Filecoin News 22: Techstars Accelerator, Filecoin Base Camp, HackFS, and More
Build
Announcing the Filecoin Techstars Accelerator
In collaboration with Techstars, we are excited to announce the Filecoin Techstars Accelerator. The program targets founders and devs from both Web2 and Web3 as they build decentralized applications for data curation, digital asset management, infrastructure and tools, DeFi, data storage, caching, and archival services. The Accelerator will accept applications from mid-September through the end of November 2021. Ten selected startups will participate in a hybrid virtual/in-person accelerator program from March through June 2022. Over the course of three months, founders will receive funding, benefit from curated workshops and educational sessions, and gain access to Techstars’ renowned network of investors, founders, and mentors. Learn more about the Accelerator.
Filecoin Base Camp with Outlier Ventures
In June 2021, Outlier Ventures and Protocol Labs launched the Filecoin Base Camp to fast-track the development of 40 exceptional startups that leverage Filecoin, IPFS, and libp2p. The program will catalyze the growth of new ecosystem projects building the next generation of decentralized data protocols and applications that will drive the adoption of Web 3.0. Learn more about Filecoin Base Camp and apply.
HackFS
Mark your calendars! HackFS is right around the corner, from July 30 - August 20. The virtual hackathon with ETHGlobal and Protocol Labs will bring together developers and founders to focus on centered on dapps, web3, decentralized storage, and everything in between. Register for the event now.
LongHashX Web 3 Accelerator
Join Filecoin and Longhash Ventures for the LongHashX Web 3 Accelerator. Earlier this year the Filecoin Frontier Accelerator helped launch 11 projects building in the Filecoin ecosystem 一 and now it’s your turn! The Filecoin Frontier Accelerator track will feature NFT and data DAO projects using IPFS and Filecoin, enhance the storage and retrieval journey, and bridge DeFi solutions around Filecoin mining.
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Browsers 3000 kicks off its 6-week event, including a presentation from ENS
July 8th marked the beginning of Browsers 3000, a six-week event focused on integrating decentralized technologies into the browser experience for users around the world. So far, we’ve heard from team members of Unstoppable Domains, ENS, IPFS, Microsoft, Puma, Agregore, and more.
You can watch the full Browsers 3000 event so far here. To drill down to the role that ENS is playing in the evolution of the browser, check out this learning session from Makato Inoue, dev at Ethereum Name Service.
Filecoin Quadratic Funding Grant Round 1 at DoraHacks
Protocol Labs is sponsoring a HackerLink Grant via DoraHacks to fund open source developer projects via donation, so that these projects can develop further into a startup in the Filecoin ecosystem. DoraHacks is a decentralized global hacker community and hackathon organizer focusing on blockchain with the mission of connecting hackers around the world and helping them solve critical issues in different industries. DoraHacks has organized 100+ featured hackathons, stewarded the launch of 3,000+ projects and connected 300,000+ hackers from 40+ countries worldwide. Learn more about the fund, how to apply, and more in this recent blog post.
Store
Starling Lab’s Jonathan Dotan featured on BloombergTV
Starling Lab founding director Jonathan Dotan recently spoke to Bloomberg TV (timestamp 43:40) about the work the organization is doing in “using distributed ledger technology to advance human rights,” particularly in helping restore trust in sources of online information and news. One aspect of this work is in authenticating photographs—and determining whether they have been altered. Cryptographic elements embedded within cameras could verify photos were taken by the device as well as embed contextual metadata, making it difficult to manipulate the images.
Mine
Baseline Minting Incentives, Blockscience x Filecoin
The Filecoin network recently crossed the Baseline Target Threshold. Filecoin block rewards are now primarily distributed according to the Baseline Minting policy. This provides ongoing incentives to maintain a baseline of storage capacity on the Filecoin network. Read this article to explore what crossing the Baseline Target Threshold means, how Filecoin block rewards work, and how block rewards respond to network dynamics.
Miners, tell us about your operations and energy sources
Calling all Filecoin miners - we are looking for community members to complete the Filecoin Mining Energy Questionnaire. Help us improve ecosystem initiatives and community support by participating in this short survey - we’d be very grateful for your input. Thank you for your ongoing work to strengthen the community.
Updates
Textile unveils plans to bring native Filecoin storage to NEAR, ETH, Polygon, and others
Starting today, you can test Textile’s first functional bridge, which is deployed to the NEAR testnet and provides simple, permissionless storage. Textile is sharing their plans and early progress on making the Filecoin bridge available on mainnets everywhere, including Ethereum, Polygon, and others. Textile offers a simple three-phase approach to releasing usable storage bridges, increasing their usability, and ultimately decentralizing them.
HyperDrive Upgrade Complete!
The Filecoin network successfully went over the HyperDrive upgrade on June 30th, 2021. Among the changes introduced in the new network version are FIPs 0008 and 0013, which optimize the rate of onboarding new storage to the network. Storage providers have begun benefiting from these FIPs, with the network onboarding a record high of 61 PiB on Sunday, June 11th! Stay tuned to see how the HyperDrive network transforms the Filecoin network moving forward.
SNARKs website launch
For the past two years, CryptoComputeLab and CryptoNetLab (two of the Protocol Labs Research Development labs) have been working on bringing zk-SNARKs to the world and to the Filecoin Network. This week, the zk-SNARKs for the World minisite launched! The site is a preview of the work done by the PL Research lab into how zk-SNARKs are applicable to the Filecoin network and to decentralized storage networks, and a preview what’s to come. Read more in this blog post.
Update from ChainSafe
Hello again from the Rust implementation team Forest! We are a part of the ChainSafe family and have a new blog post on our Medium detailing our latest updates with the project. With the Sigma Prime audit nearing completion, our Filecoin Forest team has been furiously hacking away at the new EPIC’s for our codebase. We detail all the issues completed, and all the outstanding issues still to be tackled! But our codebase is looking as strong and resilient as ever, and we cannot wait to join Lotus in building an antifragile network on Filecoin!
We’re also chipping away at Storage/Retrieval Markets, State Migration, implementing metrics to measure our node performance, & updating our RPC’s and CLI. You can read all about it here. If you want to get in touch with our Forest developers, don’t forget to drop into our Discord to ask questions. For more updates, make sure to follow ChainSafe’s Twitter.
Community
Filecoin Ecosystem Grid
Are you curious about the existing applications, clients, protocol implementations, capitals, accelerators, etc in the Filecoin ecosystem? If yes, check out the new Filecoin Ecosystem Grid to find all collaborators! If you know of any other projects and parties building in the Filecoin ecosystem that are not included in the grid yet, leave a comment in the Filecoin Ecosystem Collective.
Looking to attend events hosted by the Filecoin community?
To keep track of events (meetups, hackathons, etc.) hosted by the Filecoin community and/or Protocol Labs, add this Google Calendar to your calendar.
Learn
Introducing Filecoin Educate
In July, Encode Club announced the Encode Filecoin Club, a nine-month program including a Filecoin education series, a Filecoin-dedicated hackathon and a follow-up accelerator. Filecoin Educate aims to teach students about blockchain through the lens of Filecoin, in attendance will be 125+ university blockchain societies and students globally. To join and learn more, please see the full event schedule.
✊Get Involved!
Head over to the Filecoin project on GitHub and be sure to take a look at the community resources. Ask questions in the Filecoin Slack, discuss issues or new ideas in the community forum, follow us on WeChat @Filecoin-Official or send us your thoughts on Twitter by following @Filecoin.
The Filecoin blog and YouTube channel are also great sources of information if you’re just getting started.
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