While cryptocurrencies are getting all the flash, the most important blockchain projects continue to evolve slowly. The IPFS protocol (“Interplanetary File System”) was developed by Juan Benet (Protocol Labs) in 2015. system to store data in a decentralized way. It’s an open system that takes many of the benefits of P2P and applies it not only for downloading content, but also for storing and distributing it.

IPFS is supported by browsers like Brave and Opera, but it’s still a protocol. Here comes Filecoin, a project created in 2017 by Protocol Labs that aims to give IPFS economic meaning.

In the original protocol, different users store and share files with others in an unrelated way. This might make sense on an internal network or free projects, but it’s not scalable. Filecoin is a cryptocurrency created to manage this file exchange.

Filecoin, the world’s largest decentralized storage protocol

Want more storage? Let’s say you paid 10 Filecoins (FIL). These tokens will fall into the hands of different users, who will be those who provide the storage associated with the exchange of the currency. We can think of these tokens as “space triggers”.

The health of the Filecoin project is very good. At the beginning of 2023 one Network that manages more than 18.9 exbibytes (EiB) (about 21 million terabytes). To get an idea, 1 EiB is equivalent to about 4,500 Wikipedia copies.

It also has more than 3,800 suppliers and More than 540 organizations those who support the project. Among the exhibitors we mainly find companies from the Web3 sector, as well as academic institutions such as the University of Berkeley or CERN, which use Filecoin for the Internet Archive, the ATLAS experiment and the Seal storage system.

This is how Filecoin works: “Customers pay for storing data at certain levels of redundancy and availability, and miners are paid and rewarded by continuously storing and cryptographically testing data.”

There are three types of actions with Filecoin. The first is ‘Put’ which is used to store data. The second is ‘Get’ which lets you retrieve them. The third is ‘Manage’, which is to supervise the service offered and repair any possible malfunctions. Filecoin verifies data through a “proof of copy” (PoRep) and a “proof of space-time” (PoST).

Filecoin technical documentation is extensive. The project itself also advocates the advantages of Filecoin as a storage system. On the one hand, they explain that anyone can access the network, without the need for a company’s permission. The only requirement is to have internet access and have your own space to store data.

The price of storage with Filecoin is determined by supply and demand, not by the criteria of the company’s pricing departments. miners Compete based on storage, stability and speed was offered. Some data stored in the blockchain network.

The network explains the culprits, promoting the offer of space, not its use for large calculations. When a file becomes popular, it is stored by many computers instead of one central server.

They have important allies and have lofty goals.

Filecoin describes itself as the world’s largest decentralized storage network. As with other open source projects, they have their own Filecoin Foundation, which leads to a larger collaboration, Filecoin, Protocol Labs, EY with Seagate and AMD.

Beyond serving as a Dropbox-style file storage network, Filecoin also makes it possible to create decentralized services. This is the case of Livepeer, a “decentralized YouTube” where videos are stored in a distributed manner and at a lower cost.

Recently Filecoin decided to go one step further. This is Filecoin Web Services, a Free alternative to Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Azure. It is a cloud storage service built on the Filecoin protocol. A service with its own APIs to facilitate the creation of decentralized services such as Livepeer.

First IPFS was created, then with Filecoin the foundation was laid to make it economically viable. We are now working to facilitate its adoption by third parties. The dream of a decentralized and open storage system is slowly being pursued. We do not know if it will be implemented correctly or if it will be overshadowed by negative dynamics, but Filecoin Definitely one of the great examples. what blockchain technology has to offer.

on Xataka | Ethereum is closing the distance to Bitcoin with a winning formula: being more decentralized than ever