Ni Yiye, founder of Westworld: Distributed storage needs healthy and stable development. Running too fast can easily lead to falls.

Ni Yiye said that whether it is the western part of China or the western part of the United States, the west reflects a pioneer spirit and strives for the best. In the Eight Diagrams of the Later Heaven in the Book of Changes, the Dui hexagram is located in the west, and the hexagram symbolizes "moistening all things."

“I think ‘Westworld’ is very consistent with the identity of Filecoin miners. We position ourselves as ‘the disseminator of decentralized storage’ and we want to nourish our investors like water.”

Therefore, Ni Yiye named this technology-based enterprise, which focuses on IPFS technology and distributed storage server software and hardware research and development, cluster cloud storage equipment sales, IDC data center hosting, cloud storage operation and maintenance and other services, "West World".

In April, Ni Yiye attended the 2021 Global Blockchain Computing Power Conference, so we had the opportunity to conduct an exclusive interview with him to talk about Filecoin in his eyes, as well as the current value of Filecoin that he recognizes and the opportunity for its explosion.

If you are interested in Filecoin, IPFS, and distributed storage, you must not miss it.

Without 3 to 5 years, the value of Filecoin may not be reflected

From February to March 2021, the price of Filecoin, the leading distributed storage project, started at $20 and reached a high of $238, an increase of nearly 1,900%. Then a round of support adjustment began, and the current price has been adjusted to $156, an adjustment of 34%.

As the chief helmsman of the IPFS mining company, Ni Yiye is far less concerned about the short-term market performance than secondary market investors regarding the sharp rise and fall of FIL prices.

"It's good to see a slight drop. I don't want people to think that Filecoin is a crazy thing. Now everyone hopes to enter the market today and achieve financial freedom tomorrow. The mentality of focusing on short-term gains is not particularly good. Although it increases the popularity, once the popularity is over, it is not conducive to the healthy development of the project. For example, the skyrocketing Dogecoin does not conform to the value logic I recognize at all. I hope the market will cool down and take a rational look at this long-term business. We have always believed that mining is the only option to survive the bull and bear markets, and can achieve a 100-fold increase without retracement. Filecoin miners are not short-termists who mine and sell."

Ni Yiye first came into contact with blockchain, mining, and digital assets in 2016, when he was still a Bitcoin miner. In 2017, Filecoin set a record for early blockchain project financing with $257 million in one hour, and Ni Yiye began to pay attention to Filecoin since then.

Five years have passed, and he still believes that Filecoin is a storage technology with far stronger storage properties than blockchain. However, it has completed the standardization of storage services through blockchain and provided a tool to balance the relationship between supply and demand.

Today, a large number of projects such as AR, BTT, STORJ, and CRU have emerged in the field of distributed storage. However, Ni Yiye believes that Filecoin is always the leader in this field. In terms of technology, consensus groups, and the amount of hardware funds invested, other projects cannot catch up. Currently, the hardware funds involved in Filecoin's mining industry have exceeded 4 billion US dollars, second only to Bitcoin and Ethereum, and it is the third largest blockchain project in the industry with real money support.

Although there are still many people questioning Filecoin, some of them doubt the price of FIL and the feasibility of all projects in the entire distributed storage track.

But Ni Yiye believes that the explosive growth of global data is obvious to all, and the security and privacy of data storage are definitely issues that the world needs to pay attention to. It is undeniable that the current IPFS has not yet fully realized its expected value, but it is after all the most likely in this track at present, and entrepreneurs have no reason not to pay attention to this technological innovation.

“It’s normal to have different opinions. There are still polarized opinions on Bitcoin. Everyone has their own research logic and cognitive level, and this is especially true for the evaluation of the ecosystem and value that FIL can build. But you have to know that with the amount of new pledged coins and effective computing power added every day, Filecoin’s output is already in short supply, and the market’s heat is still rising.”

Ni Yiye believes that for Filecoin, it will take 3 to 5 years, or even 5 to 10 years to explore or realize its value. He hopes that more people should focus on the actual application value behind Filecoin, which will determine whether Filecoin can survive for a long time.

Filecoin is still in the "infrastructure" construction stage, and Westworld is actively implementing the storage ecosystem

According to the data, the cost of 1PiB today is about 20 million. Based on this, the cost of building the 4.6EiB computing power of the Filecoin network is about 13.8 billion US dollars (including hardware). At the same time, the computing power of the entire network is still increasing rapidly at a rate of about 30PiB~40PiB per day. This scale and speed are rare in all previous businesses.

With such a huge investment, it is hard to understand why so many people are complaining that Filecoin is useless and that miners are just mining for the sake of mining.

“Can we see the ecosystem of IPFS and Filecoin being fully implemented now? We don’t dare to say that either,” Ni Yiye said. “The technology is here, but its infrastructure is not yet complete, which prevents it from being widely popularized.”

It is reported that Westworld had previously connected with a medical institution, and the other party wanted to store medical data in the Filecoin network, but the cooperation ultimately failed. It turned out that the hospital did not consider the cost issue very much, but simply because deploying data to a new network like Filecoin requires multiple approvals, this process made the other party back off.

"It is very cheap to store data in the Filecoin network. If we can obtain official valid computing power proof, we can do it for free and even provide incentives to encourage everyone to store more data in the Filecoin network." Ni Yiye said with emotion.

There is a team inside Westworld, and the original intention of this team is to help Filecoin complete the landing of ecological applications. "You can't just think about making money from mining without considering its future landing. Use the income from mining to nurture the development of the ecology. Contributing to the encryption business requires capital, but the development of the ecology will feed back to the mining industry, which is a virtuous circle. Although the ecological application team is not very mature yet, this is our contribution to the entire ecology. We are now advocating and uniting the industry's major miners to form an alliance and invest more resources to promote the development and landing of the ecology." Ni Yiye said.

The Filecoin track is still in a chaotic period, and the pattern will change greatly

Data shows that in March 2021, China's Bitcoin computing power accounted for less than 70% of the total network computing power for the first time, which means that Bitcoin computing power is migrating from China to overseas. Many people believe that this is the beginning of the "decline" of China's Bitcoin mining industry.

Compared with the embarrassing position of Bitcoin mining in China, the environment of distributed storage is actually quite good. In March 2021, the National Two Sessions opened, and the development of seven key digital economy industries such as cloud computing, big data, the Internet of Things, industrial Internet, blockchain, artificial intelligence, virtual reality and augmented reality became a hot topic. Among them, the construction of computing power infrastructure such as data centers has become a top priority.

In Ni Yiye's view, domestic policies on distributed storage are relatively relaxed and highly recognized, which is a good thing for the development of the industry. "We believe that the country will give more support to us practitioners, or companies that hope to serve users through technological innovation."

From the future of the industry to policies, and then to the influx of institutions and funds, distributed storage looks like a giant ship about to set sail. But in fact, there are many challenges.

For example, taking Filecoin as an example, FIL is not only an incentive for miners, but also a transaction medium for storage services. Ordinary users may be able to use FIL to pay for storage services, but what about enterprises? There are uncertain compliance risks here. In Ni Yiye's view, although there is no unified standard in the industry at present, practitioners can only continue to try and make mistakes. This is a process of continuous exploration, but today's problems may not be a problem in two months.

For example, in distributed storage, what if there are policy risks in the stored data? Ni Yiye said that they are closely following the policy trend, but there is no need to worry too much, and problems that can be solved by technology are not problems. "We hope that we will not simply focus on the storage link, but pay more attention to the circulation link, that is, the retrieval and use of stored data. This will allow the storage market to run first."

For example, the loss of computing power in Filecoin mining has recently become the focus of attention from all parties. In addition to the weak node operation and maintenance capabilities, the crux of the problem is that it is also possible to be attacked. "As the industry is booming, attacks are not the main problem, but if it enters the stage of competing for market share, it may become a problem. We want to establish an industry alliance, and we also hope that practitioners will work together to move the ecosystem in a good direction, rather than harming the development of the ecosystem. The future of this ecosystem is very big, and the volume that can be accommodated is not what we can foresee now."

As an entrepreneur who has been with Bitcoin since its early days, Ni Yiye has always hoped that the industry can develop healthily and steadily. "Sometimes running too fast can lead to falls," he said.

“This is a market worth at least 100 billion US dollars. Like Bitcoin, it will be able to enter the top 5 in the global corporate market value rankings, or even surpass them. There is absolutely no need to do something short-sighted in the early stages of the market. I hope everyone will treat it as a long-term thing and a long-term business and work together to build it well.”

"The Filecoin track is still in a chaotic period. Many things have just begun. With many competitors competing for supremacy, the industry landscape will change greatly. It is not certain who will win in the end. Westworld is a dark horse in the industry that is running fast. Westworld is based in Shenzhen. 40 years ago, no one could have imagined that it could grow to its current scale. Its success today is the result of everyone's joint efforts. This gives us a very clear and valuable reference direction. Reading thousands of books is not as good as traveling thousands of miles, traveling thousands of miles is not as good as meeting countless people, meeting countless people is not as good as being guided by a famous teacher, and being guided by a famous teacher is not as good as following the footsteps of Shenzhen. Only by working together and moving forward can we make this IPFS, Filecoin, and distributed storage business bigger and stronger."