What is the relationship between IPFS and Filecoin?

Preface

It is a common misunderstanding in the industry to equate Filecoin and IPFS. In fact, IPFS and Filecoin are strictly different. Let's explain the relationship between the two projects in detail.

the difference

IPFS: Non-blockchain project. The IPFS project mainly solves the problem of data distribution and location, which is similar to the HTTP protocol that has a monopoly in the field of online Internet technology. Unlike the HTTP protocol, the HTTP protocol data is transmitted point-to-point, while the IPFS data is transmitted to multiple points.

Filecoin: Blockchain project. Filecoin is a distributed storage protocol based on blockchain, which is used to solve data storage problems and reduce data storage and usage costs.

Technology: The technology used by IPFS is fundamentally different from that of Filecoin.

Complementary protocols: The IPFS protocol and the Filecoin protocol are a pair of complementary protocols. Filecoin is an incentive layer running on top of IPFS. Applications based on IPFS have huge data storage and node quantity requirements. As a P2P network, the more nodes IPFS has, the faster it can download. Without an incentive mechanism, no one would be willing to contribute so many nodes and storage for free. With economic incentives, Filecoin miners can contribute a huge number of nodes to the IPFS network, which brings a huge distributed storage space to IPFS for use by applications based on IPFS, which also solves the low-cost, high-performance storage problem of the IFPS network.

Mutual independence: IPFS and Filecoin are a pair of complementary protocols, so why are they independent? In fact, IPFS and Filecoin have no technical dependencies. IPFS was launched as early as May 2015, and the IPFS system can still run well without Filecoin. Similarly, Filecoin can also run independently without the IPFS system. This is like fighting alone and fighting as a team. When IPFS and Filecoin run alone, their strength is limited. When IPFS and Filecoin run together, things become wonderful. The two protocols are combined to form a more powerful network, which greatly benefits both parties and greatly increases the probability of success of the two systems. Therefore, in the development and selection of actual applications, developers can choose IPFS or Filecoin independently, or they can choose a combination of the two at the same time, which maximizes the flexibility of development for developers.

The Filecoin protocol and the IPFS protocol promote each other. The more IPFS nodes there are, the higher the performance of the IPFS network will be, and more applications will be willing to use it. The more IPFS applications there are, the greater the demand for distributed storage Filecoin. The more data is stored and downloaded by Filecoin, the more miners are willing to invest in resources to gain more benefits. The more resources miners invest, the greater the support they bring to the IPFS network. From this we can see that IPFS and Filecoin have a strong complementary relationship, making progress together, promoting each other, and together providing an excellent solution for the distributed Internet.

The development history of the Filecoin project

On July 15, 2014, Filecoin released the first draft of the protocol, and the design of the Filecoin protocol started. The first version of the Filecoin protocol only referred to the design of Ethereum, but at that time, blockchain technology was not mature enough in both theoretical reserves and practical applications, and the design of the Filecoin protocol did not make much progress.

On July 4, 2017, Protocol Labs released the research roadmap for the Filecoin protocol. So far, Filecoin has a clear research route.

On July 19, 2017, Protocol Labs released a new version of the Filecoin protocol white paper. It has been three years since the first draft protocol was released. After three years of rapid development of blockchain technology, especially the success of Ethereum technology, it has provided a reference case for the industry.

On July 27, 2017, Protocol Labs released two technical reports, Proof of Replication and PoWer Fault Tolerance. These two technologies are the core protocols of Filecoin technology, which directly determine the feasibility and success of the Filecoin project, and even determine the performance of the Filecoin mining machine and the network.

From July to September 2017, Filecoin raised funds and obtained US$257 million in financing, becoming the largest financing in the blockchain industry in 2017.

Unlike IPFS, Filecoin is very technically difficult. Proof of replication and proof of space-time are both innovative technologies that require basic research, which makes the design and development of Filecoin much more difficult than general blockchain projects. Due to the uncertainty of research, the launch date of the project is not clearly specified in the investment agreement, and only the termination conditions of the Filecoin project are defined in the risk warning.

The value of the Filecoin project

Technology develops in a spiral in iteration. It will not appear out of thin air nor disappear without reason. Regarding the technical value and social significance of Filecoin's decentralized storage, we can expand it from the following six points.

Birth Mission

With the advancement of science and technology, a large amount of data is generated every day, and the data is growing exponentially every year.

The fifth generation of communication technology is about to be widely used, which will greatly promote the rapid development and maturity of the Internet of Things. The world is being digitized. The cost of data storage and transmission will inevitably become a bottleneck restricting the development of technology. The birth of Filecoin technology is to solve the problem of data storage and transmission. It can greatly reduce the cost of data storage and transmission while improving the security of data storage.

Save energy

Computing power is the main means of calculating miners' contributions in the blockchain system. The computing power of traditional blockchains is strictly positively correlated with the computing speed of the mining machine. The higher the computing speed, the greater the computing power and the higher the miners' income.

Bitcoin mining mainly relies on computing power. The mining process is the process of calculating the hash algorithm and obtaining the result. This brings two problems: waste of computing resources and large consumption of energy. Under this incentive method, miners must invest more computing power to obtain more benefits. It relies on high-end chips such as CPU, GPU and ASIC.

The Filecoin protocol took these two issues into consideration at the beginning of its design, fundamentally avoiding the drawbacks of previous blockchains. Filecoin mining does not require a large amount of computing and consumes little power, but it requires you to have a high-quality network environment and hard disk performance.

Instead, the Filecoin protocol incentivizes miners to invest more storage devices and network bandwidth, which also lays the foundation for increasing the value of the Filecoin system.

Sharing Economy

The essence of the Filecoin project is the sharing economy, which makes it possible for the world to use storage devices and networks more efficiently and reduce the cost of data storage and transmission.

Storage Sharing

There are a large number of storage devices in the world that are not effectively utilized, such as mobile hard disks. If these idle storage devices can be effectively utilized, the data storage cost will be greatly reduced.

Broadband sharing

Like storage devices, under the current Internet technology framework, a large amount of bandwidth is not effectively utilized or its value is not distributed more fairly.

The Filecoin protocol can utilize this value, rebalance network utilization, and effectively reduce users' network usage costs.

Technological advancement

Judging from the successful experience of Bitcoin and Ethereum, blockchain has a huge influence on promoting technological progress (for example, Bitcoin promotes the development of the chip industry). The Filecoin project will also promote the rapid development of two industries - storage device manufacturing and network bandwidth expansion.
Perhaps in the near future we will be able to enjoy a cheaper and more powerful network driven by the Filecoin project.

Blockchain infrastructure

The blockchain industry is currently in a stage where the infrastructure carrying capacity is seriously insufficient and the ecological supporting facilities are very imperfect, while the downstream scenarios and applications are overly enthusiastic, urgently need to be connected, and are anxious to be launched. This is also the main reason for the excessive bubble in the entire coin chain mining circle in the past two years.

In fact, history has been repeating itself. The Internet bubble at the turn of the century around 2000 also occurred in this way. The bubble at that time was even bigger than the current blockchain bubble.

As a decentralized storage project, Filecoin is not only the most basic storage application, but also an infrastructure and an ecological support.

Data ownership and credibility

The most promising application of blockchain is smart contracts. The key to the closed-loop implementation of smart contracts is triggering events. The key to triggering event oracles lies in the availability of data and the credibility of data sources. Filecoin's decentralized and tamper-proof features make it possible to become an oracle, authoritative evidence, credible data, the best storage warehouse and data source.

Data is one of a company's most core assets. The credibility and ownership of data can, on a larger scale, drive a country's industrial innovation and change; on a smaller scale, it can change the living habits of ordinary people.

In the future, once data ownership and credibility are truly implemented, the data we generate will truly belong to us.

END