Native currency

Filecoin’s native currency, FIL, is a utility token that incentivizes persistent storage on the Filecoin network. Storage providers earn FIL by offering reliable storage services or committing storage capacity to the network. With a maximum circulating supply of 2 billion FIL, no more than 2 billion Filecoin will ever exist.

As a utility token aligned with the network’s long-term growth, Filecoin issuance depends on the network’s provable utility and growth. Most of the Filecoin supply is only minted as the network achieves specific growth and utility milestones.

Filecoin uses a dual minting model for block reward distribution:

Baseline minting

Up to 770 million FIL tokens are minted based on network performance. Full release of these tokens would only occur if the Filecoin network reaches a yottabyte of storage capacity within 20 years, approximately 1,000 times the capacity of today’s cloud storage.

Simple minting

An additional 330 million FIL tokens are released on a 6-year half-life schedule, with 97% of these tokens projected to be released over about 30 years.

Additionally, 300 million FIL tokens are held in a mining reserve to incentivize future mining models.

Vesting

Collateral and slashing

To ensure network security and reliable storage, storage providers must lock FIL as pledge collateral during block reward mining. Pledge collateral is based on projected block rewards a miner could earn. Collateral and all earned rewards are subject to slashing if the storage fails to meet reliability standards throughout a sector’s lifecycle.

Total supply

FIL’s maximum circulating supply is capped at 2 billion FIL. However, this maximum will never be reached, as a portion of FIL is permanently removed from circulation through gas fees, penalties, and other mechanisms.

Blockchain

Tipsets

A tipset is a set of blocks with the same height, allowing multiple storage providers to produce blocks in each epoch, increasing network throughput. The Filecoin blockchain consists of a chain of tipsets rather than individual blocks. Each tipset is assigned a weight, enabling the consensus protocol to guide nodes to build on the heaviest chain and preventing interference from nodes attempting to produce invalid blocks.

Actors

Actors are ‘objects’ within the Filecoin network, each with a state and a set of methods for interaction, that pass messages to each other and ensure the system operates appropiately.

Built-in actors

Several built-in system actors power the Filecoin network as a decentralized storage network:

• Init actor: Initializes new actors and records the network name.

• Cron actor: Scheduler that runs critical functions at every epoch.

• Account actor: Manages user accounts (non-singleton).

• Reward actor: Manages block rewards and token vesting (singleton).

• Storage miner actor: Manages storage mining operations and validates storage proofs.

• Storage power actor: Tracks storage power allocation for each provider.

• Storage market actor: Manages storage deals.

• Multisig actor: Handles Filecoin multi-signature wallet operations.

• Payment channel actor: Sets up and settles payment channel funds.

• Datacap actor: Manages datacap tokens.

• Verified registry actor: Manages verified clients.

• Ethereum Address Manager (EAM) actor: Assigns Ethereum-compatible addresses on Filecoin, including EVM smart contract addresses.

• Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) account actor: Represents an external Ethereum identity backed by a secp256k1 key.

• System actor: General system actor.

Nodes

Filecoin nodes are categorized by the services they provide to the storage network, including chain verifier nodes, client nodes, storage provider nodes, and retrieval provider nodes. All participating nodes must provide chain verification services.

Filecoin supports multiple protocol implementations to enhance security and resilience. Active implementations include:

Addresses

In the Filecoin network, addresses identify actors in the Filecoin state. Each address encodes information about the corresponding actor, making it easy to use and resistant to errors. Filecoin has five address types. Mainnet addresses start with f, and Testnet addresses start with t.

• f0/t0: ID address for an actor in a human-readable format, such as f0123261 for a storage provider.

• f1/t1: secp256k1 wallet address, generated from an encrypted secp256k1 public key.

• f2/t2: Address assigned to an actor in a way that ensures stability across network forks.

• f3/t3: BLS wallet address, generated from a BLS public key.

• f4/t4: Address created and assigned to user-defined actors by customizable "address management" actors. This address can receive funds before an actor is deployed.

• f410/t410: Address space managed by the Ethereum Address Manager (EAM) actor, allowing Ethereum-compatible addresses to interact seamlessly with the Filecoin network. Ethereum addresses can be cast as f410/t410 addresses and vice versa, enabling compatibility with existing Ethereum tools.

Consensus

Expected consensus

Expected Consensus (EC) is the probabilistic, Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus algorithm underlying Filecoin. EC conducts a leader election among storage providers each epoch to determine which provider submits a block. Similar to proof-of-stake, Filecoin’s leader election relies on proof-of-storage, meaning the probability of being elected depends on how much provable storage a miner contributes to the network --measured in something called "storage power".

Ultimately, the EC process ends by gathering all valid blocks produced in an epoch to a tipset, applying a weighting function to select the heaviest chain, and adding the tipset to the heaviest chain accordingly.

Block production process

The block production process for each epoch is as follows:

• Elect leaders from eligible miners.

• Miners check if they are elected.

• Elected miners generate WinningPoSt using randomness.

• Miners build and propagate a block.

• Verify the winning miner and election.

• Select the heaviest chain to add the tipset.

Finality

EC enforces soft finality, where miners at round N reject blocks forking off before round N - F (where F is set to 900). This ensures finality without compromising chain availability.

Proofs

Filecoin operates on proof-of-storage, where miners offer storage space and provide proofs to verify data storage.

Proof of replication

With proof-of-replication (PoRep), storage providers prove they have created a unique copy of the client’s data for the network.

Proof of spacetime

Storage providers must continuously prove that they are storing clients' data throughout the entire duration of the storage deal. The proof-of-spacetime (PoSt) process includes two types of challenges:

• Winning PoSt: Verifies that a storage provider holds a copy of the data at a specific point in time.

• Window PoSt: Confirms that the data has been consistently stored over a defined period.

Slashing

If storage providers fail to maintain reliable uptime or act maliciously, they face penalties through a process called slashing. Filecoin enforces two types of slashing:

• Storage Fault Slashing: Penalizes providers who fail to maintain healthy and reliable storage sectors.

• Consensus Fault Slashing: Penalizes providers attempting to disrupt the security or availability of the consensus process.

Choose your own path to start exploring Filecoin:

The Filecoin storage model consists of three main components:

• Providers

• Deals

• Sectors

Providers

Providers offer storage and retrieval services to network users. There are two types of providers:

• Storage Providers

• Retrieval Providers

Storage providers

Storage providers, often called SPs, are responsible for storing files and data for clients on the network. They also provide cryptographic proofs to verify that data is stored securely. The majority of providers on the Filecoin network are SPs.

Retrieval providers

Retrieval providers, or RPs, specialize in delivering quick access to data rather than long-term storage. While many storage providers also offer retrieval services, stand-alone RPs are increasingly joining the network to enhance data accessibility.

Deals

In the Filecoin network, SPs and RPs offer storage or retrieval services to clients through deals. These deals are negotiated between two parties and outline terms such as data size, price, duration, and collateral.

The deal-making process initially occurs off-chain. Once both parties agree to the terms, the deal is published on-chain for network-wide visibility and validation.

Sectors

Sectors are the fundamental units of provable storage where storage providers securely store client data and generate PoSt (Proof of Spacetime) for the Filecoin network. Sectors come in standard sizes, typically 32 GiB or 64 GiB, and have a set lifespan that providers can extend before it expires.

Introduction to Filecoin

Filecoin is a peer-to-peer network that enables reliable, decentralized file storage through built-in economic incentives and cryptographic proofs. Clients, or users, pay any number of storage providers, or data centers, to store the client's data --storage providers then provide cryptographic proofs daily as evidence to the clients that the data is still at the data center. Storage providers lock a certain amount of Filecoin as collateral --should they repeatedly fail to provide a proof, their collateral gets burned, serving as a strong deterrent from the data center losing the data.

Anyone can join Filecoin as a client looking to store their data, or as a storage provider offering storage services. Storage availability and pricing aren’t controlled by any single entity; instead, Filecoin fosters an open market for file storage and retrieval accessible to all. Clients can review the history of each storage provider, along with their credentials and compliance record, before choosing to store their data with them.

Historically, IPFS node operators offered pinning services to the community out of interest and often for free, meaning there was no financial incentive for the IPFS node operators to stay online or keep a given file for a long period of time. Filecoin solves this issue by introducing an incentive layer (clients pay storage providers for long term data center use) to ensure more reliable long term cold storage. Since most Filecoin nodes are also IPFS nodes, they can pin a hot copy of the given file to the IPFS node to allow the client to easily retrieve the file later.

Compute-over-data

For example, Bacalhau provides a platform for public, transparent, and verifiable distributed computation, allowing users to run Docker containers and WebAssembly (Wasm) images as tasks on data stored in InterPlanetary File System (IPFS).

Filecoin is uniquely positioned to support large-scale off-chain computation because storage providers have compute resources, such as GPUs and CPUs, colocated with their data. This setup enables a new paradigm where computations occur directly on the data where it resides, reducing the need to move data to external compute nodes.

Filecoin Virtual Machine

The Filecoin Virtual Machine (FVM) is a runtime environment for executing smart contracts on the Filecoin network. These smart contracts allow users to run bounded computations and establish rules for storing and accessing data. The FVM ensures that these contracts are executed securely and reliably.

Initially, the FVM supports smart contracts written in Solidity, with plans to expand to other languages that compile to Wasm, as outlined in the FVM roadmap.

By enabling compute-over-states on the Filecoin network, the FVM unlocks a wide range of potential use cases. Examples include:

Data Organizations

FVM enables a new kind of organization centered around data.

Data DAOs and tokenized datasets

The FVM makes it possible to create and manage decentralized and autonomous organizations (Data DAOs) focused on data curation and preservation. Data DAOs allow groups of individuals or organizations to govern and monetize data access, pooling returns into a shared treasury to fund preservation and growth. These data tokens can also be exchanged among peers or used to request computation services, such as validation, analysis, feature detection, and machine learning.

Perpetual storage

The FVM allows users to store data once and use repair and replication bots to manage ongoing storage deals, ensuring perpetual data storage. Through smart contracts, users can fund a wallet with FIL, allowing storage providers to maintain data storage indefinitely. Repair bots monitor these storage deals and replicate data across providers as needed, offering long-term data permanence.

Financial services for miners

The FVM can facilitate unique financial services tailored for storage providers (SPs) in the Filecoin ecosystem.

Lending and staking protocols

Users can lend Filecoin to storage providers to be used as storage collateral, earning interest in return. Loans may be undercollateralized based on SP performance history, with reputation scores generated from on-chain data. Loans can also be automatically repaid to investors using a multisig wallet, which includes lenders and a third-party arbitrator. New FVM-enabled smart contracts create yield opportunities for FIL holders while supporting the growth of storage services on the network.

Insurance

SPs may require financial products to protect against risks in providing storage solutions. Attributes such as payment history, operational length, and availability can be used to underwrite insurance policies, shielding SPs from financial impacts due to storage faults or token price fluctuations.

Core chain infrastructure

The FVM is expected to achieve feature parity with other persistent EVM chains, supporting critical infrastructure for decentralized exchanges and token bridges.

Decentralized exchanges

To facilitate on-chain token exchange, the FVM may support decentralized exchanges like Uniswap or Sushi, or implement decentralized order books similar to Serum on Solana.

Token bridges

Although not an immediate focus, token bridges will eventually connect Filecoin to EVM, Move, and Cosmos chains, enabling cross-chain wrapped tokens. While Filecoin currently offers unique value without needing to bootstrap liquidity from other chains, long-term integration with other blockchains is anticipated.

If you are interested in building these use cases, the following solution blueprints may be helpful:

Filecoin EVM

Since Filecoin nodes support the Ethereum JSON-RPC API, FEVM is compatible with existing EVM development tools, such as Hardhat, Brownie, and MetaMask. Most smart contracts deployed to Filecoin require minimal adjustments, if any. For example, new ERC-20 tokens can be launched on Filecoin or bridged to other chains.

Developers can choose between deploying actors on the FEVM or native FVM: for optimal performance, actors should be written in languages that compile to Wasm and deployed to the native FVM. For familiarity with Solidity and EVM tools, the FEVM is a convenient alternative.

In summary, the FEVM provides a straightforward path for Web3 developers to begin building on Filecoin using familiar tools and languages, while gaining native access to Filecoin storage deals.

The primary difference between FEVM and EVM contracts is that FEVM contracts can interact directly with Filecoin-specific actors, such as miner actors, which are inaccessible to Ethereum contracts. To enable seamless integration, a Filecoin-Solidity API library has been developed to facilitate interactions with Filecoin-specific actors and syscalls.

Basic Retrieval from Filecoin

Currently, Filecoin nodes support direct retrieval from the storage miners who originally stored the data. Clients can send retrieval requests directly to a storage provider and pay a small amount of FIL to retrieve their data.

To request data retrieval, clients need to provide the following information to the storage provider:

• Storage Provider ID: The ID of the storage provider where the data is stored.

• Payload CID: Also known as Data CID.

• Address: The address initially used to create the storage deal.

Hot Retrieval from IPFS

Since most Filecoin nodes are also IPFS nodes, standard practice has been for Filecoin storage providers to also make available a hot copy of any given stored file through IPFS. Since the algorithm that generates a content address (CID) is the same for both Filecoin and IPFS, the client can request the CID of a file they stored on Filecoin and retrieve it from IPFS, if there is an IPFS node that is able and willing to serve the file.

Mainnet

Testnets

Test networks, or testnets, are versions of the Filecoin network that simulate various aspects of the mainnet. They are intended for testing and should not be used for production applications or services.

Calibration

All Filecoin addresses begin with an f to indicate the network (Filecoin), followed by any of the address prefix numbers (0, 1, 2, 3, 4) to indicate the address type. There are five address types:

Each of the address types is described below.

Actor IDs

All actors have a short integer assigned to them by InitActor, a unique actor that can create new actors. This integer that gets assigned is the ID of that actor. An ID address is an actor’s ID prefixed with the network identifier and the address type.

Actor ID addresses are not robust in the sense that they depend on chain state and are defined on-chain by the InitActor. Additionally, actor IDs can change for a brief time after creation if the same ID is assigned to different actors on different forks. Actor ID addresses are similar to monotonically increasing numeric primary keys in a relational database. So, when a chain reorganization occurs (similar to a rollback in a SQL database), you can refer to the same ID for different rows. The expected consensus algorithm will resolve the conflict. Once the state that defines a new ID reaches finality, no changes can occur, and the ID is bound to that actor forever.

For example, the mainnet burn account ID address, f099, is structured as follows:

  Address type
  |
f 0 9 9
|    |
|    Actor ID
|
Network identifier

ID addresses are often referred to by their shorthand f0.

Public keys

Actors managed directly by users, like accounts, are derived from a public-private key pair. If you have access to a private key, you can sign messages sent from that actor. The public key is used to derive an address for the actor. Public key addresses are referred to as robust addresses as they do not depend on the Filecoin chain state.

Public key addresses allow devices, like hardware wallets, to derive a valid Filecoin address for your account using just the public key. The device doesn’t need to ask a remote node what your ID address is. Public key addresses provide a concise, safe, human-readable way to reference actors before the chain state is final. ID addresses are used as a space-efficient way to identify actors in the Filecoin chain state, where every byte matters.

Filecoin supports two types of public key addresses:

For BLS addresses, Filecoin uses curve bls12-381 for BLS signatures, which is a pair of two related curves, G1 and G2.

Filecoin uses G1 for public keys, as G1 allows for a smaller representation of public keys and G2 for signatures. This implements the same design as ETH2 but contrasts with Zcash, which has signatures on G1 and public keys on G2. However, unlike ETH2, which stores private keys in big-endian order, Filecoin stores and interprets private keys in little-endian order.

Public key addresses are often referred to by their shorthand, f1 or f3.

Actors

Actor addresses provide a way to create robust addresses for actors not associated with a public key. They are generated by taking a sha256 hash of the output of the account creation. The ZH storage provider has the actor address f2plku564ddywnmb5b2ky7dhk4mb6uacsxuuev3pi and the ID address f01248.

Actor addresses are often referred to by their shorthand, f2.

Extensible user-defined actors

• A predictable addressing scheme to support interactions with addresses that do not yet exist on-chain.

• User-defined, custom addressing systems without extensive changes and network upgrades.

• Support for native addressing schemes from foreign runtimes such as the EVM.

An f4 address is structured as f4<address-manager-actor-id>f<new-actor-id>, where <address-manager-actor-id> is the actor ID of the address manager, and <new-actor-id> is the arbitrary actor ID chosen by that actor. An address manager is an actor that can create new actors and assign an f4 address to the new actor.

As an example, suppose an address manager has an actor ID (an f0 address) 123, and that address manager creates a new actor. Then, the f4 address of the actor created by the address manager is f4123fa3491xyz, where f4 is the address class, 123 is the actor ID of the address manager, f is a separator, and a3491xyz is the arbitrary <new-actor-id> chosen by that actor.

Blocks

In Filecoin, a block consists of:

• A block header

• A list of messages contained in the block

• A signed copy of each message listed

Every block refers to at least one parent block; that is, a block produced in a prior epoch.

A message represents communication between two actors and thus changes in network state. The messages are listed in their order of appearance, deduplicated, and returned in canonical order of execution. So, in other words, a block describes all changes to the network state in a given epoch.

Blocktime

Blocktime is a concept that represents the average time it takes to mine or produce a new block on a blockchain. In Ethereum, for example, the blocktime is approximately 15 seconds on average, meaning that a new block is added to the Ethereum blockchain roughly every 15 seconds.

In the Filecoin network, storage providers compete to produce blocks by providing storage capacity and participating in the consensus protocol. The block time determines how frequently new blocks are added to the blockchain, which impacts the overall speed and responsiveness of the network.

Filecoin has a block time of 30 seconds, and this duration was chosen for two main reasons:

• Hardware requirements: If the block time were faster while maintaining the same gas limit or the number of messages per block, it would lead to increased hardware requirements. This includes the need for more storage space to accommodate the larger chain data resulting from more frequent block production.

• Storage provider operations: The block time also takes into account the various operations that occur during that duration on the storage provider (SP) side. As SPs generate new blocks, the 30-second block time allows for the necessary processes and computations to be carried out effectively. If the blocktime were shorter, SPs would encounter significantly more blocktime failures.

By considering these factors, the Filecoin network has established a block time of 30 seconds, balancing the need for efficient operations and hardware requirements.

Tipsets

Benefits of tipsets

In other blockchains, blocks are used as the fundamental representation of network state, that is, the overall status of each participant in the network at a given time. However, this structure has the following disadvantages:

• Potential block producers may be hobbled by network latency.

• Not all valid work is rewarded.

• Decentralization and collaboration in block production are not incentivized.

Because Filecoin is a chain of tipsets rather than individual blocks, the network enjoys the following benefits:

• All valid blocks generated in a given round are used to determine network state, increasing network efficiency and throughput.

• All valid work is rewarded (that is, all validated block producers in an epoch receive a block reward).

• All potential block producers are incentivized to produce blocks, disincentivizing centralization and promoting collaboration.

• Because all blocks in a tipset have the same height and parent, Filecoin is able to achieve rapid convergence in the case of forks.

In summary, blocks, which contain actor messages, are grouped into tipsets in each epoch, which can be thought of as the overall description of the network state for a given epoch.

Tipsets in the Ethereum JSON-RPC

Wherever you see the term block in the Ethereum JSON-RPC, you should mentally read tipset. Before the inclusion of the Filecoin EVM runtime, there was no single hash referring to a tipset. A tipset ID was the concatenation of block CIDs, which led to a variable-length ID and poor user experience.

With the Ethereum JSON-RPC, we introduced the concept of the tipset CID for the first time. It is calculated by hashing the former tipset key using a Blake-256 hash. Therefore, when you see the term:

• block hash, think tipset hash.

• block height, think tipset epoch.

• block messages, think messages in all blocks in a tipset, in their order of appearance, deduplicated and returned in canonical order of execution.

Overview

Properties

Expected Consensus (EC) has the following properties:

• Each epoch has potentially multiple elected leaders who may propose a block.

• A winner is selected randomly from a set of network participants weighted according to the respective storage power they contribute to the Filecoin network.

• All blocks proposed are grouped together in a tipset, from which the final chain is selected.

• A block producer can be verified by any participant in the network.

• The identity of a block producer is anonymous until they release their block to the network.

Steps

In summary, EC involves the following steps at each epoch:

1. A storage provider checks to see if they are elected to propose a block by generating an election proof.

2. Zero, one, or multiple storage providers may be elected to propose a block. This does not mean that an elected participant is guaranteed to be able to submit a block. In the case where:

   • No storage providers are elected to propose a block in a given epoch; a new election is run in the next epoch to ensure that the network remains live.

   • One or more storage providers are elected to propose a block in a given epoch; each must generate a WinningPoSt proof-of-storage to be eligible to actually submit a block.

3. • All potential block producers fail WinningPoSt, in which case EC returns to step 1 (described above).

   • One or more potential block producers pass WinningPoSt, which means they are eligible to submit that block to the epochs tipset.

5. The tipset that reflects the biggest amount of committed storage on the network is selected.

6. Using the selected tipset, the chain state is propagated.

7. EC returns to step 1 in the next epoch.

Uses

FIL plays a vital role in incentivizing users to participate in the Filecoin network and ensuring its smooth operation. Here are some ways in which FIL is used on the Filecoin network:

Network payments

When a user wants to store data on the Filecoin network, they pay in FIL to the storage providers who offer their storage space. The payment is made in advance, for a certain amount of time that the data will be stored on the network.

In addition, storage providers choose their own terms and payment mechanisms for providing storage and retrieval services so other options (such as fiat payments) can be available.

Blockchain rewards

Storage providers are also rewarded with FIL for providing their storage space and performing other useful tasks on the network. FIL is used to reward storage providers who validate and add new blocks to the Filecoin blockchain. Providers receive a block reward in FIL for each new block they add to the blockchain and also earn transaction fees in FIL for processing storage and retrieval transactions.

Governance

Denominations

FIL, NanoFIL, and PicoFIL are all denominated in the same cryptocurrency unit, but they represent different levels of precision and granularity. For most users, FIL is the main unit of measurement and is used for most transactions and payments on the Filecoin network.

Much like how a US penny represents a fraction of a US dollar, there are many ways to represent value using Filecoin. This is because some actions on the Filecoin network require substantially less value than one whole FIL. The different denominations of FIL you may see referenced across the ecosystem are:

Using ChainID

ChainID.network is a website that lets users easily connect their wallets to EVM-compatible blockchains. ChainID is the simplest way to add the Filecoin network to your MetaMask wallet.

Manual process

If you can't or don't want to use ChainID, you can add the Filecoin network to your MetaMask manually.

Prerequisites

Before we get started, you’ll need the following:

Steps

The process for configuring MetaMask to use Filecoin is fairly simple but has some very specific variables that you must copy exactly.

1. Open your browser and open the MetaMask plugin. If you haven’t opened the MetaMask plugin before, you’ll be prompted to create a new wallet. Follow the prompts to create a wallet.

2. Click the user circle and select Settings.

3. Select Networks.

4. Click Add a network.

5. Scroll down and click Add a network manually.

6. Enter the following information into the fields:

2. Review the values in the fields and click Save.

3. The Filecoin network should now be shown in your MetaMask window.

4. Done!

You can now use MetaMask to interact with the Filecoin network.

Ledger hardware wallet

Install the Ledger app

Before you can connect MetaMask to your Ledger, you must install the Filecoin Ledger app on your Ledger device.

1. Open Ledger Live and navigate to My Ledger.

2. Connect your Ledger device and unlock it.

3. Confirm that you allow My Ledger to access your Ledger device. You can do that by clicking both buttons on your Ledger device simultaneously.

4. Go back to Ledger Live on your computer.

5. In My Ledger, head over to App catalog and search for Filecoin.

6. Click Install.

Enable expert-mode

MetaMask requires that the Filecoin app on your Ledger device is set to Expert mode.

1. Open the Filecoin app on your Ledger device.
2. Use the buttons on your device to navigate to Expert mode.
3. Press both buttons simultaneously to enable Expert mode.

Connect to MetaMask

Once you have installed the Filecoin app on your Ledger device and enabled expert mode, you can connect your device to MetaMask.

1. Open your browser and open the MetaMask extension.

2. In the Accounts menu, select Add hardware wallet.
3. Select Ledger
4. A list of accounts should appear. Select an 0x... account.
5. Done!

That's it! You've now successfully connected your Ledger device to MetaMask. When you submit any transactions through MetaMask using this account, the Filecoin Ledger app will prompt you for a confirmation on the Ledger device.

You may see a blind signing warning on your MetaMask device. This is expected, and is the reason why Expert Mode must be enabled before you can interact with the Filecoin Ledger app.

Different blockchains use different cryptographic proving systems (proofs) based on the network’s specific purpose, goals, and functionality. Regardless of which method is used, proofs have the following in common:

• Proofs incentivize network participants to behave in certain ways and allow the network to penalize participants who do not abide by network standards.

• Proofs allow decentralized systems to agree on a network state without a central authority.

Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake are both fairly common proof methods:

• Proof-of-Work: nodes in the network solve complex mathematical problems to validate transactions and create new blocks,

• Proof-of-Stake: nodes in the network are chosen to validate transactions and create new blocks based on the amount of cryptocurrency they hold and “stake” in the network.

The Filecoin network aims to provide useful, reliable storage to its participants. With a traditional centralized entity like a cloud storage provider, explicit trust is placed in the entity itself that the data will be stored in a way that meets some minimum set of standards such as security, scalability, retrievability, or replication. Because the Filecoin network is a decentralized network of storage providers (SPs) distributed across the globe, network participants need an automated, trustless, and decentralized way to validate that an SP is doing a good job of handling the data.

In particular, the Filecoin proof process must verify the data was properly stored at the time of the initial request and is continuing to be stored based on the terms of the agreement between the client and the SP. In order for the proof processes to be robust, the process must:

• Target a random part of the data.

• Occur at a time interval such that it is not possible, profitable, or rational for an SP to discard and re-fetch the copy of data.

In Filecoin, this process is known as Proof-of-Storage, and consists of two distinct types of proofs:

Proof-of-Replication (PoRep)

In the Filecoin storage lifecycle process, Proof-of-Replication (PoRep) is used when an SP agrees to store data on behalf of a client and receives a piece of client data. In this process:

2. The sector is sealed by the SP.

4. The proof is compressed.

5. The result of the compression is submitted to the network as certification of storage.

Sealing as proof

The unique encoding created during the sealing process is generated using the following pieces of information:

• The data is sealed.

• The storage provider who seals the data.

• The time at which the data was sealed.

Because of the principles of cryptographic hashing, a new encoding will be generated if the data changes, the storage provider sealing the data changes, or the time of sealing changes. This encoding is unique and can be used to verify that a specific storage provider did, in fact, store a particular piece of client data at a specific time.

Proof-of-Spacetime (PoSt)

After a storage provider has proved that they have replicated a copy of the data that they agreed to store, the SP must continue to prove to the network that:

• They are still storing the requested data.

• The data is available.

• The data is still sealed.

Because this method is concerned with proving that data is being stored in a particular space for a particular period or at a particular time, it is called Proof-of-Spacetime (PoSt). In Filecoin, the PoSt process is handled using two different sub-methods, each of which serves a different purpose:

WinningPoSt

WinningPoSt is used to prove that an SP selected via election has a replica of the data at the specific time that they were asked and is specifically used in Filecoin to determine which SPs may add blocks to the Filecoin blockchain.

• The opportunity to charge other nodes fees in order to include their messages in the block.

If an SP misses the submission deadline, no penalty is incurred, but the SP misses the opportunity to mine a block and receive the block reward.

WindowPoSt

The more sectors an SP has pledged to store, the more the partitions of sectors that the SP will need to prove per deadline. As this requires that the SP has access to sealed copies of each of the requested sectors, it makes it irrational for the SP to seal data every time they need to provide a WindowPoSt proof, thus ensuring that SPs on the network are continuously maintaining the data agreed to. Additionally, failure to submit WindowPoSt for a sector will result in the SPs’ pledge collateral being forfeited and their storage power being reduced.

When someone sends cryptocurrency to your wallet address, the transaction is recorded on the blockchain network, and the funds are added to your wallet balance. Similarly, when you send cryptocurrency from your wallet to someone else’s wallet, the transaction is recorded on the blockchain network, and the funds are deducted from your wallet balance.

There are various types of cryptocurrency wallets, including desktop, mobile, hardware, and web-based wallets, each with its own unique features and levels of security. It’s important to choose a reputable and secure wallet to ensure the safety of your digital assets.

Compatible wallets

We do not provide technical support for any of these wallets. Please use caution when researching and using the wallets listed below. Wallets that have conducted third-party audits of their open-source code by a reputable security auditor are marked recommended below.

Hot versus cold

A hot wallet refers to any wallet that is permanently connected to the internet. They can be mobile, desktop, or browser-based. Hot wallets make it faster and easier to access digital assets but could be vulnerable to online attacks. Therefore, it is recommended to keep large balances in cold wallets and only use hot wallets to hold funds that need to be accessed frequently.

Cold wallets most commonly refer to hardware wallet devices shaped like a USB stick. They are typically offline and only connected to the internet for transactions. Accessing a cold wallet requires physical possession of the device plus knowledge of the private key, which makes them more resistant to theft. Cold wallets can be less convenient and are most useful for storing larger balances securely.

Security

Wallets that have gone through an audit have had their codebase checked by a recognized security firm for security vulnerabilities and potential leaks. However, just because a wallet has had an audit does not mean that it’s 100% bug-proof. Be incredibly cautious when using unaudited wallets.

Never share your seed phrase, password, or private keys. Bad actors will often use social engineering tactics such as phishing emails or posing as customer service or tech support to lure users into handing over their private key or seed phrase.

Add a wallet to our list

If you know of a wallet that supports Filecoin, you can submit a pull request to this page and add it!

• If the wallet is a mobile wallet, it must be available on both Android and iOS.

• The wallet must have been audited. The results of this audit must be public.

What is IPC?

What is horizontal scalability and why is it important for dApps?

For decentralized applications (dApps), there are several key motivations to adopt scaling - performance, decentralization, security. The challenge is that these factors are known to be conflicting goals.

How does IPC achieve horizontal scalability?

IPC is a scaling solution intentionally designed to achieve considerable performance, decentralization and security for dApps.

Subnets are organized in a hierarchy, with one parent subnet being able to spawn infinite child subnets. Within a hierarchical subsystem, subnets can seamlessly communicate with each other, reducing the need for cross-chain bridges.

How is IPC unique as a scaling solution?

Earlier, we talked about the challenge of scaling solutions to balance performance, security and decentralization. IPC is a standout framework that strikes a considerable balance between these factors, to achieve breakthroughs in scaling.

• Highly customizable without compromising security. Most L2 scaling solutions today either inherit the L1's security features but don't have their own consensus algorithms (e.g. rollups), or do the reverse (e.g. sidechains). They are also deployed in isolation and require custom bridges or protocols to transfer assets and state between L2s that share a common L1, which are vulnerable to attacks. In contrast, IPC subnets have their own consensus algorithms, inherit security features from the parent subnet and have native cross-net communication, eliminating the need for bridges.

Applications of IPC

Here are some practical examples of how IPC improves the performance of dApps:

• Distributed Computation: Spawn ephemeral subnets to run distributed computation jobs.

• Coordination: Assemble into smaller subnets for decentralized orchestration with high throughput and low fees.

• Localization: Leverage proximity to improve performance and operate with very low latency in geographically constrained settings.

• Partition tolerance: Deploy blockchain substrates in mobile settings or other environments with limited connectivity.

With better performance, lower fees and faster transactions, IPC can rapidly improve horizontal and vertical markets with decentralized technology:

• Decentralized Finance (DeFi): Enabling truly high-frequency trading and traditional backends with verifiability and privacy.

• Big Data and Data Science: Multiple teams are creating global-scale distributed compute networks to enable Data Science analysis on Exabytes of decentralized stored data.

• Metaverse/Gaming: Enabling real-time tracking of player interactions in virtual worlds.

• DAOs: Assemble into smaller subnets for decentralized orchestration with high throughput and low fees. Partition tolerance: Deploy blockchain substrates in mobile settings or other environments with limited connectivity.

Get involved

Exchanges

A cryptocurrency exchange is a digital platform where users can buy, sell, and trade cryptocurrencies for other cryptocurrencies or traditional fiat currencies like USD, EUR, or JPY.

Cryptocurrency exchanges provide a marketplace for users to trade their digital assets and are typically run by private companies that facilitate these transactions. These exchanges can differ in terms of fees, security protocols, and the variety of cryptocurrencies they support.

Users can typically sign up for an account with a cryptocurrency exchange, deposit funds into their account, and then use those funds to purchase or sell cryptocurrencies at the current market price. Some exchanges offer advanced trading features like margin trading, stop-loss orders, and trading bots.

It's important to note that while cryptocurrency exchanges can offer convenience and liquidity for traders, they also come with risks like hacking and regulatory uncertainty. Therefore, users should take precautions to protect their funds and do their own research before using any particular exchange.

Supported exchanges

Once you have found an exchange you want to use, you will have to create an account with that exchange. Many exchanges have strict verification and Know-Your-Customer (KYC) processes in place, so it may take a few days to create your account. However, most large exchanges can verify your information in a few minutes.

Purchasing cryptocurrency varies from exchange to exchange, but the process is usually something like this:

1. Add funds to your exchange account in your local currency (USD, EUR, YEN, etc.).

2. Exchange your local currency for FIL at a set price.

Address compatibility

Fiat on-ramps

A fiat on-ramp is a service or platform that allows individuals to convert traditional fiat currencies such as the US dollar, Euro, or any other government-issued currency into cryptocurrencies. These on-ramps serve as entry points for people who want to start participating in the cryptocurrency ecosystem by purchasing digital currencies with their money but don't want to sign up with a cryptocurrency exchange.

FIL is supported by a number of fiat on-ramps, such as:

Users are cautioned to do their own due diligence with respect to choosing a fiat on-ramp provider.

Crypto ATMs

Crypto ATMs, also known as Bitcoin ATMs, are kiosks that allow individuals to buy and/or sell cryptocurrencies in exchange for fiat currency like the US dollar. They function similarly to traditional ATMs but are not connected to a bank account. Instead, they connect the user directly to a cryptocurrency exchange.

Using a Bitcoin ATM often comes with higher fees than online exchanges. Fees can vary, but they can range anywhere from 5% to 15% or even more per transaction.

Test FIL

What is Filecoin Plus?

The goal of the Filecoin Plus program is to increase the amount of useful data stored with storage providers by clients on the Filecoin network.

In short, this is achieved by appointing allocators responsible for assigning DataCap tokens to clients that are vetted by the allocator as trusted parties storing useful data. Clients then pay DataCap to storage providers as part of a storage deal, which increases a storage provider’s probability of earning block rewards. A full description of this mechanism is described below.

Filecoin Plus creates demand on the Filecoin network, ensuring the datasets stored on the network are legitimate and useful to either the clients, or a third party.

Storage Providers & DataCap

Filecoin Plus introduces two concepts important to interactions on the Filecoin network – DataCap and Quality Adjusted Power (QAP).

DataCap

DataCap is a token paid to storage providers as part of a deal in which the client and the data they are storing is verified by a Filecoin Plus allocator. Batches of DataCap are granted to allocators by root-key holders, allocators give DataCap to verified clients, and clients pay DataCap to storage providers as part of a deal. The more DataCap a storage provider ends up with, the higher probability they have to earn block rewards. The role of each of these participants, and how DataCap is used in a Filecoin Plus deal, is described below in the "Filecoin Plus Processes & Participants" section.

Quality Adjusted Power

Important

There is a common misconception that a Filecoin Plus deal increases the miner’s reward paid to a Filecoin storage provider by a factor of ten. This is not true, Filecoin+ does not increase the amount of block rewards available to storage providers. Including Filecoin Plus deals in a sector increases the Quality Adjusted Power of a storage provider, which increases the probability a storage provider is selected as the block verifier for the next block on the Filecoin blockchain, and thus increases the probability they earn block rewards.

Consider first a network with ten storage providers. Initially, each storage provider has an equal 10% probability of winning available block rewards in a given period:

In the above visualization, "VD" means "verified deals", that is, deals that have been reviewed by allocators and have associated spending of datacap.

Incentives for storage providers to accept verified deals is strongest initially. As more and more storage providers include verified deals in their sectors, the probability any one of them earns the block rewards returns to an equal chance.

Filecoin+ Processes & Participants

The participants of the Filecoin+ program, along with how they interact with each other, is detailed here:

• Root-key holders execute the governance process for Filecoin+ as determined through community executed Filecoin Improvement Proposals, their role is to grant and remove batches of DataCap to/from allocators. Root-key holders are signers to a multisig wallet on-chain –a majority of signers are needed for an allocator to be granted or removed.

• Clients are participants in the Filecoin network who store data with a storage provider. A trusted client, as determined by an allocator who performs due diligence on the client and the data they are looking to store, will be given DataCap by the allocator. Clients offer to give this DataCap to a storage provider as part of a deal, which increases the “deal quality multiplier” of the deal, and in turn the likelihood a storage provider will accept the deal.

• Storage providers who receive DataCap as part of a deal are able to use this DataCap to increase their “quality adjusted power” of the storage provider on the network by a factor of ten. As described above, this increases their probability of being selected as the verifier for a block, affording them the opportunity to earn block rewards.

How Filecoin Plus Works

A visualization of the interactions between parties involved in a Filecoin+ deal described above is shown below in Figure 1.

Acquiring DataCap for Clients & Builders

Clients can secure DataCap by making a request to an allocator. Each one of the allocators maintain their own applications for requesting DataCap.

Steps to Acquire Mainnet DataCap as a Client

The steps a client should follow to acquire DataCap are as follows:

5. Use the DataCap in a storage deal.

Steps to Acquire Testnet DataCap as a Builder

DataCap for Smart contracts

Smart contracts can acquire and use DataCap just like any regular client. To do so, simply enter the f410 address of the smart contract as the client address when making a request for DataCap.

Important

It’s important to note that DataCap allocations are a one-time credit for a Filecoin address and cannot be transferred between smart contracts. If you need to redeploy the smart contract, you must request additional DataCap.

How to Use DataCap

Once you have an address with DataCap, you can make deals using DataCap as a part of the payment. Because storage providers receive a deal quality multiplier for taking Filecoin+ deals, many storage providers offer special pricing and services to attract clients who use DataCap to make deals.

By default, when you make a deal with an address with DataCap allocated, you will spend that DataCap when making the deal.

Visualizing Blockchain Data for Filecoin+

There are three resources you can use to check the current status of the Filecoin+ deals and participants:

After FVM launched, a new Ethereum-compatible address type (f410 address) was introduced to the Filecoin network. This new f410 address can be converted into Ethereum-style addresses starting with 0x so that it can be used in any Ethereum-compatible toolings or dApps. Filecoin addresses start with f, so we will use the f address in this tutorial. And Ethereum-style addresses start with 0x, so we will use the 0x address in this tutorial.

There are four paths for transferring FIL tokens across the Filecoin network, depending on which address type you are transferring from and to.

0x => 0x address

If you want to transfer FIL tokens from one f4 address to another f4 address using their corresponding 0x addresses, you need to understand how to convert between f4 and 0x addresses.

0x => f address

f => 0x address

The process for sending FIL from a Filecoin f address to an Ethereum-style 0x address depends on the wallet or exchange you use.

Ledger device

Hot wallet

A hot wallet is a cryptocurrency wallet that is always connected to the internet. They allow you to store, send, and receive tokens. Because hot wallets are always connected to the internet, they tend to be somewhat more vulnerable to hacks and theft than cold storage methods. However, they are generally easier to use than cold wallets and do not require any specific hardware like a Ledger device.

If you want to transfer your FIL tokens from the f1\f3 to the 0x address, but the wallet or exchange you are using does not support the f4 and 0x style addresses. Then, you can create a burner wallet using Glif, transfer FIL to the burner wallet, and then transfer FIL from the burner wallet to the 0x address on MetaMask.

1. Click Create Seed Phase. Write down your seed phrase somewhere safe. You can also copy or download the seed phrase. You will need it later.

1. Click I’ve recorded my seed phrase. Using your seed phrase, enter the missing words in the blank text fields.

2. Click Next, and then Connect. The burner wallet is created

3. In the upper left corner of your wallet dashboard, click on the double squares icon next to your address to copy it. Record this address. You will need it later.

1. From your main wallet account or exchange, transfer your FIL token to this address.

2. Connect to MetaMask and copy your 0x address.

3. Once the funds appear in the burner wallet, click on Send FIL.

4. Enter the necessary information into the text fields:

• In the Recipient field, enter your 0x style address. GLIF automatically converts it to an f4 address.

• In the Amount field, enter the amount of FIL to send. Make sure you have enough FIL to cover the GAS cost.

1. Click Send. The FIL will arrive in your MetaMask wallet shortly.

Exchange

f to f address

There are no special steps or requirements for sending Filecoin from one Filecoin-style address to another on the Filecoin network.

Lassie

Lassie is a simple retrieval client for IPFS and Filecoin. It finds and fetches your data over the best retrieval protocols available. Lassie makes Filecoin retrieval easy. While Lassie is powerful, the core functionality is expressed in a single CLI command:

lassie fetch <CID>

Lassie also provides an HTTP interface for retrieving IPLD data from IPFS and Filecoin peers. Developers can use this interface directly in their applications to retrieve the data.

Lassie fetches content in content-addressed archive (CAR) form, so in most cases, you will need additional tooling to deal with CAR files. Lassie can also be used as a library to fetch data from Filecoin from within your application. Due to the diversity of data transport protocols in the IPFS ecosystem, Lassie is able to use the Graphsync or Bitswap protocols, depending on how the requested data is available to be fetched. One prominent use case of Lassie as a library is the Saturn Network. Saturn nodes fetch content from Filecoin and IPFS through Lassie in order to serve retrievals.

Retrieve using Lassie

1. Or download and install Lassie using the Go package manager:

go install github.com/filecoin-project/lassie/cmd/lassie@latest

go install github.com/ipld/go-car/cmd/car@latest

You now have everything you need to retrieve a file with Lassie and extract the contents with go-car.

Retrieve

To retrieve data from Filecoin using Lassie, all you need is the CID of the content you want to download.

The video below demonstrates how Lassie can be used to render content directly from Filecoin and IPFS.

Lassie and go-car can work together to retrieve and extract data from Filecoin. All you need is the CID of the content to download.

lassie fetch -o - <CID> | car extract

This command uses a | to chain two commands together. This will work on Linux or macOS. Windows users may need to use PowerShell to use this form. Alternatively, you can use the commands separately, as explained later on this page.

An example of fetching and extracting a single file, identified by its CID:

lassie fetch -o - bafykbzaceatihez66rzmzuvfx5nqqik73hlphem3dvagmixmay3arvqd66ng6 | car extract - > lidar-data.tar

Basic progress information, similar to the output shown below, is displayed:

Fetching bafykbzaceatihez66rzmzuvfx5nqqik73hlphem3dvagmixmay3arvqd66ng6................................................................................................................................................
Fetched [bafykbzaceatihez66rzmzuvfx5nqqik73hlphem3dvagmixmay3arvqd66ng6] from [12D3KooWPNbkEgjdBNeaCGpsgCrPRETe4uBZf1ShFXStobdN18ys]:
        Duration: 42.259908785s
          Blocks: 144
           Bytes: 143 MiB
extracted 1 file(s)

The resulting file is a tar archive:

ls -l
# total 143M
# -rw-rw-r-- 1 user user 143M Feb 16 11:21 lidar-data.tar

Lassie CLI usage

Lassie's usage for retrieving data is as follows:

lassie fetch -p -o <OUTFILE_FILE_NAME> <CID>/path/to/content

• -p is an optional flag that tells Lassie that you would like to see detailed progress information as it fetches your data.

  For example:

• Copy

  Fetching bafykbzaceatihez66rzmzuvfx5nqqik73hlphem3dvagmixmay3arvqd66ng6
  Querying indexer for bafykbzaceatihez66rzmzuvfx5nqqik73hlphem3dvagmixmay3arvqd66ng6...
  Found 4 storage providers candidates from the indexer, querying all of them:
          12D3KooWPNbkEgjdBNeaCGpsgCrPRETe4uBZf1ShFXStobdN18ys
          12D3KooWNHwmwNRkMEP6VqDCpjSZkqripoJgN7eWruvXXqC2kG9f
          12D3KooWKGCcFVSAUXxe7YP62wiwsBvpCmMomnNauJCA67XbmHYj
          12D3KooWLDf6KCzeMv16qPRaJsTLKJ5fR523h65iaYSRNfrQy7eU
  Querying [12D3KooWLDf6KCzeMv16qPRaJsTLKJ5fR523h65iaYSRNfrQy7eU] (started)...
  Querying [12D3KooWKGCcFVSAUXxe7YP62wiwsBvpCmMomnNauJCA67XbmHYj] (started)...
  
  ...

• -o is an optional flag that tells Lassie where to write the output to. If you don’t specify a file, it will append .car to your CID and use that as the output file name.

If you specify -p, the output will be written to stdout so it can be piped to another command, such as go-car, or redirected to a file.

• <CID>/path/to/content is the CID of the content you want to retrieve and an optional path to a specific file within that content. Example:

• Copy

  lassie fetch -o - bafybeiaysi4s6lnjev27ln5icwm6tueaw2vdykrtjkwiphwekaywqhcjze/wiki/Cryptographic_hash_function | car extract - | less

A CID is always necessary, and if you don’t specify a path, Lassie will attempt to download the entire content. If you specify a path, Lassie will only download that specific file or, if it is a directory, the entire directory and its contents.

go-car CLI usage

The car extract command can be used to extract files and directories from a CAR:

car extract -f <INPUT_FILE>[/path/to/file/or/directory] [<OUTPUT_DIR>]

• -f is an optional flag that tells go-car where to read the input from. If omitted, it will read from stdin, as in our example above where we piped lassie fetch -o - output to car extract.

• /path/to/file/or/directory is an optional path to a specific file or directory within the CAR. If omitted, it will attempt to extract the entire CAR.

• <OUTPUT_DIR> is an optional argument that tells go-car where to write the output to. If omitted, it will be written to the current directory.

If you supply -p, as in the above example, it will attempt to extract the content directly to stdout. This will only work if we are extracting a single file.

In the example above, where we fetched a file named lidar-data.tar, the > operator was used to redirect the output of car extract to a named file. This is because the content we fetched was raw file data that did not have a name encoded. In this case, if we didn’t use - and > filename, go-car would write to a file named unknown. In this instance, go-car was used to reconstitute the file from the raw blocks contained within Lassie’s CAR output.

go-car has other useful commands. The first is car ls, which can be used to list the contents of a CAR. The second is car inspect, which can be used to inspect the contents of the CAR and optionally verify the integrity of a CAR.

And there we have it! Downloading and managing data from Filecoin is super simple when you use Lassie and Go-car!

Lassie HTTP daemon

The Lassie HTTP daemon is an HTTP interface for retrieving IPLD data from IPFS and Filecoin peers. It fetches content from peers known to have it and provides the resulting data in CAR format.

GET /ipfs/{cid}[/path][?params]

Lassie’s CAR format

Saturn is a Web3 CDN in Filecoin’s retrieval market. On one side of the network, websites buy fast, low-cost content delivery. On the other side, Saturn node operators earn Filecoin by fulfilling requests.

Saturn is trustless, permissionless, and inclusive. Anyone can run Saturn software, contribute to the network, and earn Filecoin.

Content on Saturn is IPFS content-addressed. Every piece of content is immutable, and every response is verifiable.

Incentives unite, align, and grow the network. Node operators earn Filecoin for accelerating web content, and websites get faster content delivery for less.

Verifiable storage

Filecoin has built-in processes to check the history of files and verify that they have been stored correctly over time. Every storage provider proves that they are maintaining their files in every 24-hour window. Clients can efficiently scan this history to confirm that their files have been stored correctly, even if the client was offline at the time. Any observer can check any storage provider’s track record and will notice if the provider has been faulty or offline in the past.

Open market

In Filecoin, file storage and retrieval deals are negotiated in open markets. Anybody can join the Filecoin network without needing permission. By lowering the barriers to entry, Filecoin enables a thriving ecosystem of many independent storage providers.

Competitive prices

Prices for storage and retrieval are determined by supply and demand, not corporate pricing departments. Filecoin makes reliable storage available at hyper-competitive prices. Miners compete based on their storage, reliability, and speed rather than through marketing or locking users in.

Reliable storage

Because storage is paid for, Filecoin provides a viable economic reason for files to stay available over time. Files are stored on computers that are reliable and well-connected to the internet.

Reputation, not marketing

In Filecoin, storage providers prove their reliability through their track record published on the blockchain, not through marketing claims published by the providers themselves. Users don’t need to rely on status pages or self-reported statistics from storage providers.

Choice of tradeoffs

Users get to choose their own tradeoffs between cost, redundancy, and speed. Users are not limited to a set group of data centers offered by their provider but can choose to store their files on any storage provider participating in Filecoin.

Censorship resistance

Filecoin resists censorship because no central provider can be coerced into deleting files or withholding service. The network is made up of many different computers run by many different people and organizations. Faulty or malicious actors are noticed by the network and removed automatically.

Useful blockchain

In Filecoin, storage providers are rewarded for providing storage, not for performing wasteful computations. Filecoin secures its blockchain using proof of file replication and proof of storage over time. It doesn’t rely on energy-intensive proof-of-work schemes like other blockchains. Miners are incentivized to amass hard drives and put them to use by storing files. Filecoin doesn’t incentivize the hoarding of graphics cards or application-specific integrated circuits for the sole purpose of mining.

Provides storage to other blockchains

Filecoin’s blockchain is designed to store large files, whereas other blockchains can typically only store tiny amounts of data, very expensively. Filecoin can provide storage to other blockchains, allowing them to store large files. In the future, mechanisms will be added to Filecoin, enabling Filecoin’s blockchain to interoperate with transactions on other blockchains.

Content addressing

Files are referred to by the data they contain, not by fragile identifiers such as URLs. Files remain available no matter where they are hosted or who they are hosted by. When a file becomes popular, it can be quickly distributed by swarms of computers instead of relying on a central computer, which can become overloaded by network traffic.

When multiple users store the same file (and choose to make the file public by not encrypting it), everyone who wants to download the file benefits from Filecoin, keeping it available. No matter where a file is downloaded from, users can verify that they have received the correct file and that it is intact.

Content distribution network

Retrieval providers are computers that have good network connections to lots of users who want to download files. By prefetching popular files and distributing them to nearby users, retrieval providers are rewarded for making network traffic flow smoothly and files download quickly.

Single protocol

Applications implementing Filecoin can store their data on any storage provider using the same protocol. There isn’t a different API to implement for each provider. Applications wishing to support several different providers aren’t limited to the lowest-common-denominator set of features supported by all their providers.

No lock-in

Migrating to a different storage provider is made easier because they all offer the same services and APIs. Users aren’t locked into providers because they rely on a particular feature of the provider. Also, files are content-addressed, enabling them to be transferred directly between providers without the user having to download and re-upload the files.

Traditional cloud storage providers lock users by making it cheap to store files but expensive to retrieve them again. Filecoin avoids this by facilitating a retrieval market where providers compete to give users their files back as fast as possible, at the lowest possible price.

Open source code

The code that runs both clients and storage providers is open-source. Storage providers don’t have to develop their own software for managing their infrastructure. Everyone benefits from improvements made to Filecoin’s code.

Active community

Filecoin combines many elements of other file storage and distribution systems. What makes Filecoin unique is that it runs on an open, peer-to-peer network while still providing economic incentives and proofs to ensure files are being stored correctly. This page compares Filecoin against other technologies that share some of the same properties.

Filecoin vs. Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage

Filecoin tokens (FIL) vs. Bitcoin tokens (BTC)

Randomness outputs

By polling the appropriate endpoint, a Filecoin node will get back a Drand value formatted as follows:

• signature: the threshold BLS signature on the previous signature value and the current round number round.

• previous_signature: the threshold BLS signature from the previous Drand round.

• round: the index of randomness in the sequence of all random values produced by this Drand network.

The message signed is the concatenation of the round number treated as a uint64 and the previous signature. At the moment, Drand uses BLS signatures on the BLS12-381 curve with the latest v7 RFC of hash-to-curve, and the signature is made over G1.

Polling the network

Filecoin nodes fetch the Drand entry from the distribution network of the selected Drand network.

Drand distributes randomness using multiple distribution channels such as HTTP servers, S3 buckets, gossiping, etc. Simply put, the Drand nodes themselves will not be directly accessible by consumers; rather, highly-available relays will be set up to serve Drand values over these distribution channels.

On initialization, Filecoin initializes a Drand client with chain info that contains the following information:

• Period: the period of time between each Drand randomness generation.

• GenesisTime: at which the first round in the Drand randomness chain is created.

• PublicKey: the public key to verify randomness.

• GenesisSeed: the seed that has been used for creating the first randomness.

It is possible to simply store the hash of this chain info and to retrieve the contents from the Drand distribution network as well on the /info endpoint.

Thereafter, the Filecoin client can call Drand’s endpoints:

• /public/latest to get the latest randomness value produced by the beacon.

• /public/<round> to get the randomness value produced by the beacon at a given round.

Using Drand

Drand is used as a randomness beacon for leader election in Filecoin. While Drand returns multiple values with every call to the beacon (see above), Filecoin blocks need only store a subset of these in order to track a full Drand chain. This information can then be mixed with on-chain data for use in Filecoin.

Edge cases and outages

Any Drand beacon outage will effectively halt Filecoin block production. Given that new randomness is not produced, Filecoin miners cannot generate new blocks. Specifically, any call to the Drand network for a new randomness entry during an outage should be blocked in Filecoin.

After a beacon downtime, Drand nodes will work to quickly catch up to the current round. In this way, the above time-to-round mapping in Drand used by Filecoin remains invariant after this catch-up following downtime.

While Filecoin miners were not able to mine during the Drand outage, they will quickly be able to run leader election thereafter, given a rapid production of Drand values. We call this a catch-up period.

During the catch-up period, Filecoin nodes will backdate their blocks in order to continue using the same time-to-round mapping to determine which Drand round should be integrated according to the time. Miners can then choose to publish their null blocks for the outage period, including the appropriate Drand entries throughout the blocks, per the time-to-round mapping. Or, as is more likely, try to craft valid blocks that might have been created during the outage.

Based on the level of decentralization of the Filecoin network, we expect to see varying levels of miner collaboration during this period. This is because there are two incentives at play: trying to mine valid blocks during the outage to collect block rewards and not falling behind a heavier chain being mined by a majority of miners who may or may not have ignored a portion of these blocks.

In any event, a heavier chain will emerge after the catch-up period and mining can resume as normal.

What are some of the primary use cases for Filecoin?

Some of the primary areas for development on Filecoin are:

• Additional developer tools and layer-2 solutions and libraries that strengthen Filecoin as a developer platform and ecosystem.

• IPFS apps that rely on decentralized storage solutions and want a decentralized data persistence solution as well.

• Financial tools and services on Filecoin, like wallets, signing libraries, and more.

• Applications that use Filecoin’s publicly verifiable cryptographic proofs in order to provide trustless and timestamped guarantees of storage to their users.

How can a website or app be free if it costs to retrieve data from the Filecoin network?

Most websites and apps make money by displaying ads. This type of income-model could be replaced with a Filecoin incentivized retrieval setup, where users pay small amounts of FIL for whatever files they’re hoping to download. Several large datasets are hosted through Amazon’s pay per download S3 buckets, which Filecoin retrieval could also easily augment or replace.

How will Filecoin attract developers to use Filecoin for storage?

It’s going to require a major shift in how we think about the internet. At the same time, it is a very exciting shift, and things are slowly heading that way. Browser vendors like Brave, Opera, and Firefox are investing into decentralized infrastructure.

We think that the internet must return to its decentralized roots to be resilient, robust, and efficient enough for the challenges of the next several decades. Early developers in the Filecoin ecosystem are those who believe in that same vision and potential for the internet, and we’re excited to work with them to build this space.

What are the detailed parameters of Filecoin’s cryptoeconomics?

We are still finalizing our cryptoeconomic parameters, and they will continue to evolve.

How expensive will Filecoin storage be at launch?

As Filecoin is a free market, the price will be determined by a number of variables related to the supply and demand for storage. It’s difficult to predict before launch. However, a few design elements of the network help support inexpensive storage.

Along with revenue from active storage deals, Storage Miners receive block rewards, where the expected value of winning a given block reward is proportional to the amount of storage they have on the network. These block rewards are weighted heavily towards the early days of the network (with the frequency of block rewards exponentially decaying over time). As a result, Storage Miners are relatively incentivized to charge less for storage to win more deals, which would increase their expected block reward.

Further, Filecoin introduces a concept called Verified Clients, where clients can be verified to actually be storing useful data. Storage Miners who store data from Verified Clients also increase their expected block reward. Anyone running a Filecoin-backed IPFS Pinning Services should qualify as a Verified Client. We do not have the process of verification finalized, but we expect it to be similar to submitting a GitHub profile.

Will it be cheaper to store data on Filecoin than other centralized cloud services?

Filecoin creates a hyper-competitive market for data storage. There will be many storage providers offering many prices, rather than one fixed price on the network. We expect Filecoin’s permissionless model and low barriers to entry to result in some very efficient operations and low-priced storage, but it’s impossible to say what exact prices will be until the network is live.

What happens to the existing content on IPFS once Filecoin launches? What if nodes continue to host content for free and undermine the Filecoin incentive layer?

IPFS will continue to exist as it is, enhanced with Filecoin nodes. There are many use cases that require no financial incentive. Think of it like IPFS is HTTP, and Filecoin is a storage cloud-like S3 – only a fraction of IPFS content will be there.

People with unused storage who want to earn monetary rewards should pledge that storage to Filecoin, and clients who want guaranteed storage should store that data with Filecoin storage providers.

Lotus or Venus, which is better for storage providers?

Lotus is the primary reference implementation for the Filecoin protocol. At this stage, we would recommend most storage providers use lotus to participate in the Filecoin network.

What is your recommendation on the right hardware to use?

We are worried about the ability of our network to handle the additional overhead of running a Filecoin node and still provide fast services for our customers. What are the computational demands of a Lotus node? Are there any metrics for node performance given various requirements?

We bought a lot of hard drives of data through the Discover project. When will they be shipped to China?

There are a number of details that are still being finalized between the verified deals construction and the associated cryptoeconomic parameters.

Our aim is to allow these details to finalize before shipping, but given timelines, we’re considering enabling teams to take receipt of these drives before the parameters are set. We will publish updates on the status of the Discover project on the Filecoin blog.

Do Filecoin storage providers need a fixed IP?

For mainnet, you will need a public IP address, but it doesn’t need to be fixed (just accessible).

What if we lost a sector accidentally, is there any way to fix that?

If you lost the data itself, then no, there’s no way to recover that, and you will be slashed for it. If the data itself is recoverable, though (say you just missed a WindowPoSt), then the Recovery process will let you regain the sector.

Has Filecoin confirmed the use of the SDR algorithm? Is there any evidence of malicious construction?

How likely is it that the Filecoin protocol will switch to the NSE Proof-of-Replication construction later?

Native storage extension (NSE) is one of the best candidates for a proof upgrade, and teams are working on implementation. But there are other candidates too, which are promising as well. It may be that another algorithm ends up better than NSE – we don’t know yet. Proof upgrades will arrive after the mainnet launch and will coexist.

How are you working on bootstrapping the demand side of the marketplace? The Discover program is nice, but who is the target market for users, and how do you get them?

Does Filecoin have an implementation of client and storage provider order matching through order books?

Why does Filecoin mining work best on AMD?

Currently, Filecoin’s Proof of Replication (PoRep) prefers to be run on AMD processors. See this description of Filecoin sealing for more information. More accurately, it runs much slower on Intel CPUs. It runs competitively fast on some ARM processors, like the ones in newer Samsung phones, but they lack the RAM to seal the larger sector sizes. The main reason that we see this benefit on AMD processors is due to their implementation of the SHA hardware instructions.

What do storage providers have to do to change a committed capacity (CC) sector into a “real-data” sector?

Storage providers will publish storage deals that they will upgrade the CC sector with, announce to the chain that they are doing an upgrade, and prove to the chain that a new sector has been sealed correctly. We expect to evolve and make this cheaper and more attractive over time after the mainnet launch.

What does “terminating a sector” mean?

When a committed capacity sector is added to the chain, it can upgrade to a sector with deals, extend its lifetime, or terminate through either faults or voluntary actions. While we don’t expect this to happen very often on mainnet, a storage provider may deem it rational to terminate their promise to the network and their clients, and accept a penalty for doing so.

Does the committed capacity sector still need to be sealed before it upgrades to one with real data?

For the first iteration of the protocol, yes. We have plans to make it cheaper and more economically attractive after mainnet with no resealing required and other perks.

What’s the minimum time period for the storage contract between the provider and the buyer?

The minimum duration for a deal is set in the storage provider’s ask. There’s also a practical limitation because sectors have a minimum duration (currently 180 days).

After I made a deal with a storage provider and sent my data to them, how exactly is the data supposed to be recoverable and healable if that storage provider goes down?

How do I know that my storage provider will not charge prohibitively high costs for data retrieval?

To avoid extortion, always ensure you store your data with a fairly decentralized set of storage providers (and note: it’s pretty difficult for a storage provider to be sure they are the only person storing a particular piece of data, especially if you encrypt the data).

Storage providers currently provide a ‘dumb box’ interface and will serve anyone any data they have. Maybe in the future, storage providers will offer access control lists (ACLs) and logins and such, but that requires that you trust the storage provider. The recommended (and safest) approach here is to encrypt data you don’t want others to see yourself before storing it.

How do you update data stored on Filecoin?

We have some really good ideas around ‘warm’ storage (that is mutable and provable) that we will probably implement in the near future. But for now, your app will have to treat Filecoin as an append-only log. If you want to change your data, you just write new data.

‘Warm’ storage can be done with a small amount of trust, where you make a deal with a storage provider with a start date quite far in the future. The storage provider can choose to store your data in a sector now (but they won’t get paid for proving it until the actual start date), or they can hold it for you (and even send you proofs of it on request), and you can then send them new data to overwrite it, along with a new storage deal that overwrites the previous one.

There’s a pretty large design space here, and we can do a bunch of different things depending on the levels of trust involved, the price sensitivity, and the frequency of updates clients desire.

Who will be selected to be verifiers to verify clients on the network?

Allocators, selected through an application process, serve as fiduciaries for the Filecoin network and are responsible for allocating DataCap to clients with valuable storage use cases.

Will the existence of Filecoin mining pools lead to centralized storage and away from the vision of distributed storage?

No – Filecoin creates a decentralized storage network in part by massively decreasing the barrier to entry to becoming a storage provider. Even if there were some large pools, anyone can join the network and provide storage with just a modest hardware purchase, and we expect clients to store their files with many diverse storage providers.

Also, note that world location matters for mining: many clients will prefer storage providers in specific regions of the world, so this enables lots of storage providers to succeed across the world, where there is storage demand.

Even though Filecoin will be backed up to our normal IPFS pinning layer, we still need to know how quickly we can access data from the Filecoin network. How fast will retrieval be from the Filecoin network?

If you are retrieving your data from IPFS or a remote pinning layer, retrieval should take on the order of milliseconds to seconds in the worst case. Our latest tests for retrieval from the Filecoin network directly show that a sealed sector holding data takes ~1 hour to unseal. 1-5 hours is our best real-world estimate to go from sector unsealing to delivery of the data. If you need faster data retrieval for your application, we recommend building on IPFS.

Discussion Forums

For shorter-lived discussions, our community chat open to all on both Slack and Discord:

Filecoin improvement proposals

There are three types of FIPs:

• Technical FIPs (FTP): protocol changes, standards, API changes. They can include core (consensus-related changes, networking (network protocol improvements, interface (API/RPC or language-level updates), or can be informational (updates to general guidelines or documentation).

• Organizational FIPs (FOP): changes to processes, tools, or governance.

• Recovery FIPs (FRP): emergency fixes requiring state changes (e.g., major bugs).

Typically, the FIP lifecycle looks something like this:

[ WIP ] -> [ DRAFT ] -> [ LAST CALL ] -> [ ACCEPTED ] -> [ FINAL ]

3. LAST CALL: This status allows the community to submit final changes to the draft.

4. ACCEPTED: Once the FIP is voted on and accepted, the core engineers will work to implement it.

5. FINAL: This status represents the current state-of-the-art, and it should only be updated to correct errors.

Storing NFTs

General data storage

The Filecoin network provides decentralized data storage and makes sure data is verified, always available, and immutable. Storage providers in the Filecoin network are in charge of storing, providing content and issuing new blocks.

To become a storage provider in the Filecoin network you need a range of technical, financial and business skills. We will explain all the key concepts you need to understand in order to design a suitable architecture, make the right hardware investments, and run a profitable storage provider business.

Follow these steps to begin your storage provider journey:

1. Understand Filecoin economics

2. Plan your business

3. Make sure you have the right skills

4. Build the right infrastructure

Understand Filecoin economics

To understand how you can run a profitable business as a Filecoin storage provider, it is important to make sure you understand the economics of Filecoin. Once you understand all core concepts, you can build out a strategy for your desired ROI.

Storage providers can also add additional value to clients when they offer certain certifications. These can enable a storage provider to charge customers additional fees for storing data in compliance with those standards, for example, HIPAA, SOC2, PCI, GDPR and others.

Plan your business

The hardware and other requirements for running a Filecoin storage provider business are significantly higher than regular blockchain mining operations. The mechanisms are designed this way because, in contrast to some other blockchain solutions, where you can simply configure one or more nodes to “mine” tokens, the Filecoin network’s primary goal is to provide decentralized storage for humanity’s most valuable data.

You need to understand the various earning mechanisms in the Filecoin network.

Make sure you have the right skills

As will become clear, running a storage operation is a serious business, with client data and pledged funds at stake. You will be required to run a highly-available service, and there are automatic financial penalties if you cannot demonstrate data availability to the network. There are many things that can go wrong in a data center, on your network, on your OS, or at an application level.

You will need skilled people to operate your storage provider business. Depending on the size and complexity of your setup this can be 1 person with skills across many different domains, or multiple dedicated people or teams.

Build the right infrastructure

At the lowest level, you will need datacenter infrastructure. You need people capable of architecting, racking, wiring and operating infrastructure components. Alternatively, you can get it collocated, or even entirely as a service from a datacenter provider.

Take availability and suitable redundancy into consideration when choosing your datacenter or collocation provider. Any unavailability of your servers, network or storage can result in automatic financial penalties on the Filecoin network.

Roadmap

Research

Code of conduct

YouTube

Blog

Newsletter

Twitter

Get your Filecoin news in tweet-sized bites. Follow these accounts for the latest:

• @Filecoin for news and other updates from the Filecoin project

• @ProtoSchool for updates on ProtoSchool workshops and tutorials

WeChat

Storage fault slashing

This term encompasses a broad set of penalties which are to be paid by storage providers if they fail to provide sector reliability or decide to voluntarily exit the network. These include:

• Fault fees are incurred for each day a storage provider’s sector is offline (fails to submit Proofs-of-Spacetime to the chain). Fault fees continue until the associated wallet is empty and the storage provider is removed from the network. In the case of a faulted sector, there will be an additional sector penalty added immediately following the fault fee. Sector fault fees are equal to 3.51 days of expected block rewards.

• Sector penalties are incurred for a faulted sector that was not declared faulted before a WindowPoSt check occurs. The sector will pay a fault fee after a Sector Penalty once the fault is detected.

• Termination fees are incurred when a sector is voluntarily or involuntarily terminated and is removed from the network.

• Consensus fault slashing is a penalty incurred when committing consensus faults. This penalty is applied to storage providers that have acted maliciously against the network’s consensus functionality.

Honest Storage Providers

Note that occasionally, storage providers may experience operational issues, such as downtime or bugs, that cause them to miss their delivery of a WindowPoSt. To ensure reliability and to encourage smaller miners to join the network, there are built-in exceptions to the fault fees:

• If the Storage Provider has a history of acting honestly, there is no penalty in the current proving period for a faulted sector in the case of a missed WindowPoSt.

• There are no fees if the sector is successfully recovered in a later proving period.

• The fault fee applies only to the sectors already faulty, meaning, they are from a previous proving period, or marked for recovery. Penalties are only applied to faulty sectors from previous proving periods, never the current proving period.

Storage proving, known as Proof-of-Spacetime (“PoSt”), is the mechanism that the Filecoin blockchain uses to validate that storage providers are continuously providing the storage they claim. Storage providers earn block rewards each time they successfully answer a PoSt challenge.

Proving deadlines

WindowPoSt

Availability requirements

What’s next?

The real purpose of Filecoin is to store humanity’s most important information. As a storage provider, that means accepting storage deals and storing deal sectors with real data in it. As before, those sectors are either 32 GiB or 64 GiB in size and require that the data be prepared as a content archive; that is, as a CAR file..

Data preparation

Data preparation, which includes packaging files into size appropriate CAR files, is either done by a separate Data Preparer actor, or by storage providers acting as Data Preparers. The latter option is common for new storage providers, as they normally only have a few files that need preparation.

Data preparation can be done in various ways, depending on your use-case. Here are some valuable sources of information:

See the following video for a demonstration on Singularity:

Deal Market

The storage provider can (and should) keep unsealed data copies available for retrieval requests from the client. It is the same software component, Boost, that is responsible for HTTP retrievals from the client and for setting the price for retrievals.

Filecoin aims to be a decentralized storage network for humanity’s essential information. To achieve this, it’s crucial to add valuable data to the network. Filecoin Plus is a social trust program encouraging storage providers to store data in verified deals. A deal becomes verified after the data owner (client) completes a verification process, where community allocators assess the client’s use of Filecoin to determine its relevance and value to the Filecoin mission: storing and preserving humanity’s vital data. Allocators conduct due diligence by questioning clients and building reasonable confidence in their trustworthiness and use case.

DataCap

Notaries are responsible for allocating a resource called DataCap to clients with valuable storage use cases. DataCap is a non-exchangeable asset that is allocated by notaries to data clients. DataCap gets assigned to a wallet but cannot be sold or exchanged. The client can only spend the DataCap as part of making a verified deal with a storage provider. DataCap is a single use credit, and a client’s DataCap balance is deducted based on the size of the data stored in verified deals.

Quality Adjusted Power (QAP)

Responsibilities

As a storage provider, you play a crucial role in the ecosystem. Unlike miners in other blockchains, storage providers must do more than offer disk space to the network. Whether onboarding new customers to the network, or storing copies data from other storage providers for clients seeking redundancy, providing storage can involve:

• Business development.

• Sales and marketing efforts.

• Hiring additional personnel.

• Networking.

• Relationship building.

Acquiring data copies requires systems and infrastructure capable of ingesting large volumes of data, sometimes up to a PiB. This necessitates significant internet bandwidth, with a minimum of 10 GB. For instance, transferring 1 PiB of data takes approximately 240 hours on a 10 GB connection. However, many large storage providers use up to 100 GB internet connections. ```

Once the data is sealed and you are proving your copies on-chain (i.e. on the blockchain), you will need to offer retrievals to your customer as well. This obviously requires network bandwidth once more, so you may need to charge for retrievals accordingly.

Tools

Rewards & penalties

With great power, comes great responsibility, which also counts for storage power: rewards on Fil+ deals are 10x, but so are the penalties. Because a sector of 32 GiB counts for 320 GiB of storage power (10x), the rewards and the penalties are calculated on the QAP of 320 GiB. Filecoin Plus allows a storage provider to earn more block rewards on a verified deal, compared to a regular data deal. The 10x multiplier on storage power that comes with a verified deal, however, also requires 10x collateral from the storage provider.

If the storage provider is then not capable of keeping the data and systems online and fails to submit the daily required proofs (WindowPoSt) for that data, the penalties (slashing) are also 10x higher than over regular data deals or CC sectors. Larger storage power means larger block rewards, larger collateral and larger slashing. The stakes are high - after all, we’re storing humanity’s most important information with Filecoin.

Ways to contribute

Code

Filecoin and its sister-projects are big, with lots of code written in multiple languages. We always need help writing and maintaining code, but it can be daunting to just jump in. We use the label Help Wanted on features or bug fixes that people can help out with. They are an excellent place for you to start contributing code.

The biggest and most active repositories we have today are:

If you want to start contributing to the core of Filecoin, those repositories are a great place start. But the Help Wanted label exists in several related projects:

Documentation

Filecoin is a huge project and undertaking, and with lots of code comes the need for lots of good documentation! However, we need a lot more help to write the awesome docs the project needs. If writing technical documentation is your area, any and all help is welcome!

Before contributing to the Filecoin docs, please read these quick guides; they’ll save you time and help keep the docs accurate and consistent!

Community

Build Applications

Filecoin is designed for you to integrate into your own applications and services.

Get started by looking at the list of projects currently built on Filecoin. Build anything you think is missing! If you’re unsure about something, you can join the chat and discussion forums to get help or feedback on your specific problem/idea. You can also join a Filecoin Hackathon, apply for a Filecoin Developer Grant or apply to the Filecoin accelerator program to support the development of your project.

Protocol Design

Filecoin is ultimately about building better protocols, and the community always welcome ideas and feedback on how to improve those protocols.

Research

Writing guide

Walkthroughs

The purpose of a walkthrough is to tell the user how to do something. They do not need to convince the reader of something or explain a concept. Walkthroughs are a list of steps the reader must follow to achieve a process or function.

The vast majority of documentation within the Filecoin documentation project falls under the Walkthrough category. Walkthroughs are generally quite short, have a neutral tone, and teach the reader how to achieve a particular process or function. They present the reader with concrete steps on where to go, what to type, and things they should click on. There is little to no conceptual information within walkthroughs.

Goals

Use the following goals when writing walkthroughs:

Function or process

The end goal of a walkthrough is for the reader to achieve a very particular function. Installing the Filecoin Desktop application is an example. Following this walkthrough isn’t going to teach the reader much about working with the decentralized web or what Filecoin is. Still, by the end, they’ll have the Filecoin Desktop application installed on their computer.

Short length

Since walkthroughs cover one particular function or process, they tend to be quite short. The estimated reading time of a walkthrough is somewhere between 2 and 10 minutes. Most of the time, the most critical content in a walkthrough is presented in a numbered list. Images and GIFs can help the reader understand what they should be doing.

If a walkthrough is converted into a video, that video should be no longer than 5 minutes.

Walkthrough structure

Walkthroughs are split into three major sections:

1. What we’re about to do.

2. The steps we need to do.

3. Summary of what we just did, and potential next steps.

Conceptual articles

Articles are written with the intent to inform and explain something. These articles don’t contain any steps or actions that the reader has to perform right now.

These articles are vastly different in tone when compared to walkthroughs. Some topics and concepts can be challenging to understand, so creative writing and interesting diagrams are highly sought-after for these articles. Whatever writers can do to make a subject more understandable, the better.

Article goals

Use the following goals when writing conceptual articles:

Article structure

Articles are separated into five major sections:

1. Introduction to the thing we’re about to explain.

2. What the thing is.

3. Why it’s essential.

4. What other topics it relates to.

5. Summary review of what we just read.

Tutorials

When writing a tutorial, you’re teaching a reader how to achieve a complex end-goal. Tutorials are a mix of walkthroughs and conceptual articles. Most tutorials will span several pages, and contain multiple walkthroughs within them.

Take the hypothetical tutorial Get up and running with Filecoin, for example. This tutorial will likely have the following pages:

1. A brief introduction to what Filecoin is.

2. Choose and install a command line client.

3. Understanding storage deals.

4. Import and store a file.

Pages 1 and 3 are conceptual articles, describing particular design patterns and ideas to the reader. All the other pages are walkthroughs instructing the user how to perform one specific action.

When designing a tutorial, keep in mind the walkthroughs and articles that already exist, and note down any additional content items that would need to be completed before creating the tutorial.

Grammar and formatting

American English

While Filecoin is a global project, the fact is that American English is the most commonly used style of English used today. With that in mind, when writing content for the Filecoin project, use American English spelling. The basic rules for converting other styles of English into American English are:

1. Swap the s for a z in words like categorize and pluralize.

2. Remove the u from words like color and honor.

3. Swap tre for ter in words like center.

The Oxford comma

In a list of three or more items, follow each item except the last with a comma ,:

References to Filecoin

As a proper noun, the name “Filecoin” (capitalized) should be used only to refer to the overarching project, to the protocol, or to the project’s canonical network:

Filecoin [the project] has attracted contributors from around the globe! Filecoin [the protocol] rewards contributions of data storage instead of computation! Filecoin [the network] is currently storing 50 PiB of data!

The name can also be used as an adjective:

The Filecoin ecosystem is thriving! I love contributing to Filecoin documentation!

When referring to the token used as Filecoin’s currency, the name FIL, is preferred. It is alternatively denoted by the Unicode symbol for an integral with a double stroke ⨎:

• Unit prefix: 100 FIL.

• Symbol prefix: ⨎ 100.

The smallest and most common denomination of FIL is the attoFIL (10^-18 FIL).

The collateral for this storage deal is 5 FIL. I generated ⨎100 as a storage provider last month!

Examples of discouraged usage:

Filecoin rewards storage providers with Filecoin. There are many ways to participate in the filecoin community. My wallet has thirty filecoins.

Consistency in the usage of these terms helps keep these various concepts distinct.

References to Lotus

Lotus is the main implementation of Filecoin. As such, it is frequently referenced in the Filecoin documentation. When referring to the Lotus implementation, use a capital L. A lowercase l should only be used when referring to the Lotus executable commands such as lotus daemon. Lotus executable commands should always be within code blocks:

Acronyms

If you have to use an acronym, spell the full phrase first and include the acronym in parentheses () the first time it is used in each document. Exception: This generally isn’t necessary for commonly-encountered acronyms like IPFS, unless writing for a stand-alone article that may not be presented alongside project documentation.

Virtual Machine (VM), Decentralized Web (DWeb).

Formatting

How the Markdown syntax looks, and code formatting rules to follow.

Syntax

The Filecoin Docs project follows the GitHub Flavoured Markdown syntax for markdown. This way, all articles display properly within GitHub itself.

Rules

Style

Text

The following rules apply to editing and styling text.

Titles

1. All titles follow sentence structure. Only names and places are capitalized, along with the first letter of the title. All other letters are lower-case:

1. Every article starts with a front-matter title and description:

In the above example title: serves as a <h1> or # tag. There is only ever one title of this level in each article.

1. Titles do not contain punctuation. If you have a question within your title, rephrase it as a statement:

Bold text

Double asterisks ** are used to define boldface text. Use bold text when the reader must interact with something displayed as text: buttons, hyperlinks, images with text in them, window names, and icons.

Italics

Underscores _ are used to define italic text. Style the names of things in italics, except input fields or buttons:

Quotes or sections of quoted text are styled in italics and surrounded by double quotes ":

Code blocks

Tag code blocks with the syntax of the core they are presenting:

Output from command-line actions can be displayed by adding another codeblock directly after the input codeblock. Here’s an example telling the use to run go version and then the output of that command in a separate codeblock immediately after the first:

Command-line examples can be truncated with three periods ... to remove extraneous information:

Inline code tags

Surround directories, file names, and version numbers between inline code tags `.

List items

All list items follow sentence structure. Only names and places are capitalized, along with the first letter of the list item. All other letters are lowercase:

1. Never leave Nottingham without a sandwich.

2. Brian May played guitar for Queen.

3. Oranges.

List items end with a period ., or a colon : if the list item has a sub-list:

1. Charles Dickens novels:

   1. Oliver Twist.

   2. Nicholas Nickelby.

   3. David Copperfield.

2. J.R.R Tolkien non-fiction books:

   1. The Hobbit.

   2. Silmarillion.

   3. Letters from Father Christmas.

Unordered lists

Use the dash character - for un-numbered list items:

Special characters

Whenever possible, spell out the name of the special character, followed by an example of the character itself within a code block.

Keyboard shortcuts

When instructing the reader to use a keyboard shortcut, surround individual keys in code tags:

The plus symbol + stays outside of the code tags.

Images

The following rules and guidelines define how to use and store images.

Alt text

All images contain alt text so that screen-reading programs can describe the image to users with limited sight:

What are block rewards?

Filecoin’s storage capacity

The Filecoin network is composed of storage providers who offer storage capacity to the network. This capacity is used to secure the network, as it takes a significant amount of storage to take part in the consensus mechanism. This large capacity makes it impractical for a single party to reach 51% of the network power, since an attacker would need 10 EiB in storage to control the network. Therefore, it is important that the raw capacity also referred to as raw byte power, remains high. The Filecoin spec also included a baseline power above which the network yields maximum returns for the storage providers.

The graph below shows the evolution of network capacity on the Filecoin network. As can be seen, the baseline power goes up over time (and becomes exponential). This means from May 2021 to February 2023 the network yielded maximum returns for storage providers. However, in recent history, Quality Adjusted Power (QAP) has taken over as a leading indicator of relevance for the Filecoin network. QAP is the result of the multiplier when storing verified deals:

Impact of storage capacity on block rewards

As mentioned before, when the Raw Byte Power is above the Baseline Power, storage providers yield maximum returns. When building a business plan as a storage provider, it is important not to rely solely on block rewards. Block rewards are an incentive mechanism for storage providers. However, they are volatile and depend on the state of the network, which is largely beyond the control of storage providers.

The amount of FIL that is flowing to the storage provider per earned block reward is based on a combination of simple minting and baseline minting. Simple minting is the minimum amount of FIL any block will always have, which is 5.5. Baseline minting is the extra FIL on top of the 5.5 that comes from how close the Raw Byte Power is to the Baseline Power.

The below graph shows the evolution of FIL per block reward over time:

There is a positive side to releasing less FIL per block reward too. As Filecoin has a capped maximum token supply of 2 billion FIL, the slower minting rate allows for minting over a longer period. A lower circulating supply also has a positive effect on the price of FIL.