Filecoin mainnet test "advanced" mining machines may be eliminated

Text | Hoho

Editor | Wen Dao

The Filecoin community has waited for two full years and finally saw the launch of the project’s test network.

Filecoin, a decentralized storage project that uses the Interstellar File System (IPFS), has been surrounded by glory since its birth. The project has raised $205 million on the financing platform COINLIST. Over the past two years, the development team has repeatedly delayed the launch of the mainnet, which has damaged the project's reputation.

On December 12, the Filecoin (FIL) testnet was successfully launched. Market funds and attention poured in again, but the development team's history of "delayed releases" has long been a concern for the community. Some investors are worried that the official launch of the mainnet will be delayed again and again.

Previously, the cryptocurrency industry had already seen futures trading of project assets FIL and mining machines. In 2018, ten mining machine service providers with the label of "IPFS mining" appeared on the market. Several digital asset trading platforms, including LBank and Gate, also launched FIL futures trading last year.

An official community manager said that Filecoin will most likely adopt GPU mining. Miners who have been waiting for more than a year and stockpiled CPU mining machines are in trouble.

At 1:55 am on December 12, the Filecoin (FIL) test network was successfully launched. According to the test network browser, the entire network has produced 6,927 blocks, with an average block time of 47 seconds. As of 16:00 on the 15th, the network storage space reached 96.1TiB.

Currently, the Filecoin test network is running smoothly

Filecoin and IPFS protocol supporters have waited for this moment for two years.

The Chinese name of IPFS is "Interstellar File System". It is an Internet protocol officially released as early as 2015. It is a global, peer-to-peer distributed version of the file system. Its goal is to supplement or even replace the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) that currently dominates the Internet and connect all computing devices with the same file system together.

IPFS, with the expectation of "subverting the HTTP protocol", has been applied in some media and browsers.

According to official data, both Filecoin and IPFS were created by Protocol Labs, and Filecoin is an incentive mechanism of the IPFS system. "Using IPFS, each node can store the data they think is important, but there is no scheme on the IPFS network to incentivize others to join or store specific data. Therefore, under the incentive structure of Filecoin, miners can get rewards by continuously storing data and proving data storage in an encrypted manner, thus improving the IPFS system."

Thanks to the reputation of IPFS, Filecoin can be said to have been blessed since its birth. However, for the miner nodes waiting to mine, the development progress of Filecoin is really not satisfactory.

In 2017, Filecoin completed a $205 million financing on the financing platform COINLIST. Netizen "POGO", who has been following FIL since 2018, was quite emotional, "FIL set a record for financing in the cryptocurrency circle at that time. In the past two years, the market has experienced many bull-bear transitions, but FIL has been silent."

Now that the project testnet is online, the discussion about Filecoin and IPFS protocol has heated up again. In several Filecoin discussion groups, long-dormant supporters have begun to bubble up, discussing the latest progress of the project from time to time.

Although the testnet has already started "trial operation", supporters who have been "delayed" by the mainnet launch time many times are still worried. In the original plan, the mainnet launch time of FIL was June 2018, but in August 2018, the mainnet launch time of FIL was changed to the second or third quarter of 2019. Now, according to the latest official announcement of FIL, the mainnet launch window has become March 23 to April 24 next year.

As market funds are ready to move, some investors said that the biggest risk is the launch time of the project's main network, "I'm afraid it will be delayed again and again."

Against the backdrop of repeated delays in the launch of the Filecoin mainnet, the market hype always outstrips the project's development progress.

From the project financing in August 2017 to 2018, ten mining machine service providers with the label of "IPFS mining" have appeared on the market. These miners use "mineable Filecoin tokens" as a promotional point and compete to launch mining machines.

In addition, several digital asset trading platforms, including LBank and Gate, also launched futures trading of FIL assets last year in response to market enthusiasm.

For a long time, miners and FIL investors who purchased mining machines have been trapped in a vicious circle of "having mining machines and computing power, but no coins to mine" and "having exchanges to trade, but no coins to withdraw".

According to the official account "Bibi News", as of June this year, the number of Filecoin mining machines sold on the market has reached one million, and miners have earned huge profits. It is worth noting that Filecoin officials have never announced the hardware parameters of FIL mining machines. This means that miners can't wait to buy mining machines when they are still unsure when the main network will be launched and whether the mining machines can mine coins.

On August 28 last year, the Filecoin team reminded mining machine investors in an announcement not to buy any specific IPFS mining machines before the official mining rules were released. "We have not yet released the configuration rules for FIL mining machines, so the IPFS mining machines on the market may become suboptimal or have unnecessary complexity."

Now, Filecoin’s well-intentioned reminder from a year ago has become a reality.

On November 27 this year, the Filecoin development team announced a piece of news that shocked the community. Official community administrator Why said on social media, "In the next development network, Filecoin mining has basically confirmed that graphics cards (GPUs) will be required."

Filecoin team says it will use GPU mining

According to statistics from the public account "IPFS Miner Club", there are currently ten mainstream FIL mining machines on the market. These mining machine service providers use "mineable FIL" as a promotional point, and the Leviathan P1 mining machine, Maya mining machine H2, Hummingbird H1 and other mining machines they launched all use CPU mode.

In March this year, Hao Liang (pseudonym) bought an "IPFS Interstellar Miner F1", which the manufacturer claimed "you only need to plug in the network cable to start mining Filecoin in fool-proof mode". During the more than one year of waiting for the FIL mainnet to be launched, Hao Liang used it to mine tokens such as SC and Storj, but the profit was minimal. As the FIL mainnet is about to be launched, Hao Liang's mining machine may face the embarrassment of being unusable. "Now let's see if we can add a GPU slot to the mining machine. If not, it will be a waste."

Parameters of IPFS Interstellar Miner

There are many miners who have experienced the same thing as Hao Liang, and the GPU mining model has also triggered discussions within the FIL community. On November 9, the FIL futures price was around $7.17, which was the highest price of the project in more than a year. As of 18:00 on December 15, the price of FIL had fallen to $3.71, a drop of 48% in the past month. Analysts believe that the decline in the price of the currency is related to the fact that the previously popular CPU mining machines in the market cannot participate in Filecoin mining.

Every breakthrough in technological innovation hides huge dividends, but premature digging for dividends often turns into a deep pit, and blind speculators become the sand that fills the pit. Now it seems that Filecoin's variables are indeed one of the risks.

The mainnet has been delayed many times. Do you still believe in Filecoin?