Filecoin's "centralization" goes one step further? Analysis of Filecoin Plus's 10x computing power plan

Yesterday, Filecoin officials held an online discussion on ZOOM. The main topic was to discuss the previously hotly debated issues of "real data" and "ten times the effective computing power", called Filecoin Plus. Filecoin Plus is essentially an additional program that adds a verification procedure for valid data. Valid data that passes the notary's review will receive ten times the current computing power.

Now that we are talking about notaries, let’s talk about the identities involved in this proposal:

The root key holder is the signatory of the multi-signature on the chain, who has the power to grant and delete notaries and has the highest authority in the entire system. There are likely to be multiple people who hold the multi-signature address, but the specific names and how they are selected have not been announced. However, according to the Github description, the private key holder only speaks for the community (it is likely that someone from Protocol Labs holds the private key and serves as the root key holder).

Notary - is an important judge who certifies that the effective data computing power can be increased tenfold, and decides and allocates ten times the "data" to miners for storage. Notary will also be one of the identities that everyone must compete for in the future. The application to become a notary is divided into five levels (which will be discussed later). The Filecoin Foundation will be nominated as the first notary.

Certified client - is the provider of real data, so it is also called the client. It provides data to the notary, obtains Data Cap and distributes it to the miners.

(This seems quite centralized.)

The basic process and member relationships are shown above:

On the effective data provider side, the authentication client sends a request to store "real data". After receiving the storage request, the notary verifies the data and provides the allocation of DataCap. The authentication client arranges Data Cap to store the data, and the miner stores the "verified" transaction storage data. After completing the order, the miner will obtain the effective computing power of the original value of the file multiplied by 10 times.

In fact, it can be seen that the key to judging whether the data can increase the effective computing power tenfold lies in the notary's verification and review of the user.

So last night, at the meeting of Protocol Labs, the selection criteria for notaries were announced. There are 5 major categories and 11 sub-items. Notaries will be divided into 5 levels, one of which will be linked to the amount of pledged funds.

The final five levels are linked to the upper limit of "ten times the effective computing power" that can be allocated. The L1 level obtains the quota allocation right below 10T, L2 can allocate 10-100T, L3 is 100TB-1PB, L4 is 1-10PB, and L5 is 10PB.

The evaluation criteria include:

1. Long-term interest in the Filecoin network — the length of time participating in the Filecoin network and the amount of FIL assets involved in the Filecoin network

2. Industry Reputation — Reputation in the Filecoin Network Security in the Filecoin Network Reputation Outside the Filecoin Network

3. Diversity and decentralization — geographic diversity, data content diversity

4. Completeness of quota usage plan - the degree of due diligence of quota usage plan customer investigation and the degree of detail of quota allocation accounting

5. History - past achievements as a notary public

Obviously, the authorities want to use this method to encourage miners to store real data, provide a nutrient environment for applications based on the Filecoin network, and promote the IPFS network to move towards a truly usable commercial direction. This is also one of the important "viewpoints" that the Filecoin network wants to bring to the blockchain world. "Mining is not a meaningless competition, but should become an important part of the infrastructure for ecological construction, allowing miners to participate in ecological construction."

But it is not certain whether things will go in the direction of the official vision.

The most difficult problem is that the tenfold increase in effective computing power actually adds tenfold leverage to the pledge and output of the entire mining machine. The official confirmed this news in a previous slack reply. The computing power, pledge, mortgage and error penalties of real verified data will be ten times that of unverified data.

In such a huge reshuffle phase, whether it is due to the surge in the effective computing power of large mining machines or the surge in the effective computing power pledged leading to an increase in the price of coins, these two results are extremely unfriendly to the current small and medium-sized miners.

First, the surge in effective computing power will cause serious difficulties for small miners who do not have surplus funds to buy staked coins to increase their computing power. Before, everyone was growing slowly, and the gap may not be obvious. When ten times the effective computing power comes out, the computing power of large miners with staked coins will increase very quickly, and the single T income will be diluted. The income of small miners that do not increase computing power will become less and less.

In addition, ten times the effective computing power brings ten times the amount of pledged coins. At present, miners have entered a period of competing in the growth rate of computing power, which will inevitably lead to a further increase in the amount of pledged coins, making the already scarce pledged coins in the market even more scarce (the current FIL lending rate has reached 80%-100%). Small miners have no coins to run, and there is even the possibility of default.

Another more difficult thing is that when the mining machine stores invalid data (basically 01010010 and other garbage data), it does not involve regulatory issues at the data level. Once the so-called "real data" is stored, it will involve legal issues of data storage at the regulatory level, so this area needs to be further explored. However, the official said that FIP3 has emphasized that data compliance is a core principle. Of course, in the context of China, the criteria for compliance are very vague.

However, from another perspective, the official believes that it is a positive factor for new, debt-free small and medium-sized miners, because if they meet the notary's review, they can obtain more benefits by storing valid data.

Of course, judging from the current progress, Filecoin Plus is still in the demonstration stage, and it will take some time before it can be truly implemented. After a while, miners and ecosystem participants will be allowed to test it, and when the time is right, it is likely to smoothly transition to the official version like the main network. In short, Filecoin officials are using various policies to reduce speculative bubbles and encourage projects to move towards real storage applications.

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