Filecoin

Filecoin is a blockchain and cryptocurrency digital storage platform developed by Protocol Labs and released on July 15, 2014. The Filecoin platform uses a combination of proof-of-storage (PoS) and proof-of-replication (PoRep) consensus mechanisms to allow any data form to be stored in physically independent storage. The Filecoin platform offers a decentralized peer-to-peer network on which users can sell their excess storage on an open platform. Further, as an alternative to centralized digital storage, Filecoin users are able to sell or purchase storage with preferred contract terms and prices.

Filecoin is open source and decentralized, offering the governance of the platform to the community, where users can create cloud file storage services. Filecoin was founded by Juan Benet, part of Protocol Labs, who also created the Interplanetary File System it is developed upon. To secure financing for Filecoin's development, the initial team held a token sale in 2017 that was able to collect over USD$205 million, which made it one of the largest token sales at the time. Filecoin would later contribute approximately USD$10 million (50,000 Filecoins) to the Internet Archive in 2021 to continue the organization's commitment to internet-based storage.

Filecoin is supported by the Interplanetary File System (IPFS), a protocol for distributed file storage and organization. The Filecoin decentralized data storage platform offers a marketplace for users to set their own prices for uploading and hosting data. The platform also allows its users to customize their orders by being able to prioritize speed, redundancy, and cost. The IPFS network allows files to be copied on any nodes and is distributed to give resilience to the files on the internet. Each file on the IPFS network is designated with a unique signature, and multiple nodes can host portions or the entirety of that file.

Introduction to Filecoin.

The Filecoin token is a native asset to the Filecoin blockchain and is used to power the data storage and data retrieval markets. It is the basis of the economy that underlies the network and offers economic incentives and disincentives in the blockchain. For example, users hosting a storage node earn FIL as a reward for partaking in the storage network.