【Filecoin】The secret behind the 4 million FIL reward

Q: 4 million FIL testnet reward plan, why did the official set the reward to 4 million? What is the important information?

Brother Xin: 4 million FIL refers to the total amount of rewards for this test, which is the final result determined after many official considerations and discussions. Of course, such rewards are very motivating for us miners.

This is the reward rule, which is divided into two parts: global and regional, and the regional rewards are evenly divided into 6 independent continents. To unlock the 4 million rewards, the official has also set a threshold. For example, for a global reward of 1 million, the global storage capacity must reach 100PiB. This means that unlocking 4 million FIL is still very difficult, mainly because the global miners are unevenly distributed, mainly concentrated in America and Asia.

Why launch the plan at this time? The authorities may have three reasons:

1. Before the mainnet goes live, check the miners’ hardware and software through large-scale testing;

2. Preheat the market and make the ecosystem and community active;

3. Filecoin is a global distributed storage. The purpose of setting up such a reward mechanism is to ensure that there are Filecoin nodes in every continent in the world, so as to achieve a truly global distributed storage layout.

Q: What are the necessary conditions for Filecoin miners to participate in this program?

Brother Xin: The competition is getting hotter and hotter, and many miners want to participate. However, you can see that only the top 100 global rewards and the top 50 regional rewards are available. Therefore, miners must be very cautious if they want to get rewards.

To get rewards, you need to invest enough. A single mining machine is definitely not enough, only a cluster can have hope. So how much should be invested has not yet been determined, and investors need to weigh it themselves - your software and hardware coordination, architecture management, monitoring and maintenance, operation and maintenance level, etc.

Therefore, you need to start from several aspects:

1. Code Optimization

2. Design professional architecture

3. Professional operation and maintenance personnel

These thresholds are relatively high and not particularly friendly to general miners. This is why the Force Zone launched a global partnership program to help miners in other regions build their own power nodes and have the ability to compete and unlock all rewards.

Q: Judging from the test network data, large miners are mostly concentrated in domestic manufacturers, so the competition in Asia must be fierce. Wouldn’t it be easy for miners from other continents to get regional rewards?

Brother Xin: This statement is correct in one aspect. The existing computing power is mainly concentrated in Asia and America. It is naturally easier to obtain rewards in regions with less intense competition than in Asia and America, but you must also be careful not to unlock the rewards.

As far as I know, there are some teams that are currently cooperating with external parties, and the Force Zone has also reached some strategic cooperation, mainly to help miners build their nodes rather than deploying them themselves.

Q: What arrangements has the Force Zone made for this project?

Brother Xin: In the current test network, we in the Force Zone are actually also conducting some tests, such as verifying our own algorithms and program stability, but we are not aiming for computing power rankings.

At this stage, the main task of the Force Zone is the global partnership program. In fact, we have received cooperation invitations from many regions and are currently in the discussion and implementation stage. Our goal is to help more people enter Filecoin and prosper the ecosystem.

Perhaps in the next stage of testing, everyone will be able to see multiple nodes in the Force Zone, as well as some miner nodes that use the Force Zone technology.

Q: What reference value do the effective computing power, packaging speed, and block rate rankings of Filecoin mining have?

Brother Xin: These indicators have reference value, but they are not absolute and it is difficult to use them as effective reference at this stage.

For example, effective computing power is actually related to hardware. If a company invests 5 million and another company invests 10 million, the effective computing power they produce will definitely be different.

For example, packaging speed reflects the degree of software optimization to a certain extent. However, packaging speed and efficiency are not absolutely related. It is possible that the packaging speed is very fast, but the efficiency and resource utilization are relatively low.

For example, the block rate. In a previous article, "Why do we have to compete for the computing power ranking in Filecoin testing?" , it was mentioned that under the existing rules, a block rate that is too high is actually a disadvantage. This is determined by the code design. I discussed the relevant issues with the official some time ago, and they have made some optimizations. I hope to see adjustments in the next stage of updates.

Q: How far does Filecoin have to go before the mainnet launch?

Brother Xin: The launch of the Filecoin mainnet was originally scheduled to take about 2 months. However, there are still some key issues that have not been finalized, such as POST, economic model, storage & retrieval market, and security audit, which are all very important. If these are finalized, coupled with large-scale testing, such as the implementation of the 4 million FIL test reward plan, then the launch of the mainnet is basically a foregone conclusion.

In fact, there are still many things that need to be finalized within 2 months, but most of them do not affect the code and are relatively easy to complete. Now we hope that the large miner test can be completed smoothly. As long as it does not involve code modifications, the follow-up will be very smooth.