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
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.
- 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).
- These endpoints support read-only calls and
- 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