"Where the 'wealth effect' gathers, it is often full of all kinds of lies and scams, and if you are not careful, you will step on the thunder." Sister Yang talked about the entanglement with the IPFS&Filecoin mining machine, every sentence was reasonable and heart-wrenching.
In June 2018, the venue of a hotel outside the North Fifth Ring Road was full of seats, and many people even stood in the aisle. Sister Yang, who is in her fifties, was introduced by a friend to attend a class. After two days, she was still skeptical. “However, having two buffets a day and being able to eat openly is a beautiful thing,” she said.
On the third day, at the instigation of her friends and the encouragement of her teacher, Ms. Yang bought 3 mining machines at a very low price of 2980 yuan/unit. Although she still doesn't understand what "mining" is, the dream of getting rich through mining has been deeply rooted in her heart.
However, the day failed. Not long after, the friends who introduced her to the class and the staff of the mining machine manufacturer "lost contact" one after another. Sister Yang had a premonition that the situation was not good, but there was nothing she could do. In this way, it took two years for the three mining machines to be placed under Sister Yang's bed.
"Last month, by chance, I learned that the mainnet of Filecoin is about to go live." Sister Yang thought that she had finally waited for the opportunity. However, the bad news came again. The mining machine she purchased did not meet the mining configuration requirements and eventually became useless.
secondary title
Storage demand boosts project explosion
"The development of human civilization today has mapped from the traditional physical world to a huge and unlimited digital world, that is, the digital age." Chen Hongdao, CEO of Wujiang Cloud Chain Technology, said that massive data can increasingly be used as an independent entity. exists and has its own value.
According to the main research results of the white paper "IDC: China will have the world's largest data circle in 2025", by 2025, the global data circle will increase from 33ZB in 2018 to 175ZB in 2025. By then, China will become the largest data circle in the world.
Chen Hongdao believes that the storage of digital information mainly includes centralized storage and distributed storage. Among them, the distributed storage method can be subdivided into "centralized distributed storage", "multi-centralized distributed storage" and "decentralized distributed storage" from the perspective of data control rights.
At present, the decentralized distributed storage solutions mainly include Storj, Sia, Arweave, IPFS&Filecoin, etc. The current hot spot is the IPFS&Filecoin project.
He said that the Inter-Planetary File System (Inter-Planetary File System, referred to as "IPFS") is a global, point-to-point distributed version file system, and its goal is to realize the self-interconnected Web3. The Internet's Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), connecting all computing devices with the same file system. Filecoin is a blockchain incentive layer based on IPFS, which mainly solves the problem of data storage.
As far as IPFS is concerned, Chen Hongdao believes that, first, IPFS realizes non-differentiated decentralized nodes, which guarantees the characteristics of network decentralization; second, the anonymity of nodes ensures the anti-censorship of its peer-to-peer network; URLs, making web pages safer, faster, more robust, and more durable. This, to a certain extent, builds a rudimentary network that realizes information freedom and interconnection.
"However, this is only the first step in the realization of Web 3.0." He said, because what data creators want to achieve on the Internet is not only free information exchange, but also digital power clarity and value realization.
"In view of this, the Value Internet Lab's approach is to create a digital ownership network 'EMSC', which is an 'infinite autonomous storage computing network'. It is based on decentralized distributed storage and coupled with the blockchain system. A network infrastructure that realizes data security, digital rights autonomy, and digital value concurrently, and then realizes the leap from storage freedom to digital rights autonomy," he said.
In contrast, since IPFS was officially launched in May 2015, due to the adoption of distributed decentralization, it means that the system has insufficient incentives, and there is no centralized organization to give incentives. Therefore, the IPFS team has developed an IPFS-based incentive mechanism - Filecoin, to promote the wider implementation of IPFS in the form of blockchain incentives.
It is understood that Filecoin adopts a network benchmark reward model and a penalty mechanism for staking FIL. At the same time, in order to improve efficiency, the Filecoin network also adopts a committed capacity mechanism and a verification database mechanism.
According to the data, Filecoin raised 205 million US dollars through "ICO" in September 2017. Prior to this, it also raised USD 52 million from well-known investment institutions such as Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, and Union Square Ventures through private equity.
secondary title
The market staged a "herd effect"
Due to information asymmetry, the "herd effect" in the currency circle is obvious, and many projects can often "respond to everything".
According to media reports, since the successful financing of Filecoin in 2017, there have been hundreds of various service providers under the banner of IPFS & Filecoin mining in the market. It can be said that fake products are everywhere and funds are rampant.
Chen Hongdao clearly remembers that when the news of Filecoin’s successful financing spread like wildfire, there was a lot of discussion in the domestic market. At the same time, scams under the banner of IPFS & Filecoin also came into being.
In view of this, in August 2018, the Filecoin project team reminded investors in an announcement that before the official mining rules are released, please do not blindly buy IPFS&Filecoin mining machines.
Thinking about it, what Sister Yang encountered was a carefully packaged mining machine scam. However, no matter what kind of Filecoin mining machine investors buy, they are caught in the dilemma of having no coins to mine. And when mining machine manufacturers "disappear", all they are left with is a pile of useless scrap iron.
Since the end of last year, the "trial operation" of the Filecoin test network, which spanned more than half a year, has always teased investors' fragile nerves from time to time. An industry insider who did not want to be named believed that due to the optimistic expectations of many industry insiders on Filecoin, investors flocked to it.
According to the official Filecoin blog, on December 12, 2019, the Filecoin testnet was officially launched. The purpose of this testnet is to evaluate Filecoin at a meaningful scale before launching the mainnet, and to address any issues that may arise.
Subsequently, the mining market began to become restless. According to media reports, in the first half of this year, domestic companies such as Golden Hashrate Cloud, Mars Cloud Mine, Hufu, Bee Exchange, HomiEx, BKEX, HyperPay, and Cloud Management Hashrate entered the game, turning into a Filecoin mining machine arms race.
On May 15th, the second phase of the Filecoin testnet was launched. It is worth noting that there are still 1 million FIL rewards on the testnet this time, which has caused the mining machine market to be extremely hot. Since then, reports of "Filecoin's mainnet launch is imminent, and the first mine bonus is about to start" have frequently appeared in the newspapers.
On June 10th, Filecoin announced that it will release the reward plan for the Filecoin testnet, inviting miners from all over the world to compete for global and regional rewards totaling 4 million Filecoin tokens. The testnet bounty program is said to be a collaborative competition designed to stress test the network, encourage global participation and help miners prepare to run the world's largest distributed storage network.
Under the hype of the Filecoin test network, the market heat continues to rise. The WeChat search index shows that since June 18, the search index of IPFS has surpassed that of BTC, and it is still at a high level.
At the same time, the Filecoin token FIL has also attracted the attention of the secondary market, and dozens of exchanges such as Gate.io and BiKi have launched FIL futures. According to non-small data, as of 6:00 on August 17, FIL has increased by 504% this year.
secondary title
The industry's "high fever" needs to cool down
"Although people are full of infinite fantasies about IPFS & Filecoin. However, it is difficult to live up to the reputation." An analyst who did not want to be named believes that in the frantic pursuit, the voices of a few people will always be drowned out, but it should be aroused. People's alertness.
"It's finally going online." Fan Yiwei, a veteran player, can't remember how many times he has sent such a message. He told the Nuclear Finance APP that he had eaten "meat" in FIL futures this year, and his patience was almost worn out while waiting for the Filecoin mainnet to go online.
According to the Nuclear Finance APP, in the original plan, the Filecoin mainnet will be launched in June 2018. Since then, the launch time of the Filecoin mainnet has been delayed many times.
On July 14, Filecoin updated the mainnet launch schedule again. Its official blog shows that the launch window of the Filecoin mainnet has been updated to "August 31st to September 21st".
"Filecoin has the meaning of 'blossom abroad and domestic fragrance'. It is wildly sought after domestically, but it has been in a tepid state abroad." Chen Hongdao told the truth.
According to 1475ipfs data, as of 7:00 on August 17, in the TOP list of Filecoin miners, China accounted for 5 of the top 10 miners. Deep Chain reported on July 6 that according to the data of the filcount.io platform, there are currently about 806 global nodes of Filecoin. Among them, according to the statistics of Filecoin.cn founder Xie Dapao, there are as many as 203 nodes from China, accounting for about a quarter.
Fan Yiwei pessimistically believes that IPFS & Filecoin may become the next EOS. Although the goal is ambitious, the prospect is not optimistic.
From the IPFS official website, there are nearly a hundred ecological applications based on the IPFS protocol, including text, audio, video, pictures, maps, data, etc., all of which can be stored or invoked using the IPFS network.
However, its performance has been criticized. "The performance of IPFS is too poor, not to mention small movies, and storing pictures is enough." Jiang Zhuoer, CEO of Leibit Mining Pool, said on his Weibo that if the performance of IPFS is too poor to store small movies, then it is worthless.
In addition, behind the rise of FIL, its rise is facing a test. On July 5th, Bao Erye kindly reminded on his Weibo that the speculation of FIL is too high and the risk is too great.
Recently, when talking about the investment value of IPFS, Zhong Gengfa, the founder and CEO of ChainUP, pointed out that the value should be viewed from two perspectives. From the perspective of investors, Filecoin is currently a hot project that can bring short-term value, but it needs to be invested cautiously .
On August 16, Tong Yang, CEO of IPFS100.com, said at an industry event that if the speakers on stage can’t even tell the difference between IPFS and Filecoin, then the current industry is very dangerous. She also pointed out that investors need to rationally distinguish between true and false Li Kui.
