The latest AMA: Filecoin officials are here to answer questions again

We announced on September 27, a few weeks before the mainnet launch, that mainnet would start as a continuation of testnet. “The Space Race testnet will continue to run and will gradually enter the mainnet through protocol upgrades and state transitions over the next 3 weeks,” the Filecoin project wrote in a blog post.

This is a deliberate decision designed to secure the Filecoin network by hosting the tremendous mining power and community built during the testnet, including balance and rewards earned throughout the space race. These tokens convert to mainboard tokens when the network is upgraded. These awards are intended to recognize the tremendous contributions of miners large and small to stress-testing and improving the network over the past few months.

FIP-4 was designed weeks before the mainnet launch, with careful consideration of cryptoeconomics and miner profitability. It enables immediate 25% storage mining rewards without vesting - a balance between short-term miner growth and long-term network adjustments.

All four Filecoin implementations approved the FIP last week and it has been included in Lotus v1.1, released today. V1.1 is a consensus-breaking upgrade scheduled to be triggered at block height 170,000 (around 6:40 a.m. Friday, Beijing time 22).

No, we don't.

There are multiple lending programs hosted by independent organizations - Huobi, CodeFi (coming soon), and many others. You can always contact these organizations.

PL continues to invest in the long-term success of the network and miners by working with partners (TBA) to provide small loans to miners seeking to grow their operations until the loan market can expand.

Block rewards are meant to reward reliable and useful storage. Collateral exists to provide storage and consistent security. Mining pools can accept penalties and stop mining at any time, but will only return the original stake once the industry's commitment is fulfilled.

No, this is not a bug. There are three main sources of circulating tokens: unlocked mining rewards, unlocked SAFT tokens, and tokens reserved for stable markets and lending (almost all of which are unused), as detailed below https://protocol.ai/blog/pl-participation-in-the-filecoin-economy/. Only a small amount of tokens are held by miners as working capital and converted to mainnet tokens along with the stake, which is necessary because miners need a certain amount of unlocked tokens to seal sectors and fix errors.

In addition to the FIP-004 proposal, are there any new policies that can alleviate the miners' mortgage problems?

Space Race 1 and 2 were designed to help miners on the network. Over 500 miners participated in the nearly 2-month network upgrade, initial commitments were rewarded, and new miners were able to build business expertise and help improve the network.

For those who choose not to participate in the space race and participate now, Codefi, Huobi and others are developing new lending applications that allow miners to get upfront collateral by sharing their future earnings. At the same time, PL will also provide small loans to miners through third-party providers to finance collateral. Lending is a great option for miners and token holders to increase their investment while benefiting the network - we hope to see more participation soon.

Is there a miners strike?

In reality, we haven't seen any large miners shut down their operations. So I wouldn't characterize this as a strike. The fact is that miners are growing slower than they were before launch. This is largely because the network is no longer subsidizing their staking and fee costs, fees now cost real money, and miners need to match growth rates with token flow. Miners are still actively proving their storage capacity - we're seeing 2 PiB added every 3-4 hours.

Although most miners are aligned with the project for the long term, there are still some miners who use this excuse to push things and try to get more benefits. Filecoin's priority is to correctly establish the mechanism and long-term ROI, rather than responding to short-term noise from speculators.

Where can I learn more about the Retrieval Marketplace?

There’s a lot of great work going on in the Filecoin retrieval market. Just today, David Anselmino, Elizabeth Binks, David Hyland-Wood, Robert Durst, Thomas Chardin, and Mike Golzer spoke about building Filecoin and what’s next during Launch Week.

Check out the recording for more information: https://youtu.be/oYu6cA5VTvQ?t=25282

Are smart contracts included in the development plan?

Yes, it’s definitely something we want, but we don’t have a very clear timeline for it yet — maybe in the first half of 2021. Since Filecoin is open source, the community can accelerate the development timeline for smart contracts and any other feature requests.

What are the certification requirements and information of the real data review agency? How to submit it?

Please visit the FIP3 address:

https://github.com/filecoin-project/FIPs/blob/master/FIPS/fip-0003.md for more information!

Are there any interesting lightweight client designs? A lot of apps are working hard on this, I would say most don't get it wrt incentives and security right.

We are now actively developing our own light client! You can track our progress here:

https://github.com/filecoin-project/lotus/issues/3532.

How does the cost of Filecoin storage compare to alternatives like AWS?

Check out Consensys Codefi’s Filecoin Storage (https://www.storage.cod

efi.network/) to see the average FIL price per GiB and a list of miners making transactions.

As of this writing, the average price is 0.000043 FIL (or $0.001328), while the average price for the AWS S3 Basic tier is $0.023/GB/month.

A few days before the mainnet was launched, someone bought a large number of test coins in the group. Did the official insiders know in advance that the test coins would be directly converted into mainnet coins and privately informed some big miners? If not, did the official insiders collude with the outsiders to harvest users?

On September 27, many weeks before the mainnet was launched, we announced to the public that the mainnet would be a continuation of the testnet. Filecoin said in a blog post: "The Space Race testnet will continue to run and will gradually enter the mainnet through protocol upgrades and state transitions over the next 3 weeks." The original post is at https://filecoin.io/zh-cn/blog/mainnet-ignition/

Everyone gets exactly the same information.

Big miners, the computing power is not increasing now, but the weight and block explosion are the same?

Many large miners are adding new sectors, and we are looking forward to seeing more new miners on the hashrate rankings. A small number of existing miners may choose not to add new storage, but that doesn’t matter - they will be eliminated by the network in a relatively short period of time. Filecoin’s crypto-economic mechanism rewards miners who are willing to add storage space to the network for a long time and are committed to storing real data.

When will the Filecoin team establish an effective data mechanism for NSE?

NSE is under active development and is currently undergoing external and internal security audits. Once these steps are completed, we can move on to the "trusted setup" and integration work for the various implementations. It is now scheduled to be integrated into Lotus in Q1 or Q2.

Why is Coinlist so slow in responding to investors' emails? Some investors have not received their filecoins yet.

Sorry, we are working on helping Coinlist to make sure they respond to questions as quickly as possible. As far as we know, everyone who submitted their information before the deadline has received their tokens, and we are also working hard to assist those who submitted their information later.

What is FIP-4? When will it be completed?

FIP-4 (https://github.com/file

coin-project/FIPs/blob/master/FIPS/fip-0004.md) was designed a few weeks before mainnet launch, with careful consideration of cryptoeconomics and miner profitability. It enables immediate access to 25% of storage mining rewards without vesting - a balance between short-term miner growth and long-term network adjustments.

Last week, all 4 Filecoin implementations approved this FIP and it has been included in Lotus v1.1 released today. V1.1 (https://github.com/filecoin

coinproject/lotus/releases/ta

g/v1.1.0) is a consensus-breaking upgrade that is scheduled to be triggered at block height 170,000 (around 6:40 a.m. Friday, Beijing time) 22).

Is it necessary to create and maintain dual nodes of ipfs and filecoin for applications to be connected? Are there any other solutions?

Currently, developing and loading applications requires a Filecoin (Lotus) node. We are developing a set of solutions to simplify this process. This will include lightweight client functionality and the ability to complete transactions without the need for a synced node.

An IPFS node is not required unless the application in question requires one for some reason.

The maintenance cost of the nodes is not low. Have you considered setting up some public nodes?

Yes, we plan to set up some master nodes that users can use. We are also working hard to reduce the maintenance cost of nodes through snapshots and light users.

Are there any support and reward policies for new miners? Is it possible to not do the early pledge but only the later pledge?

Yes, mining accelerators and loan programs are being prepared for new miners. Pre-collateralization is for good reasons. It provides guarantees for storage reliability and consensus security. Filecoin mining, as a global economic platform supported by a distributed network, is more like being a landlord on Airbnb than Bitcoin mining. Pre-collateralization also makes miners the owners of the network.

The current economic model requires miners to spend tens of millions of dollars as collateral to start up their equipment, which is very difficult. Can you take care of those who have already invested all their funds in the machines?

The collateral requirement is not new, and the team has repeatedly advised against investing too much in packaged hardware over the years. There are many ways to address this. If all funds have been invested in packaged hardware, consider collateralizing that hardware and taking out a loan. Filecoin mining hardware has a high resale value regardless. Miners can also start slowly and increase capacity at a rate they see fit. The introduction of FIP4 will also help miners improve their cash flow. Adding more storage capacity is great, but the utility and quality of the storage is more important, which will make Filecoin a more robust economy.

Is the order reward the amount of the price set at the time the sector expires, or the amount on the lotus-miner storage-deal list?

Transaction payments are based on the transaction agreement, and the amount is the same as the amount when the transaction is put on the chain. Transaction payments are gradually received as the storage space provider meets its commitment.

Will Juan's team participate in the Shanghai Vientiane Blockchain Week? Or will only the lab members in China participate? What specific activities will be arranged?

Juan is unable to come to Shanghai to attend the summit, but will give an online speech on 10/27, and will participate in a roundtable discussion on public chain technology innovation with Vitalik and Gavin Wood on 10/28. We will also hold a Filecoin Open Day on 10/26, welcome to view the detailed agenda and register for our Open Day event in Shanghai here! https://www.eventbrite.com/e/file

coin-tickets-125845883425

Why is the test network computing power all migrated to the main network? This is not fair to some people.

This is a well-considered decision that aims to ensure the security of the Filecoin network by inheriting the huge mining power and community built during the testnet, including the settlement balances and rewards earned throughout the Space Race competition. This is also intended to incentivize the huge contributions of large and small miners who have helped stress test and improve the network over the past few months.

Transactions also have a pledge option. Wouldn’t it be better to let the data party decide how much to pledge? The project party can control the reward cycle and even give a pledge bottom line instead of a pledge cap, right?

This is the situation right now. The protocol stake requirement is a floor to provide storage reliability and consensus security. The purpose of the protocol stake requirement is to establish a baseline of reliability (while not being too high) to develop a strong network reputation. Storage space users can and should demand more transaction stake from their storage space providers to provide better security. Miners can offer higher transaction stakes to signal better quality of service.

Has PL considered using the linear release portion of block rewards for pre-mortgage?

Yes, this has been discussed many times. Currently, there are several reasons not to do this. First, the locked block reward is part of the stake of the sector that won the reward. For sectors that disappear early, all rewards earned by the sector up to 90 days will be punished. If the locked funds are used as collateral, it will lead to insufficient sector collateral and prone to crisis. FIP-0004 is a different but more effective way to solve this liquidity concern without sacrificing too many incentives, providing guarantees for storage stability for storage users, and considering the overall utility of the network. The second reason is that without the initial collateral of each sector, the network will be insecure and can be attacked at a relatively low cost. After all, storage prices are cheap, and Filecoin mining uses general-purpose hardware with high resale value. The initial collateral is a way to protect the network from speculation and flash attacks. Finally, the initial collateral can be seen as a deposit for landlords to rent out their houses on decentralized Airbnb. It makes miners the protagonists of the platform economy and keeps incentives compatible with the success of the network. However, as the network iterates and new technologies emerge, there may be other improvements in the future.