Overview

Helpful reference materials for the Filecoin specification, implementations, and ecosystem.

About Filecoin #

• Filecoin Specification - technical specification for Filecoin protocol and its associated subsystems.
• Engineering Filecoin’s Economy - the design of Filecoin’s economic incentives.
• Filecoin Slack - announcement, open discussion of Filecoin.
• Filecoin Community - Filecoin community and ecosystem channels, discussion forums, and more.
• Filecoin 中文社区 - resources and forum for the Chinese community, maintained and moderated by CoinSummer & PL.
• Filecoin Youtube channel - various Filecoin workshops, conference talks, and meetups.
• Filecoin Core Dev meeting - technical meeting to bring together various Filecoin teams for protocol development.

Filecoin Network #

Node implementations #

• Lotus - Recommended most advanced implementation and security audited, in GoLang.

• Other implementations (In progress):

  • Fuhon - C++
  • Forest - Rust
  • Venus (formerly go-filecoin) - also in GoLang (Venus Docs).

• Lotus Docker Hub Images (unofficial):

  • glif/lotus
  • ognots/lotus - mainnet-v1.830-rc1
  • textile/lotus - latest

Networks #

Network.filecoin.io - lists all current Filecoin networks and related information.

• Mainnet
  • Mainnet network status - reports the status and incident of the Filecoin Mainnet.
• Calibration
  • Largest testnet which support 32GiB and 64GiB sectors.
  • See #fil-net-calibration-announce for announcements and #fil-net-calibration-discuss for questions and discussion in Filecoin Slack.
• Local Devnet
  • Run a Local Devnet using Lotus.
  • Textile’s Local Devnet - uses a mocked sector builder for faster deal confirmation and it is for storage app prototyping.
  • Ganache for Filecoin - local network to support development with Filecoin by various ways.

Network status #

Tools to check status and details of the network and chain.

Block explorers #

• Filfox.info - Mainnet
• Filscan - Mainnet & Calibration
• Filscout - Mainnet & Calibration
• Grafana - Network Statistics Dashboard
  • Mainnet
  • Calibration

Chain data and monitoring #

• dashboard.starboard.ventures - network health monitoring
• Filstats.io - node telemetry monitoring - add your node!
• Orphan blocks (not an official protocol term in the Filecoin Spec) - Blocks without rewards that were either mined on the wrong tipset that the network fails to deliver in time, or a mix resulting in reorgs.
  • Orphan Block Statistics
  • Orphan Block List
• Sentinel Project - Filecoin Network Monitoring and Analysis System

Storage/Deals status #

• storageindex.io - compares storage capacity of different networks
• storage.filecoin.io - general storage summary of Filecoin
• filecoin.tools - check your CID’s storage deal status. Also provides an API - check filecoin.tools/docs for reference
• file.app - Filecoin storage provider analytics
• Deals list at Filfox.io

Storage Web Applications #

Web-based applications that store your data on Filecoin. No command-line or coding experience required.

• Estuary allows uploading and storing content on the Filecoin network directly from your browser. Allows anyone with public data to store and retrieve using a few API calls.
• Slate.host - a storage application on Filecoin to collect, organize, and link files together and share them, listed on Product Hunt here on Github at filecoin-project/slate
• ChainSafe Files - Dropbox-style UI, login with Oauth or general Metamask
• File.video - video hosting with decentralized transcoding from LivePeer
• Starling Framework for Data Integrity
  • to securely capture, store and verify human history
  • learn more at starlinglab.org/78days or the Filecoin blog interview
  • Starlingstorage.io - API + CLI that simplified storing data to a local Lotus node for preservation use cases.

APIs & Developer tools #

Developer tools, API clients & storage services that developers can use to build on Filecoin.

Storage APIs for app builders #

• Estuary - a simple IPFS node that integrates with Filecoin. For infrastructure operators, developers and users.
  • Estuary Docs
  • Estuary www - a simple web app example
  • Estuary Rclone - sync to and from different cloud storage providers and Estuary
• NFT.storage - beta service from Protocol Labs for storing off-chain NFT data on IPFS and Filecoin.
• Web3.storage - beta service from Protocol Labs for storing off-chain dapp data on IPFS and Filecoin, with help from Pinata (a fast IPFS Pinning Service) to distribute the content across IPFS
• Slate.host - has a Developer API that allows you upload files with an account
• Textile.io’s tools - suite of tools for interacting with IPFS and Filecoin
  • includes The Hub, Buckets, ThreadsDB, Powergate, Tableland (new) and Filecoin bridges to Polygon and NEAR
  • Powergate - infrastructure tool for using IPFS for hot storage and retrieval and Filecoin for cold, with deal helpers and other convenience features
  • Textile Buckets - simplified cloud bucket store on IPFS with archive to Filecoin option using Powergate under the hood
• Fleek’s tools - provides access to Fleek’s hosted services using IPFS, Textile, Filecoin, Ethereum, etc.
  • Space SDK - JS library backed by Fleek’s hosted services
  • Space Daemon - GoLang library for building desktop apps

Message signing tools #

• Filecoin Signing Tools - Recommended a pure JS or Rust / WASM / JSONRPC library for creating signed messages apart from a Filecoin node.
  • Also available on npm at @zondax/filecoin-signing-tools
  • For an open source example of how to use it see the Glif web wallet on Github.
• Filecoin JS Signer - [last update: June 2021] pure TS / JS library for creating signed messages and interacting with Filecoin’s built-in Actors (like Payment Channel and Multisig), used by the Filecoin Loans grant project.
  • On npm at @blitslabs/filecoin-js-signer

Wallet-related tools #

• Filecoin Rosetta API Proxy - Rosetta is an API standard created by Coinbase for a consistent interface to many chains for wallets and exchanges.
• FilSnap MetaMask Plugin - MetaMask has a new plugin system currently still in beta that developers can try out. The MM UI will not change but Filecoin keys are in the MM vault. Try it with https://filsnap.chainsafe.io/

Node Infrastructure & APIs #

NOTE: making deep calls into the chain’s history may take some time to return and it may be more efficient to use a chain database (e.g. used by block explorers) that stores the chain’s history and is optimized for queries.

• Glif nodes and Infura - Hosted endpoints to Filecoin mainnet and testnet.
  • These endpoints support read-only calls and MPoolPush() for sending signed transactions to the network (which can be signed using the Message signing tools).
• Lotus JSON-RPC API - Lotus offers the full feature set of its capabilities through API.
  • lotus API Postman sample - (shows sample wallet calls only)

Scalable endpoint hosting #

For running a node cluster of load balanced Lotus JSON RPC API endpoints.

• Filecoin-chart (k8 cluster) - Helm chart for hosting Lotus Node clients.

Filecoin API clients #

• Filecoin.js (outdated) - higher-level JS library for interacting with Lotus via JSON-RPC API.
• js-lotus-client - lower-level JS wrapper for basic parsing of the Lotus JSON RPC API.
• lotus-json-rpc-provider (outdated) - wraps the Lotus API in TypeScript.

Storage provider index API #

• Filrep.io API - A suite of RESTFul JSON endpoints to discover the best storage provider to make deals with.
• Textile storage provider Index - API and CLI to find storage providers by price, observed deals, speed from North American nodes.

Data prep tools #

• CAR files - automatically used on Lotus import for less than 32 and 64 GiB, Filecoin archive format serialized from DAGs, see also offline deals for large datasets.
• go-graphsplit - by FileDrive chunks a larger single DAG for storage in default Filecoin 32 and 64 GiB sector sizes.
• IPFS - you can use ipfs add with an IPFS node then add the CID from a Filecoin node.

Databases using IPFS and Filecoin #

• Tableland - (new) create familiar SQL tables to read and write dynamic NFT metadata or application data for dapps, from Textile
• OrbitDB - decentralized multi-party database on IPFS with multi-party syncing with topic pubsub and CRDTs. Filecoin integration using Powergate available at orbit-db-powergate-io.
• ThreadsDB - decentralized multi-party database for user-siloed data on IPFS, from Textile

Other developer tools #

• js-rle - RLE+ Spec. Learn about rle-bitset-encoding in the Filecoin Spec.
• Truffle for Filecoin - building apps to preserve files to IPFS and Filecoin.

Storage providers #

Storage provider reputation systems #

• Codefi Storage - view the Filecoin Storage Market, storage provider info, asking price, completed deals.
• FIL Swan - for offline deals, storage provider info, prices, offline deal acceptance.
• Filrep.io - Index of online storage providers and their pricing, ranked by power and reputation score.
• SpaceGap - shows storage proof deadlines and sector details for the top 50 storage providers.

Storage provider tools #

• Bidbot - A Filecoin Network sidecar to bid in storage deal auctions.
• Filgas.io - real-time Filecoin mining gas queries.
• Lotus Farcaster - Prometheus, Grafana and Python monitoring dashboard.

Storage client and miner programs #

• Filecoin storage providers - Interested in becoming an SP? A bootcamp, grants and expert advice is available here!
• Filecoin Plus Verified Data Program
  • incentivizes valuable data stored on Filecoin with a social trust network for verified data
  • Clients can apply to Notaries to receive DataCap and incentivize storage providers at 10x to their quality-adjusted power, increasing probability of block rewards
• Slingshot Competition - ended in 2021 and has now become Filecoin Evergreen

Retrieval Market resources (WIP experiments) #

The Retrieval Market is in early development; research and development teams are actively exploring improvements.

• Browser Retrieval Client
• Browser Retrieval Client using WASM
• ChainSafe’s Full Node Retrieval Client
• Decentralized Data Delivery Markets - Open Problems and RFCs
• July 2020 Retrieval Markets Workshop - list of Sessions

Ecosystem galleries #

• Community Projects Showcase - updated news about ecosystem projects
• Filecoin Ecosystem

Hackathons #

• Upcoming Hackathons
  • Keep a lookout for upcoming hackathons!
  • All winners are eligible for Next Steps Grants after the Hackathon!

Grants and accelerators #

• Filecoin Dev Grants - ongoing monthly dev grant program to support open source projects + new RFPs on Filecoin
  • funded by the Filecoin Foundation
• Accelerators