I’m sure you’ve heard enough cryptocurrency news, but FileCoin solves key infrastructure problems for the internet.

Decentralized Storage Network

Filecoin is built heavily on top of IPFS,  a distributed file system launched in 2016, which is on it’s own a Distributed Storage Network. There are no central servers with IPFS, as files are stored on user equipment and served by those users. IPFS was very promising tech back in 2016, but it suffered from a serious problem, no body wanted to run servers for free. Filecoin solves this issue by rewarding nodes and charging uploaders in Filecoin.

Filecoin gets very granular and allows for multiple storage “plans”, with options including the ability to decide how many nodes your file gets uploaded to, the bidding price, if you want fast storage (SSD vs HDD), and the network speed of the node. Filecoin also will automatically repair your file across the network if a node fails, making it more appealing for long term usage.

Aims for low resource utilization

You may be able to mine Filecoin right from your desktop. Users with fast internet connections or large storage are rewarded the most, but since Filecoin wants to prevent wasting resources, the performance impact on mining Filecoin is significantly lower than mining other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. I’m expecting the performance impact to be low enough to not be noticeable on fast networks based on reading the white paper.

Potentially Cheaper than Cloud Companies

With the current low cost of hard drives (A WD 6TB drive is going for $178 at the time of writing) and of fast internet connections, it is possible that these costs can outcompete companies like Amazon and the Google. Lower costs would bring the appeal of smaller internet platforms to the Filecoin platform and will allow popular content to survive much longer than in the current centralized internet infrastructure.

Overall, I am very interested to see where Filecoin goes in the nearby months. Mining looks promising and I hope to jump on that opportunity when it arises.