Filecoin miner: As the mainnet is about to be launched, I feel like the project is going to die

According to official news, Filecoin will launch the mainnet when it reaches block 148888, which is expected to be the evening of October 15. This means that this "king-level" project that the community has been waiting for for three years is finally about to usher in a milestone progress.

To welcome the arrival of this moment, a few days ago, many trading platforms including OKEx and Huobi announced that FIL trading will be officially opened on October 15. As the mainnet launch approaches, many blockchain media have also prepared live broadcast events, and investors have also made predictions about the performance of FIL after it goes online.

Behind the seemingly enthusiastic crowd, there are also calm people who are worried. On the eve of the launch of the Filecoin mainnet, BlockBeats had a chat with Jieming, a senior Filecoin miner. Different from the general enthusiastic attitude in the market, Jieming expressed deep concerns about the Filecoin project. He told BlockBeats that the mainnet will be launched tonight, but he felt that "the project is going to die."

Mortgage coins are the first barrier for miners to enter the market

In his sharing, Jieming said that the two pieces of news that have been intensively reported by the media in the past two days - the official lowering of the entry threshold for mining machines, and the official compensation of 100FIL to miner nodes with negative available balances of Filecoin so that miners have no debt before entering the main network - have little impact, and still cannot solve the most important problem: mortgage coins. He said, "Big miners still have the computing power of the space race, while small miners have nothing." To make matters worse, the project party has recently introduced a series of policies that are beneficial to big miners, which is actually very detrimental to the health of the entire ecosystem. For blockchain miners, they are all betting on long-term returns. Based on rational considerations, miners will not rush to 5 times or 10 times a week like coin speculators, so miners tend to pay more attention to the long-term development of the project.

It is understood that according to the design of Filecoin, for every additional 1T of effective computing power, an initial pre-pledge of 6.4 FIL is required. According to the current prices of multiple platforms, the current futures price of FIL is about US$33, and the price on some platforms is even as high as US$200. This means that if miners want to seal at full speed, they may need to pay another fee in addition to the mining machine.

Screenshot source: Feixiaohao

It is understood that on October 14, a Filecoin fork project called "Filecash" has been launched. According to official statements, a four-week mortgage-free mining will be started from now on. The main focus is on the mortgage coin problem that Filecoin has been criticized for. However, one day has passed, and there seems to be no discussion about the project in the community. Although there are rumors that a first-tier trading platform will be launched, as of now, no trading platform has officially announced that it will support this currency.

The launch is approaching, but the mainnet launch rules are still unclear

“I think Filecoin is courting its own demise, giving forked coins many opportunities.”

The closer the mainnet is to launch, the more worried Benjamin becomes. In his opinion, Filecoin's various rules are basically formulated based on the project's own wishes, "for example, directly treating test coins as mainnet coins."

In early September this year, the official announced at a global community online conference call that the mainnet code will be frozen. According to official news, the mainnet code will no longer update functions from September 4, and each miner will test the compatibility of the equipment and the test and make the final optimization, and the code will be frozen on September 30.

But to this day, the official has not disclosed the latest code. According to the follow-up statement of Filecoin core developer "Why", the code base will never be frozen.

Screenshot source: GitHub

At present, the rules for launching the entire mainnet are still unclear, and no one knows what the detailed rules are. "It feels like it's the mainnet now." It is precisely because there are too many uncertain factors in the project that the team can only make multiple preparations.

As for some recent actions of the project party, he also has a different view. "We are actually the beneficiary of a series of official operations during this period, but in the long run, we hope that the entire ecosystem will develop healthily and benignly, so that we can maximize the benefits of our years of investment in this field." Rather than letting the entire ecosystem bear the consequences because of the official's hasty decision.

After several twists and turns and delays, the Filecoin mainnet is finally going to be launched today. However, facing this highly anticipated project, many people have expressed confusion: What are the economic model parameters and release mechanism? What is the payback period for miners?

Screenshot source: In previous tests, the Filecoin team changed data in a short period of time

Although distributed storage will have a bright future, as one miner said, whether buying Filecoin or taking over FIL, "there is an element of gambling" and the risks are not small.

At the request of the interviewees, the names in this article are pseudonyms.