Liftoff Day 2 Recap: Growing Filecoin’s Island Economy

Today we wrapped up day 2 at Filecoin Liftoff Week. We heard from mining experts across the Web3 ecosystem, including solo Filecoin miner Benjamin Hoesjbo, Node Factory CEO Belma Gutlic, IPFSMain Co-founder Neo Ge, Chainsafe lead engineer Elizabeth Binks, and many many more. Here are some highlights from today’s “Mine on Filecoin” agenda, and a snapshot of what’s in store for tomorrow.

👥 Filecoin is for miners of all sizes

Throughout the day, we heard from individual miners, small mining teams, and large corporate-structured mining companies. All agreed on the same general idea: that Filecoin mining worked for their setup, no matter its size. In the miner spotlights that kicked off today’s events, Eric Tu of ChainSafe talked about the BigChungus project and his mission to prove that small-scale mining is feasible. Later, Filecoin miner Benjamin Hoesjbo showed off his solo miner rig, explaining how he even connected it to his floor heating for maximum efficiency. When asked how he was able to win Space Race, Core Architect of 6Block Lee White explained how he had divided his large mining rig into smaller clusters. Smaller clusters allowed 6Block engineers to more precisely fix issues, and overall still led to 6Block’s success.

👨‍🚀 Space Race was the place to be

Filecoin’s Space Race was mentioned in most of the talks today, culminating in the “How we Won the Space Race” panel with 6Block Core Architect Lee White, IPFS Main co-founder Neo Ge, IPFS-Force CTO Steven Li, and ARS CTO Wayne Yang. Throughout the day, the attitude towards Space Race was consistent; it had served as a vital catalyst in the past few months to jumpstart the Filecoin mining ecosystem. Space Race is just another example of Filecoin’s impressive community development. Tomorrow, you’ll have the opportunity to hear more about Filecoin’s commitment to ecosystem engagement at 10am PDT when Vivek Singh of Gitcoin kicks off the agenda with a demo day for Apollo, a hackathon hosted with Protocol Labs and Gitcoin.

🔮 The future of Filecoin mining is more decentralization and greater participation

Throughout the day, speakers and panelists answered questions about the future of Filecoin mining. Two consistent themes emerged: greater participation and decentralization were both needed and inevitable. Lee White of 6Block predicted that a major near-term user base of Filecoin would be data-oriented research groups such as scientists. These communities need vast amounts of verifiable, uncensored data from around the world. Neo Ge of IPFS Main predicted that people in the future will be using Filecoin both consciously and unconsciously. He sees the driver of unconscious use as services that help people rent out their extra disk space on the Filecoin network, possibly without ever knowing what the Filecoin network is. Protocol Labs engineer Aayush Rajasekaran hosted a meetup with developers from different implementations of Filecoin, including Forest from Chainsafe, Venus from IPFS Force, and Fuhon from Soramitsu. Rajasekaran emphasized that greater implementation diversity results in a stronger economy and a more secure network. Finally, just today, Codefi Activate launched its Filecoin Storage web app and API to make price discovery for storage on the Filecoin network simple and transparent. The app queries all active miners and stores relevant information, including the miner’s account ID, the storage capacity they are offering, the monthly price per gibibyte, their location, and a reputation score. With more and more participation in the network - from miners, unconscious users, developer partners, and more - the Filecoin ecosystem grows more and more decentralized. We are, as Steven Li of IPFS Force emphasized, just barely at the beginning of seeing what Filecoin will become.

🏝 The power of Filecoin’s island economy

In his talk “Filecoin’s Storage Economy,” ZX of Protocol Labs talked through the idea of an island economy and miners’ role in it. The idea behind an island economy is that everyone has a role to play, with the goal of any economy being to create production cycles from raw materials into goods and services as efficiently as possible. The better that economic process is, demand for the island nation’s native currency will grow, and the island’s economy grows as well. Though not explicitly referenced elsewhere, the idea of an island economy was present throughout the day. DeFil is a project focused on combining the worlds of DeFi and Filecoin on a single decentralized platform to supercharge the adoption of both. The team discussed the idea that bringing DeFi and Filecoin together would increase the overall size of the Filecoin ecosystem, creating a wider variety of economic opportunities and resulting in the same eventual strengthening of Filecoin’s economy as discussed by ZX. IPFS Main co-founder Neo Ge described repair miners as “general contractors” that take orders from the network, and storage miners as “subcontractors” that fulfill specific roles to get the job done. Overall, the idea of Filecoin as a functional economy in which people perform their unique roles, create value for the network, and grow the size of the “island” was prevalent throughout the day.

Join us for Liftoff Week!

This week is Filecoin Liftoff Week, five days of talks, panels, workshops, demos, and community events. From October 19 - 23, tune in to listen to leaders from across the Web3 ecosystem as we celebrate Filecoin’s launch last week and plan for its continued growth in the months and years to come. Register and join us!

Tomorrow, October 21, is day 3 of Liftoff Week, during which we’ll be focusing on Building on Filecoin. It’s a full day of what’s been developed on and for the Filecoin ecosystem and what’s in store for the months and years ahead. A preview of the agenda:

10am PDT: Kick off day 3 with “Apollo Demo Day” led by Vivek Singh of Gitcoin. Attendees will tune into the results of Apollo, Protocol Labs’ ecosystem building hackathon in coordination with Gitcoin.
12pm PDT: Join Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin and Filecoin founder Juan Benet for a fireside chat about “Bridging Filecoin and Ethereum”.
1:10pm PDT: Filecoin product lead Pooja Shah will give an overview of Filecoin developer pathways and how to use Filecoin for your use case.
1:50pm PDT: Cezar Paraschiv of Digital MOB will give a talk and demo into the roadmap to building a reputation system for the Filecoin ecosystem.
2:20pm PDT: Infura Senior Engineer Tim Myers will give a sneak peak of Infura’s soon-to-launch managed Filecoin API.
3:00pm PDT: Molly Mackinlay and Dietrich Ayala of Protocol Labs, CEO of Textile Andrew Hill, and Sigma Prime director Adrian Manning sit down for panel about what lies ahead for Web3.0.
3:40pm PDT: “How we Made Slate” with Jimmy Lee of Protocol Labs.
4:50pm PDT: “Building Dev Tools on Filecoin” with Jordan Ellis of Web3API, Artefactual Systems founder Peter Van Garderen, and NodeFactor CEO Belma Gutlic.
5:30pm PDT: Fleek CEO Harrison Hines and developer Samuele Agostinelli will give a tech-focused talk and workshop to dive into the technology behind Space, use-cases, and getting started with the Space Daemon.
6:40pm PDT: Join Corbin Page of ConsenSys Codefi, Ren CTO Loong Wang, and Aave CEO Stani Kulechov as they explore the exciting potential for Filecoin and DeFi.