Filecoin Mainnet Launch Guide

As crazy as it sounds, there are less than 24 hours left until the Filecoin mainnet launch, and as we count the final hours of SR2 track one, Orbital Burn , here are some helpful tips and FAQs to help miners make a smooth transition to mainnet.

Today, the Filecoin network has reached a total of 530 PiB , equivalent to more than 10 billion YouTube videos . In the SR2-Orbital Burn track , miners need to start storage faster than ever. The main goal of Orbital Burn is to create test conditions that can correctly simulate the dynamics of the real mainnet network so that miners can continue to accumulate their operational expertise, and protocol developers can analyze and improve network performance under actual conditions.

Over the past 4 weeks since the end of SR1, we have seen huge improvements in network operations, stability, efficiency, and resiliency over the course of 8 large Lotus releases. These releases include our first Filecoin Improvement Proposal (FIP) to reduce window error failure fees (Lotus 0.8.0), a major migration to make core participant logic inside Filecoin easier to cleanly upgrade (Lotus 0.9.0), and even our first state-breaking fix (Lotus 0.10.0). Miners have also made major improvements in the stability, upgradability, and efficiency of storage mining, while also stress testing transactions as part of Slingshot.

Overall, the SR2 - Orbital Burn track was a huge success, adding another 300 PiB in one month.

Orbital Burn Rewards

SR2: Orbital Burn ’s rewards are designed to simulate real-world network conditions by tracking stored sectors, pledged collateral, and block and gas fees collected throughout the competition. To receive rewards, miners participating in SR1 and SR2 only need to continue operating their miners through the mainnet transition on October 15th.

• Starting from the mainnet era: all committed sectors will be migrated to the mainnet with their corresponding capacity, helping miners to immediately start mining new blocks and receive rewards;

• Miners will also receive collateral guaranteed by all sectors, and these reward collateral will belong to the miner when the miner's sector expires (by default, 540 days after sealing);

• Block rewards earned in the space race will continue to be distributed linearly for 180 days since the block was mined. (Note: If we release FIP-0004 soon after mainnet, pending community approval, future storage mining rewards will receive 25% of the rewards immediately without vesting.)

• Miners participating in Slingshot will also receive payments from customers for storage and retrieval transactions.

These awards recognize the tremendous contributions of miners both large and small who have helped stress-test and improve the network over the past few months; this has been a critical , productive time in the evolution of the Filecoin network, and we’re grateful for making the Filecoin network and community stronger.

Tap and Reimbursement

During the space race, we ran various testnet FIL faucets to compensate miners for onboarding and normal network operations. In preparation for the mainnet, and to limit abuse by miners, we have now retired the automatic fault compensation service and the staking compensation service (called PCR bot). Starting from the mainnet, miners will need to fund their own continued growth and are solely responsible for managing miners' available balances, owners, control rights, and worker balances.

To address this , we performed a one-time reimbursement for all miners with negative balances, replenishing them to a net available balance of zero so that all miners can enter the mainnet debt-free. In addition, we also issued a one-time bonus of 100 FIL to all Space Race 2 miners who actively proved network storage capacity in the past week .

Normally we avoid incentivizing people to create sybil nodes to earn rewards, and we want small miners who have been working towards a 10 TiB minimum miner size throughout SR1 & 2 to be able to earn block rewards.

SR2: Orbital Burn is coming to an end as we transition to mainnet, but competition for the Slingshot race continues! In order to specifically support miners participating in Slingshot to store valuable data on the network, we plan to continue running some small faucets such as PublishDeals and the WindowPoSt reimbursement bot as the network stabilizes.

Liftoff FAQ

Q: When will the Filecoin mainnet be launched?

A: The Filecoin mainnet will officially start at 148,888.

Q: As a miner, the mainnet is about to be launched, what do I need to do?

A: As a storage miner, you can submit new storage capacity to the network by submitting new ProveCommits, you can store data for storage clients through PublishingDeals, and you can continue to prove existing committed storage through WindowPoSts.

Q: If I continue to participate in the Space Race, will my mining-related information change?

A: No, since the Lotus 0.9.0 upgrade, all miners have been converted to the mainnet f0xxxx address. Your account and miner address will remain unchanged during the mainnet transition.

Q: From an operational security perspective, is there anything I need to change before the mainnet launch?

A: Starting from Lotus 0.9.0, there is a new CLI for managing the owner addresses of miners. The wallet associated with the owner address is designed to act like a cold wallet, as it should not be used frequently and is essential to protect the miner's funds. In a production environment, we strongly recommend using separate owner and worker addresses. See the guide here.

Q: How can I help miners maintain stability throughout the mainnet transition?

A: We recommend that all miners set up a separate control address to submit PoSt windows to the chain to avoid critical, time-sensitive messages getting stuck in the mpool. It is also important to adjust the fee caps set to mitigate gas-related issues. Read this blog post to learn more.

Q: What happens if I stop running the miner during the mainnet?

A: If you shut down your miner and stop actively validating the storage and transactions you have submitted to the network, the miner will lose power on the first missed proof and be fined for missing the proof window after about 24 hours. The more proof periods you miss, the more fines you will be fined. If you do not reclaim the fines and storage transactions within 14 days, the miner's power will be permanently removed from the network and all outstanding rewards will be consumed.

Q: Assuming the original testnet is transitioning to the mainnet, will there be a new testnet?

A: We plan to run many testnets with different configurations. Calibrationnet has been set up as a new long-running testnet that we plan to use for testing new releases and testing before state upgrades in mainnet. It has the same parameters as mainnet but supports 512 MiB sectors for faster testing. We encourage everyone to run miners there, especially before major upgrades.