Filecoin is standing on the shoulders of giants - Summary of Filecoin launch week

At the opening ceremony, Juan, founder and CEO of Protocol Labs, asked everyone to take a step back and think about what our lives are like now.

He divided civilization into the pre-computing era and the post-computing era, and emphasized that our lives today are closely related to the Internet. He asked the audience to think that even the most ordinary actions we perform online today are stepping up to superpowers compared to the capabilities of the pre-computer era. We have more rights and interests in our daily lives and interpersonal relationships. Juan summed it all up in one sentence, saying: We don’t know what the world will look like in 80 years, and we carefully solve today’s Internet problems in order to be prepared for everything in the future.

“Filecoin’s mission is to create a distributed, efficient, and robust foundation for humanity’s information.”

Juan is inspiring the Filecoin community to take ownership of the network and take it to the next level.

3 Challenges:
1. Bringing very valuable data to the network
2. Build a new application using Filecoin technology
3. Make Filecoin yours

3 suggestions:
1. Build something people want
2. Think long term
3. Flexible

Juan and Dan Boneh, professor of applied cryptography at Stanford University, discussed the future of cryptography with blockchain technology and Filecoin. Juan asked: What is the most important technological innovation in cryptography in the next 15-20 years? Dan bypassed the details of cryptography and said that the most important role any technology can play is to make people's lives better. In addition, he emphasized the importance of private conversations.

Olaf Carlson wee, founder of Polychain Capital, delivered his speech "The Decentralized Cloud is Here". He explained the importance and innovation of the Filecoin network by comparing it to well-known blockchain networks such as Bitcoin. Most blockchain networks that require "work" to reach consensus are deliberately designed to be wasteful. For example, Bitcoin's hashpower can only be used to mine Bitcoin. There is no other way for a person, a company, or a government to take advantage of Bitcoin's "work". However, through FIL, as well as its benchmark architecture and storage market, Filecoin combines various incentives to ensure that the work done on the network can benefit from the overall interests of the decentralized storage economy. This "bundling of economic work functions with distributed file storage networks" is the foundation for Filecoin's future success.

Every day we hear from individual miners, small mining teams, and large mining companies. All agree on one idea: Filecoin mining works for their setup, no matter the scale. In the opening speech of today's event, Eric Tu of ChainSafe talked about the BigChungus project to prove that small-scale mining is feasible. Later, Filecoin miner Benjamin Hoesjbo showed off his standalone mining rig and explained how he connected it to a floor heating device for maximum efficiency.

Protocol Labs’ ZX talked about the concept of island economy and the role of on-chain nodes in it in his speech “The Storage Economy of Filecoin”.
The idea of ​​an island economy is that everyone has a role to play and the goal of any economy is to create the production cycle from raw materials to goods and services as efficiently as possible. The better the economic process, the demand for the island's currency will grow, and the island's economy will grow.
Especially with the rapid development of DeFi, the relevance and possibility of economic development should be established. DeFil is a project that aims to combine the worlds of DeFi and Filecoin on a decentralized platform to promote the adoption of both. The community discussed the idea that integrating DeFi and Filecoin will increase the overall scale of the Filecoin ecosystem and create broader economic opportunities, and ultimately the Filecoin economic concept discussed by ZX was also supported.
At the same time, there are also community members in the discussion who describe maintenance nodes as "general contractors" who accept orders from the network, and storage nodes as "subcontractors" who perform specific duties to complete the work. In general, Filecoin is a functional economy in which people can play their unique role, create value for the network, and expand the size of the "island", as well as storage nodes as "subcontractors" who perform specific duties to complete the work.

The launch of Filecoin has ignited some ideas among blockchain developers about the relationship between Web3 and Web2. CTO Loong Wang summed it up well, describing the early crypto meme of taking Web2 applications and completely replicating them on Web3 to create a parallel but identical Web3 world. This vision has not come to fruition because of two main issues: the massive cost of storage and transactions. Filecoin’s mainnet launch solves half of the problem — storage costs. Wang predicts that other layer 1 and layer 2 solutions that address transaction costs will solve the other half of the problem, and we will form a blockchain ecosystem that can truly replicate and supercharge the Web2 world. Filecoin founder Juan expressed a similar sentiment when discussing the relationship between Ethereum and Filecoin with Ethereum co-founder Lubin. He noted that Ethereum developers can now rely on long-term storage that is crypto-driven and encrypted without having to rely on a Web2-oriented model. The launch of Filecoin now enables them to enter into contracts on Ethereum to rent storage devices from Filecoin in a more automated way. Lubin doubled down on this sentiment, emphasizing that “the holy grail of the blockchain ecosystem is to build fully decentralized applications”; for example, those that do not rely on centralized, Web2 storage for data. As we think about how to get there — Web3 replicating the world of Web2 — we can take some advice from Textile CEO Andrew Hill, who praises the creativity and innovation of Web3 developers who are creating entirely new applications, but thinks we as an ecosystem may find incredible value in addressing the market and connecting with applications that already exist.

The launch of Filecoin has inspired blockchain developers to think about the connection between Web3.0 and Web2.0. During the third day of the Startup Week event, some technicians described the early days of the crypto era, about taking Web2.0 applications and completely replicating them on Web3.0 to create a parallel but identical Web3.0 world.
This vision has not yet been realized due to two major problems: the huge cost of storage and transactions. The launch of the Filecoin mainnet solves half of this problem, the storage cost. At the same time, technicians predict that other layer 1 and layer 2 solutions that solve transaction costs will solve the other half of the problem, and we will form a blockchain ecosystem that can truly replicate and supercharge the Web2.0 world.
In addition, Filecoin founder Juan Benet expressed a similar view when discussing the relationship between Ethereum and Filecoin with Ethereum co-founder Lubin. He pointed out that Ethereum developers can now rely on long-term storage with encryption functions without having to rely on a Web2.0-oriented model. The launch of Filecoin now enables them to write contracts on Ethereum, which enables them to rent this storage from Filecoin in a more automated way.
Filecoin will provide a network that allows people to access large data sets in their daily lives, especially in the DeFi ecosystem. Connecting FIL to the innovative world of DeFi is a big step for Filecoin. In the future, with the establishment of a decentralized protocol ecosystem, Filecoin will quickly occupy the high ground in the storage field!

Today, prominent developers from the Ethereum ecosystem attended the entire launch week event to discuss the future of Web3 with Filecoin leaders. The overall message was clear: the Ethereum community has been waiting for the features that Filecoin will bring to DAPPs and the entire ecosystem. Ethereum has attracted a huge ecosystem of developers, broadcasters, and entrepreneurs to build powerful applications, such as DeFi and emerging applications such as games and NFTs. Corbin Page of ConsenSys Codefi explained the utility that Filecoin will provide to Ethereum, noting that the state of Ethereum is "broken." And Filecoin will provide a network that can access large data sets when needed.

CTO Loong Wang also described the value of this relationship from the opposite perspective. In a few weeks, there are plans to wrap FIL ​​into an ERC-20, making it fully functional on Ethereum, especially in the DeFi ecosystem.

As described by Aave CEO Stani Kulechov, providing liquidity is the "bread and butter" of the protocol, and connecting FIL to the innovative world of DeFi is a huge step for Filecoin. In summarizing the Ethereum community's attitude towards the release of Filecoin, Joe Lubin emphasized that "the two legitimate heavyweight layer 1 protocols are Bitcoin and Ethereum, and I think Filecoin will soon become one of the heavyweight protocols as we build a decentralized protocol ecosystem."

Every day developers came together to discuss what tools they are building and using to fast-track development in the Filecoin ecosystem. Joelubin discussed MetaMask Snap, a recently released feature that provides an API to connect other protocols with MetaMask. The team plans to launch Filecoin Snap soon. Lubin also highlighted Codefi Activate’s Filecoin Storage web app and API, making price discovery for storage on the Filecoin network simple and transparent. Timmyers, senior engineer at Infura, presented Infura’s Filecoin System API to make it easy for developers to get onboard the network. Jordan Ellis took the audience on a tour of Web3 APIs. Peter Vangarderen of Artefacture Systems talked about Pygate. Overall, the message was clear: developers will find more and more tools and support to start their journey developing on Filecoin.

Video and visual media were a recurring topic on today’s agenda. Doug Petkanics, Founder and CEO of Livepeer, spoke about Livepeer’s goal to “build open video infrastructure”. Video makes up 60% of downstream Internet traffic, and a lot of it is streamed, not stored. We need more video to be recorded. Today’s infrastructure cannot keep up, either socially or financially. From a social perspective, today’s infrastructure will continue to be centralized on a few proprietary platforms that monopolize online video traffic. Economically, Web3-powered video has proven to be 10-100x cheaper than other centralized options, ensuring that access to video infrastructure will remain open in the future.

Today there was a clear underlying, consistent message from the rest of the week: the launch of Filecoin fills in a missing piece of the Web3 puzzle. Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, discussed with Juan the role of storage in maintaining critical Internet information.

The theme of the presentation was that the launch of Filecoin enables the next phase of the Internet Archive to protect all of humanity’s information. CRSReports founders Antoine McGrath and Bill Marczak emphasized that their mission to make every Congressional Research Service report available is entering the next phase with the development of Filecoin and IPFS, which will ensure that their public documents will exist forever on a decentralized network.

As Filecoin Launch Week draws to a close, many talks and panels looked toward the future.

Brewster Kahle warns that we are now at risk of witnessing the collapse of open protocols and the preference for centralized platforms.

The fireside chat ended with the announcement of the Filecoin Archive, an effort to begin moving humanity’s most important information onto a decentralized web to ensure it is preserved.

Jonathan Dotan highlighted the potential for future crises in his talk “From Storage to Justice”. He began with the Nuremberg trials, which used documents as evidence of crimes to develop a broad system of justice for war crimes during World War II and the Holocaust in particular. He compared those trials to the recent violence in Syria, where documents could not be used as evidence due to rampant misinformation around the world. He described our current situation as a “truth crisis” and compelled all of us to ensure that the emerging decentralized protocols remain strong and maintain integrity to restore and protect justice in the future.

Kristin Smith , executive director of the Blockchain Association, highlighted some of the top policy goals she believes should be addressed, including: how to classify different crypto assets, clarity on tax laws, and a clear legislative approach to the crypto market. Anchorage General Counsel Georgia Quinn stressed that unlike previous eras of the internet and technology development, the (U.S.) government is not openly and actively funding the development of decentralized networks. Quinn noted that when funding comes from institutions, it comes primarily from universities, research companies, and businesses, not from the government. This flow of funding has accelerated the development of blockchain, but it is possible that the government could provide additional support for the development of the technology. However, one thing remains clear when it comes to government involvement in blockchain technology. As Smith emphasized, it is critical that legislative measures that undermine the development of blockchain are not passed in the coming months or years.

When asked what role Filecoin should play in traditional finance, Anchorage General Council Georgia Quinn responded: the historical relationship between finance and blockchain technology. She believes that the problem faced by Filecoin and other blockchain platforms is that the terminology of this field that was formed in the early days is traditional finance. Using known but imprecise terms has created a wide range of preconceived notions of what blockchain technology is and what it can do for the financial industry. As a member of the newly announced Filecoin Foundation, Quinn will make it her mission to revisit many of the terminology-based misunderstandings of blockchain technology and financial services, striving to accurately describe the role of blockchain in the financial field.

Throughout the day we were highlighted for how large and collaborative our Web3 community is. While much of the week’s activity was about Filecoin’s tools, applications, and infrastructure, everything was about recognizing that we’re all in this together. Earlier in the day, Longhash Ventures CEO Emma Cui, Tachyon Accelerator Director Gabriel Andreson, and Gitcoin Co-Founder Scott Moore spoke about how they are integrating Filecoin projects and teams into the accelerator program. “Many of us in this community are building on a common idea that these protocols interoperate,” commented Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin. “Only by building on each other can we successfully realize the vision of a decentralized web. The community has brought us to this point, and we have more to go.”

As Juan noted in his closing keynote, Filecoin is “built on the shoulders of giants.”