Deploy smart contracts on Filecoin’s Virtual Machine →
Build on the Filecoin network and make the Web3 vision a reality. Whether you’re a storage or dapp developer,  there are a range of tools to help you get started.

Build on Web3: apps, dapps, and more

A groundbreaking storage network with the power of built-in incentives.

A programmable network from the ground up

Software programming terminal displaying Filecoin developer software

All it takes to store files is code and a crypto wallet. This provides developers everywhere access to an entirely new data storage paradigm, even letting your programs store data autonomously.

Getting started with Filecoin & IPFS

Tools & services

Whether you’re a storage or dapp developer or just curious, there are a range of tools and infrastructure services to help you get started.

Docs & Guides
Foundation

Filecoin cryptographically verifies that a unique encoding of your data exists in physical storage in the world... over time.

Filecoin Proofs of Storage are a new foundation for a decentralized network with built-in incentives that drives an internet-wide market for storing and retrieving data.


Learn More What sets us apart: Filecoin’s Proof System

Storage Market

Filecoin uses economic incentives to create a verifiable storage market.

An open marketplace of storage nodes incentivizes long-term distributed storage at competitive prices. Storage Providers compete on factors like reliability as well as price.

Storage Providers earn FIL from storage deals, message transaction fees or block rewards. Retrieval Providers & Services earn FIL for data retrieval and serve as a CDN or caching layer.


Learn More Filecoin's Cryptoeconomic Constructions

IPFS & Filecoin

Filecoin is built on top of IPFS, complementary protocols for storing and sharing data in the decentralized web.

Filecoin is the missing incentive layer for IPFS and verifies that your data is being stored, while maintaining the efficiency, authenticity and resiliency provided by IPFS.

They can also be used in conjunction with other blockchains.


Learn More IPFS & Filecoin - Docs

Roadmap

Network governance will involve future Filecoin Improvement Proposals to the protocol along with a community exploring developer tools, services & apps.

Programmable storage and user-defined smart contracts (aka actors in Filecoin) are roadmap, along with continued research into protocol improvements.

Filecoin is a core protocol for a storage market. Developers can build their own encryption, redundancy and storage provider reputation systems on top.


Learn more The Filecoin Project: Roadmap & Research

Filecoin

The Filecoin network is now live and fully functional.

The Filecoin network is permissionless and open for anyone to access. The codebase of the Filecoin Project is open-source for anyone to use or contribute to.

Storage Providers can earn Filecoin by providing useful storage for clients. Storage clients can store and retrieve real data. Developers can begin building applications on top of APIs.

We welcome disclosures of security vulnerabilities and protocol issues. Please follow our security vulnerability reporting guide.


View Filecoin network statistics and blocks

Nodes

The foundational protocol layer is enabled by a p2p network of Filecoin nodes.

Node implementations include lotus (furthest along, in Go), fuhon (in C++) and forest (in Rust).

Like IPFS nodes, they communicate over a libp2p peer-to-peer network, use IPLD to authenticate data models and formats, and multiformats to future-proof upgradability.


Filecoin implementations The importance of multiple implementations

Node CLIs & API

Interact with the network via command line or node API. Or try out the developer tools in the next section.

To get started with a full node, install node software and follow the docs to connect to a devnet, testnet or Filecoin mainnet. Start storage mining, storing, and retrieving data.

Learn more about lotus Filecoin's JSON RPC API.


Filecoin Community Slack Issues, help requests, questions, and benchmarks can be shared in our Community Slack:

#fil-help for general questions, #fil-lotus for lotus topics

For async discussions please visit the Filecoin discussion forums.

Devnets

A local or shared Devnet can simplify development & testing under different conditions before deploying to the live main network.

You can find resources to join a Devnet on the community resources documentation. Options for accessing hosted endpoints are also available.


Find Devnet tools on the Community Resources Wiki A list of community projects to aid in installing, using & building on Filecoin

Tools

Filecoin is a core protocol for a verifiable storage market. Our ecosystem has additional tools to simplify building & end-user experience.

If you're familiar with other blockchains, there are wallets, authentication tools and JS APIs to help you get started, with more on the way.

Powergate by Textile is a convenient tool that has all of these + a storage market swiss army knife (including a deal agent and fast retrieval).

Know IPFS? Learn about more convenient tools like Pinning Services, up next.


Community Resources A list of community projects to aid in installing, using & building on Filecoin

Filecoin & IPFS Pinning Services

Offer both options through a general Pinning API, making it seamless for dapp developers to back up from IPFS to Filecoin.

For those who want IPFS performance as well as Filecoin's incentives, but do not want to maintain IPFS & Filecoin nodes.

Filecoin-backed IPFS Pinning Service (FPS) infrastructure is the prototype for advanced retrieval providers in the Filecoin network. Several service providers are offering FPS services to beta testers like dapp integrators. Reach out to filecoin-collab for more info.


FPS one-sheet Filecoin-backed IPFS Pinning API

Application Architectures

Wherever on the spectrum between fully decentralized to backed by hosted services, Filecoin offers apps long-term storage with the structural efficiency of IPFS.

Filecoin's range of ecosystem tools & services help you evolve your dapp ideas and harness the power of verified storage.

Leverage a robust global market where storage price is driven by supply and demand, not corporate departments, and data storage is cryptographically verified on the network.

Built with Filecoin

To learn about awesome projects built with Filecoin, visit the Filecoin Shipyard.

If you have an idea for something great, consider applying to the Filecoin Dev Grants program. New grants are awarded every quarter. Stay tuned for new RFPs.


Filecoin Shipyard Community launchpad to collaborate on research experiments, products, code libraries, and more.

Grants

The Filecoin ecosystem is looking to fund talented and eager developer teams that want to build the future of the web.
Number of projects to date 400+
Total awarded to date $4+ million
Filecoin Ecosystem Grants and Dev Grants
  • Rewards ongoing open source contributions.
  • Seeds creation of new products, businesses, tools.
  • Inspires contributors to solve open problems.
Learn more and apply

Where we‘re headed

Building a blockchain is like building a software rocket – it is fundamentally hard, and takes extraordinary care to ensure launch is secure and stable. Check out these resources to learn about Filecoin’s development progress and how the network is approaching some extremely challenging problems in cryptography, distributed systems, and beyond.
Rocket just after blast-off, climbing into the sky
Roadmap

The Filecoin network is now live. Read about our latest updates and join us as we continue to build the network.

Software text editor displaying the Filecoin specification
The Filecoin Technical Specification

The singular source of truth for the Filecoin Protocol

Two men from the Filecoin research team sitting at a table and writing on a large notepad
Research

Learn about the predicates that enable Filecoin

New possibilities for programmable storage and algorithmic data markets.

Discover more potential Filecoin use-cases

With the Filecoin Virtual Machine (FVM) sophisticated smart contracts will operate on large volumes of data, mediate valuable data transactions, and create a new economy around information.

Decentralized apps can programmatically use smart contracts that administer storage. For retrieval, algorithmic CDNs will be able to optimize content delivery as an incentivized, auto-scalable worldwide CDN.

Discover more potential Filecoin use-cases

Filecoin Community

Filecoin is a large community of developers, storage providers and users all coming together to collaborate and build something greater than themselves.

Woman giving a presentation about the Filecoin Network to a large room full of seated people
Man presenting about Filecoin to a large room of seated people
Filecoin code on a laptop screen
Close up of a microphone
Two men from the Filecoin community sitting at a table and looking at a laptop screen

Get in touch

Engage with the active Filecoin community of builders, storage providers, users, and enthusiasts of all kinds.

Events

For the latest information about upcoming (and ongoing) hackathons, please check out our Hackathons site. If you’re interested in organizing a meetup reach out on the Community Slack or apply to host a meetup.

Apply to host a meetup
Filecoin is an open-source cloud storage marketplace, protocol, and incentive layer.
icon_client
filecoin_request_icon
filecoin_data_icon
filecoin_data_icon_black
icon_miner
icon_miner_other
filecoin_data_icon_black