Filecoin mainnet finally launched, people involved share their pains and thoughts

Along with a series of adjustments and regulations of Filecoin, when the Filecoin mainnet was finally launched, investors in Filecoin mining machines, cloud computing power, futures and other related products, as well as people in the upstream and downstream participants of the industrial chain, also developed very different emotions and judgments, reflecting the difficulties encountered by Filecoin.

Author | Wang Dashu

Editor | Gong Quanyu

Year after year, the Filecoin mainnet, launched in 2014, has finally been officially launched today, bringing its grand decentralized storage narrative to the public for practical testing and embarking on a new development journey.

Before this, Filecoin, as the industry's "top stream", has gathered a huge industrial chain, but the repeated postponements of the launch time not only seriously affected the interests of the participants, but also reflected the various difficulties of the project in the development process.

Looking at this year alone, the launch time of Filecoin's mainnet has been postponed at least four times, with different reasons given for almost every postponement, such as the negative impact of the epidemic on miners' return to work, the need for repeated security testing, and the increase in calibration periods for debugging new functions. However, the outside world believes that one of the most important reasons is the uncertainty of the economic model of the incentive layer. Filecoin's core data such as the miner's pledge ratio and reward coefficient caused a lot of controversy in the industry until the eve of the launch. This reflects the huge difficulties faced by Filecoin as a huge ecosystem: how to balance the interests of different participants while ensuring the security and stability of the storage system.

Along with a series of adjustments and regulations of Filecoin, investors in Filecoin mining machines, cloud computing power, futures and other related products, as well as upstream and downstream participants in the industrial chain, have also developed very different emotions and judgments, reflecting the difficulties encountered by Filecoin.

Complaints from Filecoin-related communities

01

Futures players: Already sold, waiting for the short-selling market after the launch

Although the problem of pre-collateralized coins is expected to be solved in the future, from the perspective of market value, the total amount of FIL coins is 2 billion. Calculated at the current price of approximately US$30, the valuation is approximately US$60 billion, which has surpassed Ethereum, the second largest in the world, and is second only to Bitcoin, which ranks first.

"Even if FIL's initial liquidity is small, once the private and public offerings are unlocked, FIL will most likely face selling pressure. Currently, there are 143 participants in the Filecoin private offering, with an average holding of 638,000 FIL per person and an average cost of $0.57; there are 2,318 participants in the public offering, with an average holding of 25,700 FIL per person and an average cost of $2.58; if the former is sold at the current price of $33, the market selling pressure will be approximately RMB 140 million; at the current price of $33 for the latter, the market selling pressure will be between RMB 5.5 million and RMB 6 million." This is the analysis by He He (pseudonym), an insider of the exchange.

He also admitted that on the first day of the mainnet launch, there will be 239,000 FILs to be sold. Assuming the unit price is 30U, the released circulating volume will be 50 million yuan. Assuming the unit price remains unchanged, by the 10th day the market will see a release of nearly 500 million yuan, and it is likely that it will not be able to hold on.

Perhaps futures holders are also aware of this. At present, most of the futures players that Chain Catcher knows have already cleared their positions.

"I first bought futures through Gate. It was the bottom of the market at that time. I bought 1,000 FIL futures. Later, I gradually increased my position to 100,000. The overall holding cost was reduced to about 50 yuan. I held it for four months and sold it at a unit price of 138 yuan." FIL futures player Macbeth told Chain Catcher that he started holding FIL futures in March and experienced the fourth delay in the launch of the Filecoin mainnet during the holding period.

Macbeth further stated that there were three main reasons for his liquidation. The first was that he and his friends in the community felt the disappointment of the official frequent defaults; the second was that he saw some friends get rich by reselling mining machines at the peak of the trend, but he was not optimistic about the project; the third was that during the period of holding the position, he read the information related to Filecoin and IPFS by the big guys and realized the great vision and technical bottleneck.

Like Macbeth's strategy, player Jin Jing also chose to sell futures on October 14. "Although the vision is good, it is not a good investment opportunity for ordinary users at this stage. Maybe it will wait until it develops more application scenarios like Ethereum to attract more ordinary users." He also joked that he is looking forward to the melon after the mainnet is launched and waiting for the high point of short selling.

However, in Lao Fu’s opinion, after the mainnet is launched, the Ponzi scheme and futures market will have stories to tell again, which means the opportunity to reap a wave of profits has arrived.

02

Cloud computing power investors: If you can’t mine, then seek legal redress

"I bought 50T from BoNet at the price of 99U/T in July, and I'm going to see the profit after the mainnet goes online. I've waited for three months. If I can't mine anything, I'll go and defend my rights." Investor Xu Fei (pseudonym) revealed anxiety in his expectant tone. He told Chain Catcher that he currently only knew that BoNet's cooperative mining pool was Yaochi, and he was going to check Yaochi's information.

In fact, in addition to Yaochi, Golden Computing Cloud, Mars Cloud Mining, Feng Exchange, Hufu, etc. are all selling cloud computing power. However, compared with the blossoming sales scene in July, the cloud computing power market before the mainnet launch seems a bit deserted, reflecting the industry's lack of confidence in Filecoin.

Cloud computing power is the leasing of mining machines, which aims to lower the entry threshold for investors, but due to its low transparency, it has always been controversial.

On the one hand, as Xu Fei worried, if the authenticity and adaptability of the mining machine, if the configuration of the mining machine deviates greatly from the official specifications, and the mining efficiency is far lower than expected, it is very likely that the profits will be difficult to cover the costs, and some cloud computing manufacturers may even run away directly; on the other hand, the FIL produced by cloud computing mining is often delayed for several months. Due to the current strong bearish sentiment on FIL in the market, investors' actual returns may also be lower than expected.

In fact, not only has the sales situation changed, but the price gap between miners has also been greatly reduced. Compared with the common price range of 600 yuan/T to 3000 yuan/T in July, the current pricing of cloud computing power is mainly concentrated in 1800 yuan to 2500 yuan/T, and is gradually stabilizing.

"With the mainnet going live soon, most platforms want to take the opportunity to grab market share and sell more cloud computing power. However, it is easier to raise prices than to lower them at the moment. So the previous method of attracting retail investors through price wars will not only be ineffective, but may also arouse resentment from old customers and even lead to rights protection incidents." Miner Lao Fu told Chain Catcher that users who intend to make a layout had already bought almost all of their shares in the first half of the year, and the upcoming launch of the mainnet will not stimulate their desire to buy. Those potential customers who have been waiting for a long time are waiting to see the situation after the mainnet goes live, and the sales market is not as lively as it was around July.

In addition to user demand, Wu Blockchain's related analysis mentioned that the shortage of mortgage coins is also one of the important factors that have caused various companies to temporarily suspend the promotion and sale of mining machines and cloud computing power.

03

Merchants: Hastily adjusted layout in shock

"The official has stood up too many times. Although the launch was expected to be not far away, we did not expect it to be launched as scheduled on October 15." Fang Yunhao, partner of the open source mining pool, told Chain Catcher that in addition to being surprised, the team is stepping up the optimization of technical solutions, adjusting machine configurations according to the optimization parameters of the software, purchasing the hardware required for new machines, and communicating with customers to complete the visual mining product. Compared with these, the most urgent thing is the unified deployment of computer rooms.

The reason for this is that due to the official adjustment of the economic model and the restrictions on pre-mortgage coins, the mining cost has increased compared to the previous estimate, and the income has correspondingly decreased, so we chose to save resources at the IDC computer room level. "Filecoin mining is different from Bitcoin mining. Once the machine is turned on, the stable and continuous operation of the machine must be guaranteed, otherwise FIL tokens cannot be mined. This restriction forces us to complete the unified deployment of the computer room before the main network goes online." Fang Yunhao said.

Similar to Fang Yunhao, Shang Silin, head of Mars Cloud Mine, was also surprised by the official launch time, but the official time node was not much different from what he expected.

"When I learned about the launch on October 15, I was at the setup site of the Mars DeFi Summit in Shenzhen. I quickly ran to the upstairs room and held an emergency meeting with Wang Feng and other responsible persons to determine a series of adjustments for this mainnet launch." Shang Silin revealed to Chain Catcher that Mars Cloud Mining is currently purchasing mining machines in advance to avoid the problem of tight supply chain when the mainnet is launched. On the other hand, it has launched a full-storage computing power product for the mainnet launch to avoid the problem of pre-mortgage coins.

Shang Silin also said that the problem of pre-mortgage coins is still the biggest concern for miners and even miners. Although miners are trying to communicate with the authorities to solve this problem, it is unknown when the liberation plan will be implemented. At present, given the small amount of release in the early stage, in order to prevent the machines from being idle, miners generally obtain FIL coins through channels such as OTC and third-party pledge institutions.

However, given the small amount of early release, many problems may arise from this. For example, miners with weak technical capabilities in software and hardware have low coin production capabilities, but for the purpose of investor responsibility, they may need to purchase a certain amount of tokens in the secondary market. In the case of a small amount of early release, the value of FIL may be very expensive, making it difficult for them to afford it, and even causing a thunderstorm.

For example, some futures exchanges do not have real private investment quotas behind them but use underlying assets such as mining machines for redemption. Once the FIL output of the mining machines is insufficient, there will also be redemption problems.

04

Mining machine investor: I want to return the machine, it’s too bad

"Do we need to buy pledge coins for the mining machines we bought?" "If we really want to buy 350 coins for pledge, then we'll just have to return the mining machines" ... These are the questions raised by some buyers in the Filecoin Phase II testing group of Diancun Technology. The questions mainly originated from the fact that Diancun Technology CEO Li Haotian publicly stated during the Douyin live broadcast on October 13 that all customers need to purchase 350 FIL as pre-collateral after the mainnet is launched, otherwise only 0.5 FIL can be mined per month.

Pre-staking means that miners need to provide tokens for pledge before packaging sectors to ensure that miners can complete the promised life cycle of the sector and will not harm the security of the network for short-term interests. At present, the pledge amount of a single sector is about 0.25 FIL. In the early stage of the mainnet launch, the tokens that can be used for pre-staking mainly consist of three parts: block rewards generated by existing computing power on the mainnet, reward tokens generated by the space race, and unlocking of official and early investor shares.

According to the calculation of Mars Cloud Mining, miners encapsulate 331,250 sectors every day at a rate of 10.6PiB/day. According to the current mortgage demand of about 0.4FIL/sector, the entire network needs to mortgage 133,000 FIL every day. However, according to the current policy, all FIL tokens have a linear release period of at least 6 months, so the circulation of FIL will be very low in the first 6 months. The available rewards generated by miners' own mining are difficult to meet the requirements of pre-mortgage of new sectors. This problem will continue to plague the miners.

Diancun Technology has two solutions. One is to help miners advance the cost of pre-collateralized coins in the early stage, and deduct the advance payment and related service fees from the subsequent mining income; the other is that customers can choose to go to the market to buy FIL tokens for staking, and Diancun will charge related service fees. Obviously, the above doubts are dissatisfaction with the plan. As predicted by an industry insider in an interview with Chain Catcher in June, after the mainnet is launched, there will definitely be mining machine sellers who will face user doubts and even rights protection.

Currently, the Filecoin community and core developers are making proposals on issues such as pre-collateralized coins, but it will take a long time to implement them, and the stakeholders related to Filrcoin are still in trouble.

Regardless of the outcome, Filrcoin and its people have already made a significant mark in the blockchain industry, bringing more thinking and possibilities to the Internet world.