The Internet economy relies on data. As of 2019, more than 4.13 billion Internet users generate more than 250 million bytes of data every day. It is estimated that the amount of data in my country will reach 48.6ZB in 2025. All of these data are driving the digital revolution. The Internet data ecosystem provides many Internet companies with opportunities for maturity, growth, innovation and profit. At the same time, the data blowout has also made the Internet overwhelmed. Traditional cloud storage systems can hardly guarantee data security and node trust, and there is a risk of data being leaked and modified. In the torrent of Internet changes, IPFS, a peer-to-peer, distributed file system, was established by Juan Benet in 2014. Soon after, Juan Benet founded Protocol Labs, which is what we call the Protocol Lab.
As blockchain began to enter people's field of vision, Bitcoin, Ethereum and other blockchain networks proved the effectiveness of decentralized transaction ledgers. These public ledgers handle complex smart contract applications and trade crypto assets worth tens of billions of dollars. Inspired by blockchain, Protocol Labs issued the incentive layer blockchain project Filecoin based on IPFS. In 2017, Filecoin obtained $257 million in financing, successfully breaking the world record in blockchain financing. Filecoin token is a self-financial model, which promotes technological progress through financing and then invests the profits from finance into network construction . This year is the first year of Filecoin. After the launch of Filecoin mainnet, it means that Filecoin is officially born. Facing the Filecoin gold mine of hundreds of billions, especially the announcement of the 4 million FIL test network reward plan, Filecoin has attracted the attention of all parties. Major media have rushed to report, and major summits have basically arranged special sessions for Filecoin. The currency circle, mining circle, chain circle and investment circle are all gearing up to enter the market. Today, I will talk to you about the opportunities and challenges of Filecoin. Why should we care about Filecoin? IPFS has been online for 5 years, and the ecosystem is relatively rich, but it is still limited to a small circle of developers. As the incentive layer of IPFS, Filecoin has its own financial attributes, attracting more developers and investors to join, whether it is the 4 million FIL test rewards or the 250,000 FIL security team rewards. When Filecoin tokens are circulated, more and more people will join the ecosystem. Filecoin is a decentralized network storage infrastructure built on the IPFS protocol. IPFS is decentralized storage, while Filecoin is mainly a token economy. Filecoin transfers the control of data from the centralized system to individual users. Most of the value generated by the data will belong to the users. Filecoin's incentives for valid data will make it possible for users to use storage services for free, which will accelerate the application of decentralized storage.Three Ways to Invest in Filecoin In the past two years of 2018 and 2019, there were actually not many new valuable currencies entering the mainstream vision. Under this circumstance, the head effect of Bitcoin has become more obvious, and the agglomeration effect in the past two years has caused the dividends of Bitcoin mining to be overdrawn in advance. With the completion of Bitcoin halving this year, its mining difficulty has increased, and the launch of Filecoin mainnet is getting closer, which has attracted the attention of people in the currency circle, mining circle, chain circle, financial circle, investment circle and other circles. There are three traditional ways to obtain Filecoin: Filecoin completed a financing of US$257 million in 2017, which means that the window period for the primary market has passed. Currently, the Filecoin mainnet has not been launched, and transactions in the secondary market are all Filecoin futures. Not only are the prices of futures on various exchanges quite different, but the actual price can only be known after the mainnet is launched. In fact, now is the best time to participate in mining. Filecoin has a linear release mechanism. Except for private investors who locked up their funds for 6 months, 9 months, and 12 months in the early stage and released them, there is no unofficial coin holder in the market. 70% of FIL is generated through mining. Investors who join the mining team now are mining the first mines. In addition, Filecoin has a linear release mechanism. The amount of Filecoin released in the early stage is the largest, and there are relatively few effective miners, which means that there are few people to share the big cake. Therefore, each investor will naturally mine more coins. Therefore, in the more than one month before the launch of the Filecoin mainnet, participating in Filecoin mining is actually choosing a stable investment. How high is the threshold for the highly anticipated Filecoin mining? Bitcoin is a POW mechanism that competes on the computing power of the machines and the financial resources of the miners. The algorithm is simple and direct, and it can be said to be a miracle-making mining method. However, Filecoin's proof of replication and proof of space and time essentially determine the high complexity and challenge of Filecoin mining . There are as many as five roles on the Filecoin network. The network is complex and has never been a one-man show. It has very high requirements for encryption algorithms, network maintenance, and mining operations: Clients , which store and retrieve data through applications Developers , who develop applications on top of the protocol Retrieval miners can deliver files to clients on demand Storage miners, who store files and help maintain and update the Filecoin blockchain FIL holders make Filecoin a viable currency by using it as a store of value and medium of exchange.
Filecoin has a penalty mechanism that requires the machine to be online 24 hours a day. In addition, Filecoin must adopt a cluster approach to steadily obtain higher returns. Therefore, home mining machines have no way to participate in Filecoin mining, and even the living space for small miners is small. After the Filecoin mainnet is launched, the pattern of Filecoin miners will most likely conform to the 80/20 rule.How can ordinary people participate in Filecoin mining? Faced with Filecoin, a gold mine worth hundreds of billions of dollars backed by top venture capital institutions, there are many people who want to participate. However, Filecoin mining is actually very high in terms of both technical and investment thresholds. This is why there are hundreds of companies buying mining machines on the market, but only a dozen or twenty companies with test results on the Filecoin test network, and only a few of them actually occupy the top five positions. As an ordinary person, the best way to participate in Filecoin mining is to buy mining machines from professional mining machine companies and conduct managed mining, or purchase cloud computing power for mining. Just like Bitcoin mining now, mining is not possible in an ordinary home environment. However, you can entrust professional mining farms and mining pools to provide one-stop mining managed services. In other words, for investors, it is just to find a reliable project and a reliable company, and entrust the funds to them to manage. The rest of the matter will be left to professional mining machine companies, that is, professionals doing professional things .There are so many companies selling IPFS and Filecoin mining machines. How to choose? The IPFS & Filecoin mining craze has been hyped for more than two years. There are hundreds of companies selling IPFS or Filecoin mining machines or computing power on the market, and it is really difficult for novices to distinguish them. My suggestion is to identify from several dimensions: The results of the Filecoin official test network . A good test result does not necessarily mean that you will be able to mine a lot of coins in the future, but if there is no test result or the test result is very poor, it can basically be determined that there is a high probability that no coins will be mined or very few coins will be mined in the future. However, everyone should also learn how to distinguish the test network results. Look at the company’s technical strength and team background . If the company’s core team has no experience in storage-related development and consists of people who work in investment or marketing, then this type of company is either an agent of other companies or a sales company that is trying to make money by riding on the popularity of IPFS and Filecoin. Be careful. Look at the company's marketing methods . If they rely on high returns on investment, exaggerated publicity, and use a multi-level distribution incentive mechanism to make money by recruiting people, be careful of such companies. See whether it is dual mining on one machine , claiming to be able to mine dual mining under the banner of IPFS, or issuing its own coins. Such companies are also trying to take advantage of the popularity and most likely have no core advantages in Filecoin mining.
For more information about IPFS and Filecoin, and for friends who want to participate in Filecoin mining, you can add Kuangge on WeChat ( WeChat ID: kuangge2018 ). |
