currency price of FIL was 112 yuan. Based on this calculation, without considering the cost of electricity and operation and maintenance (the electricity cost of the Filecoin mining machine is not high), a mining machine with a price of 248,000 yuan only It takes 77 days to pay back, and its return on investment ratio far exceeds that of Bitcoin mining machines.
However, the future of Filecoin mining is highly variable.
In the first year of Filecoin's launch, the entire network produced an average of 410,000 FIL per day, and the daily output per T was about 0.2. However, once the mainnet is launched, the computing power will increase sharply, the amount of coins produced per T of memory will be reduced simultaneously, and the payback period of miners will also be greatly extended.
"Now Filecoin mining machine manufacturers are desperately selling mining machines." Miner Lao Ding said to a blockchain, "Because once the main network is launched, the bubble is likely to be blown, and high-priced mining machines will not be returned for several years. Book."
Different from Bitcoin mining, Filecoin mining does not require high electricity bills, but has certain requirements for network bandwidth and stability. Therefore, if the Filecoin mining machine wants to exert its full functions, it also needs to be equipped with a "mine" and large-scale cluster mining.
Therefore, after many small and medium-sized miners buy Filecoin mining machines, they will not ask the manufacturers to ship them, but will directly host them in the mines of the mining machine manufacturers. Some manufacturers have also launched Filecoin cloud computing power products by referring to the cloud computing power model in Bitcoin mining.
"The price of our IPFS mining machine is 53,800 yuan, 40T memory, and the right to use it for three years. In addition, the platform will charge 25% of FIL as a hosting fee." Wang Qiang told Yiben Blockchain.
This means that many players pay for mining machines, but what they buy is only the right to use the mining machines.
Compared with self-purchased mining machines, the investment method of cloud computing power is simple and direct, which is more suitable for novices. But at the same time, the cloud computing power market is also full of various scams.
Among them, some cloud computing power platforms do not have real mining machines and computing power at all. As early as 2018, various IPFS mining machines were flooding the currency circle, most of which were scams. (See:"Bottom IPFS Mining Machine Scam: The cost is only one-tenth of the selling price, and some people have been cheated for hundreds of thousands")
In February 2019, the Snail Interstellar IPFS mining machine ran away. It claims to be able to mine both Filecoin and CAI coins with one machine. However, CAI coins are nothing but air coins issued by Snail Interstellar itself.
According to the Zhengzhou police announcement, in just five months, the company sold more than 300,000 "snail interstellar servers" to thousands of people, with a total amount of 2 billion yuan involved.
"In 2018, Filecoin officials didn't even determine the mining rules, so the so-called IPFS mining machines are naturally a scam." Jia Ming said.
secondary title
Chinese capital enters the market
Behind the popularity of Filecoin, there are many strange things.
Most DeFi projects are located abroad, and the popularity is also concentrated in foreign markets. But Filecoin is completely different-its team is located abroad, but its enthusiasm is concentrated in the domestic market.
Searching for the word Filecoin on Baidu can retrieve 8.18 million search results. But on Google, the number is only 1.93 million. Baidu's figure is more than four times that of Google's.
In contrast, the number of search results for Bitcoin in Baidu is 67.2 million, which is only one-seventh of Google.
"The behind-the-scenes drivers of Filecoin are all Chinese capital." Jia Ming said, "The bubble of Filecoin mining machines was also created by them."
For example, Fenbushi Capital, a blockchain investment institution, and Erye Bao, a big V in the currency circle, all participated in the early investment of Filecoin. Since then, Filecoin mining machine manufacturers have also received capital injections from a large number of domestic currency circle investment institutions.
Obviously, they will spare no effort to promote Filecoin. "The IPFS mainnet will be launched this year, and the 100 times currency will depend on FIL!" "The next investment opportunity at the level of Ethereum!" Bao Erye and other big Vs have frequently waved the flag for Filecoin recently.
image description
Filecoin miner node distribution map
"Filecoin officials have repeatedly postponed the launch of the mainnet and raised the hardware threshold of mining machines. It is likely that because of the control of these capitals, they want to push up the price of mining machines and sell them for more money." Jia Ming said.
In the early years, the hardware specifications of IPFS mining machines were not high, and the industry generally believed that home PC-level mining machines would be sufficient to run Filecoin mining. But since then, Filecoin officials have gradually raised the hardware threshold for mining machines.
In November 2019, Filecoin officially announced that Filecoin mining machines need to be equipped with high-performance graphics cards, and the configuration must reach the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti level. The retail price of this type of graphics card mostly starts at 10,000 yuan.
"As a decentralized storage technology, IPFS should be a civilian game. But in the end, Filecoin mining has evolved into a mining machine arms race. The price of mining machines starts at 30,000 to 50,000 yuan, and can even reach 200,000 yuan. This has deviated from the original intention of IPFS." Jia Ming said with emotion.
Now, as the mainnet launch date approaches, there are more and more doubts about Filecoin.
"The FIL currently circulating on the exchange are all futures. Once the Filecoin mainnet goes live and the development is not as expected, it may trigger a stampede." Lao Ding said.
Even Bao Erye, a staunch advocate of Filecoin, also tweeted frankly on July 5: "FIL speculation is too high, and the risk is too great."
In addition, IPFS technology itself may also be a false demand. Some investors believe that there are already relatively mature commercial storage products on the market, such as domestic Baidu Netdisk and foreign Dropbox.
Jiang Zhuoer, CEO of Lebit Mining Pool, said on Weibo that he was once optimistic about IPFS, but now he has doubts about the future of IPFS. The ending of the fast broadcast can be used for IPFS reference.
"In fact, IPFS is likely to become a breeding ground for illegal content such as piracy and pornography. Running Filecoin mining machines may be regarded as spreading the above-mentioned illegal content. This is also a sharp sword hanging over Filecoin's head." Blockchain Researcher Sun Yuan said.
The launch time of the Filecoin mainnet has been pushed back and forth, but the price of mining machines has risen.
A decentralized content storage protocol is evolving into a financial game.
Is Filecoin a new generation of "rich-making machine" in the currency circle, or the biggest "bubble" in history?
The answer, I am afraid, will only be revealed after the tide recedes.
* Some interviewees in this article are pseudonyms.