When talking about projects and startups in the blockchain field, we always think that their characteristics are "fast, accurate and ruthless". Some of them even end before they even start performing. Therefore, some people think that this circle is full of impetuousness and barbarism. But on the contrary, there is still a group of people who are doing things in a down-to-earth manner, and there are still some companies working hard to become Alibaba.

In terms of the age of cryptocurrency, Bitcoin is undoubtedly the big brother now, but in terms of the completeness of project development, there is a project that is truly like an "old cow pulling a slow cart". People have been waiting for 6 years since its birth, and last night, it finally had its glorious moment - the Filecoin mainnet was successfully launched!

Looking back to 2014, the IPFS protocol took advantage of the Bitcoin blockchain protocol and network infrastructure to store immutable data, remove duplicate files on the network, and obtain the address information of storage nodes to search for files on the network . It then launched the Filecoin protocol incentive project, but then embarked on a long road of development, and the main network has been waiting to be launched.

Until the National Day, Filecoin officially released the countdown notice for the mainnet launch , claiming that the mainnet will be officially launched at epoch 148888. As a veteran in the industry, I almost burst into tears when I saw the news. After all, the machines from 3 years ago are already covered in dust, but they have not yet ushered in their highlight moments.

But last night, from the Western Hemisphere to the entire Eastern Hemisphere, it seemed that the cryptocurrency industry was filled with excitement. After all, the project that once claimed to change the world finally came to us. Regardless of whether it had a strong posture or not, the audience had already jumped up excitedly, and even applauded loudly...

Why is he so popular?

What is the most expensive thing in the 21st century? In A World Without Thieves, Ge You said it was "talent", but today more people say it is " data ". With the development of the Internet, artificial intelligence, and 5G, the speed of generating data is getting faster and faster, and the amount of data is increasing. These data have not only become a tool for people to survive, but also the "wealth" of many people.

However, with the explosion of data, the problem of data storage is becoming increasingly serious. In addition to security issues, there are also storage issues. Therefore, we are constantly building data centers to meet the demand . However, what most people don’t know is that nearly half of the hard disk storage space in the world is idle, and most of us actually have some idle storage space in our computers, which is not being used effectively.

Therefore, the IPFS protocol itself is intended to solve these data storage problems. Using this protocol can ensure that data cannot be tampered with, achieve permanent data preservation, solve the problem of excessive redundancy, and realize storage sharing .

On the other hand, the current bottleneck of blockchain is that it cannot carry large amounts of data, making it difficult to use for data sharing, and can only store some transaction information. There are generally two ways to solve this problem : one is to solve the transaction speed problem, and the other is to solve the problem of storing large amounts of data . As the most representative application of the IPFS protocol, Filecoin aims to use the characteristics of the blockchain itself to solve this bottleneck problem and achieve decentralized distributed storage.

In essence, Filecoin uses the characteristics of blockchain to activate the world's idle bandwidth and hard drives, allowing those who are willing to share hard drive space (that is, miners) to receive token rewards, while those who need to store files have to pay the corresponding tokens. This is its core value.

Therefore, if this value can be realized, countless hard disk spaces will be activated around the world, and the market space cannot be underestimated. This is why Filecoin has always attracted much attention. After all, it may be able to change the business model of data storage and distribution.

The story is exciting and everyone is eager to try it out

Precisely because the story of Filecoin is so exciting, it has always had a group of supporters following it since its birth, and some of them have indeed gone from "trying it out" to "devoting themselves to it."

It even attracted another group of miners who followed in addition to Bitcoin mining. They rushed into the track one after another, intending to roll up their sleeves and do a great job. After all, Bitcoin went from being worthless to becoming more valuable the more it was mined. Therefore, Filecoin is like the protagonist in the new gold rush story, and everyone wants to be the lucky one.

Therefore, we can see that whether it is individual traders, institutions, or exchanges, they have already prepared "flowers" and are waiting for the moment when dawn comes . Especially exchanges, they seem to treat Filecoin as another DOT (Polkadot token). After all, the trading volume at that time was still astonishing.

However, as a savvy practitioner, we also need to reflect on whether such a popular Filecoin can really take off?

You can join in the fun but don't go crazy

Mr. Buffett has a very famous investment quote, "Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful." From an investment perspective, Filecoin seems to be a little crazy at the moment. After all, so many people are chasing it. On the one hand, it means that the market is hot and there is a demand for growth, but on the other hand, it also means that if the market is too hot, there will be a bubble, and we need to be wary .

Filecoin is another long-awaited project in the market this year. Regardless of the current level of technical perfection and whether its value can be realized, it is bound to become a hot commodity. However , for blockchain startup projects with hardware costs, it is necessary to pay attention to whether the hardware operating costs match the market price . Otherwise, there will still be risks. After all, mining Bitcoin was a loss-making business many years ago.

Especially for some computing power products and some unqualified mining machine products, everyone needs to keep their eyes open and beware of being deceived. After all, people are prone to hallucinations in the face of excitement, especially illusions of wealth.

As for whether Filecoin itself can be implemented and whether the ideal of everyone sharing storage space can be realized, in terms of ecology, there is still a long way to go. After all, we have heard quite a lot of stories over the years, but this story seems to be more beautiful than ever before. At this time, we may have to be careful of the "innovation trap."

But as Soros believes, we need bubbles to make profits, but whether we can exit when the bubble arrives is a real technical issue.