Filecoin mainnet finally launched, spot price plummeted 60% in half an hour

"Ten years have passed since the sword was sharpened. Today, we will test its sharpness."

At 22:45 on the evening of October 15, the leading decentralized storage project Filecoin successfully exploded at block 148,888 on the test network, announcing the official launch of the main network.

So far, Filecoin, which is regarded as the next generation storage infrastructure and carries expectations and doubts, has finally opened a new chapter in the application of Filecoin. The many stakeholders on board, from the early investors who bet in the frenzy in 2017, to the mining machine manufacturers who rushed in like a prey in 2018, to the investors who took advantage of the opportunity to get on board in 2020, all breathed a sigh of relief.

This time, he finally didn’t run away.

Since the launch of the testnet in December 2019, Filecoin has gone through 3 versions of testnet verification and iteration. This mainnet launch is based on the incentive testnet "Space Race" launched on August 24. According to the latest official documents, miners on the testnet can seamlessly switch to the mainnet, and all their sectors and corresponding computing power, pledged FIL and block rewards will be migrated to the mainnet simultaneously. Miners will soon receive "Space Race" rewards and can use them for pledge after the mainnet is launched.

According to the browser FILscout, as of the launch of the mainnet, the total computing power of the Filecoin network is 569 PiB, the amount of pre-collateralized tokens is 12 million FIL, the average block time is 30s, and the block reward is 10.8 tokens.

Data from filscout.io, time: October 15, 22:50

In the secondary market, the three major exchanges have recently announced that they will support Filecoin token FIL as soon as the mainnet is launched. Its price rose and fell last night, and is currently (October 16, 10:00) stabilizing around 70 USDT.

Data from: Huobi, time: October 16, 9:55

Gate.io launched FIL’s IOU (Exchange Accounting) product earlier. Previously, the price was similar to FIL6 futures, hovering around 20 USDT, but yesterday afternoon, it suddenly surged 500% in half an hour to a high of 237 USD, and then fell back slightly. Last night, FIL was more like a hasty exit after the good news was realized, and it fell 61% in half an hour after it went online.

Data from: Gate.io, time: October 15, 23:20

On the morning of October 16, an investor in the Filecoin community questioned that an unknown account suddenly obtained 1.5 million FIL tokens on October 15 and transferred 800,000 FIL to Huobi. According to the unlocking plan, the amount of unlocking by early investors, officials and miners on the first day should be only 500,000.

In response, the relevant personnel replied that these coins were transferred to different exchanges, not just Huobi, mainly to establish independent market makers and maintain stable prices in the early stages of the project, because prices are likely to be the most unstable at this time. At the same time, it was stated that these coins were not a sell-off of FIL by the Filecoin team. Another member said that it was part of the investor's allocation, and some of the unsold tokens would be used for market making.

Token Distribution and Circulation

The total number of Filecoin is 2 billion, of which 70% is allocated to miners, 15% to the development team, 10% to investors, and the remaining 5% to the Filecoin Foundation. A total of 20% of the team and fund tokens will be unlocked linearly over 6 years, and 10% of investors will have an unlocking period ranging from 6 months to 3 years.

Because the official promise is that there will be no sales in the early stage, looking at the circulation volume within 30 days of the launch of the FIL mainnet, in general, the contribution of early investors will become the main selling pressure, while the selling pressure from miners will be relatively small due to increased computing power, pre-mortgage and other reasons.

According to official estimates, more than 50 million FIL will be released across the network within 3 months, and more than 100 million FIL will be released within 6 months.

The project was repeatedly delayed, and the "air mining machine" was harvested one after another

In 2014, Juan Benet, a graduate of Stanford University, led a group of top students to create a protocol designed to replace HTTP - IPFS (Interplanetary File System).

Similar to blockchain, "distributed, censorship-resistant, and more open" is the biggest selling point of IPFS. In order to promote the application of this open source protocol, in June 2017, the Juan team (also known as Protocol Labs) released a new distributed storage protocol Filecoin, hoping to improve the implementation/adoption of distributed storage by adding an economic incentive system.

This project, which had great potential, good timing (during the ICO craze) and good people, raised $57 million from nine well-known investment institutions, including Sequoia Capital, Union Square Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Winklevoss Capital, etc. In the subsequent public offering, Filecoin raised another $205 million in one month, becoming the largest 1CO in history at the time.

The team, investors, fundraising and abundant funds made Filecoin popular before it was launched. However, the project was not strong enough, and Filecoin, which was originally expected to be launched at the same time as EOS, was delayed for a year.

But at that time, hardware manufacturers who wanted to make a fortune by taking advantage of Filecoin’s popularity had already stepped halfway on board. Therefore, from mid-2018 to 2019, Filecoin “air mining machines” emerged in an endless stream, laying the foundation for the “MLM gene” of the hard disk mining market - the big pie of the next-generation storage network alone was enough to attract many novice investors and people in the mining circle to actively participate.

At the peak, a Filecoin manufacturer sold fake mining machines worth 2 billion yuan.

It was not until 2019 when the Filecoin testnet was launched that real mining machines began to appear one after another, and this industry also attracted more high-quality technical teams and institutional investors in the cryptocurrency circle to participate.

It is still early for application, mining is still the theme of Filecoin in the short and medium term

Although other types of public chains and developer teams have noticed the uniqueness and implementation of Filecoin, and have begun to explore some possible "cross-border" cooperation methods, in the short and medium term, it will take some time for Filecoin to launch practical products, and mining will still be an important topic in the future. Odaily Planet Daily will also continue to pay attention to the mining efficiency of major miners and product delivery.

For miners, especially those mining on behalf of others, these few issues when a new network is launched will be a busy time.

According to official guidelines, if miners shut down their machines during/after the mainnet launch and stop providing proof of storage and transactions, they will face the loss of computing power and be fined.

Recently, there has been an ongoing discussion about the official mining and economic mechanisms that affect the interests of miners. For example, one of the controversial points is the high pre-collateralized tokens and the 180 linear release mechanism of mining tokens.

For this reason, on September 18 alone, two teams announced to fork Filecoin. These "independents" listed several "crimes" of the Filecoin project and made adjustments to the project governance and economic mechanism. In order to seize the "first-mover advantage", Filecash initiated by MIX Group was launched on the mainnet the day before yesterday.

The Filecoin official team has been comprehensively considering the interests of all parties in the network. Therefore, it recently proposed the FIP-0004 proposal. If the proposal is passed after the main network, 25% of the block rewards will be released immediately to miners, and 75% of the block rewards will be released linearly according to 180 days.

At the same time as the mainnet is launched, the official will also open multiple testnets with different settings. The calibration network has also been set up as a new long-term testnet to test new versions and upgrades.

Despite the dissidents, Filecoin's large and wealthy ecosystem participants compete with each other based on their own interests, demonstrating the vitality and hope of this community. We look forward to Filecoin moving towards its next milestone.

References

Official release of mainnet launch guide, 6block Pomegranate Mining Pool