Maintaining the security and stability of the storage network is the fundamental purpose of Filecoin’s previous test network operations, including the ongoing space race.
As the first landing pass in the distributed storage industry, Filecoin is generally favored by the industry and has broad prospects. Filecoin’s mission is to create a decentralized, efficient and powerful infrastructure for human information, with huge commercial applications and landing expectations.
Maintaining the security and stability of the storage network is the fundamental purpose of Filecoin’s previous test network operations, including the ongoing space race. Real security and stability are based on the due diligence of global node participants, but if the node fails to perform due diligence due to evil or negligence, it will also be punished. In order to ensure that node participants can provide high-quality data storage services, Filecoin uses a penalty mechanism to restrict node participants’ sabotage behavior. This is also the difference between Filecoin and Bitcoin.
How the punishment is triggered
In the official Filecoin Economic Structure Questions and Answers (FAQ), the official answer to the question “How is the punishment triggered and how is it implemented?”
Suppose the node participant is proving a sector: If the sector is in a fault state, the node participant needs to pay a daily sector failure fee for the sector in the fault state. When the reliability of storage node participants increases above a reasonable threshold, the risks brought by these costs will quickly decrease.
If the node participant does not report the failure truthfully, but an unreported failure is found on the chain, the node participant must pay a sector failure detection fee for potentially malicious or dishonest behavior.
If the sector continues to be in a fault state for too long (14 days), the sector will be terminated, and the node participant must pay the sector termination fee (in between the sector failure fee for several days and the potential sector failure detection fee) on).
Node participants can also choose to actively terminate the sector, but they need to pay a termination fee. If there is pledged by the storage order provider, it will also be destroyed. Please note: There are penalties based on other malicious behaviors that have nothing to do with storage reliability.
According to the latest official economic model, the specific penalties in the Filecoin network include: sector failure fee, sector failure detection fee, and sector termination fee.
Punishment mechanism and WindowPoSt
Although Filecoin officially adjusted the relevant parameters in “Creating the Filecoin Economy”, the punishment mechanism is still very strict:
If a node participant discovers a sector failure and voluntarily reports it, the expected 2.14-day income of the sector will be deducted; if the node participant does not find a sector failure but is discovered by the system during WindowPoSt, it will be punished for the 3.5-day income of the failed sector Sector error detection fee; if the sector is terminated before the expiration of the sector, part of the block rewards obtained by the sector in the previous period will be deducted (≤140 days, half of the service time income will be confiscated; >140 days, will be Confiscation of proceeds for 70 days).
The WindowPoSt in Filecoin’s proof of replication is the sword of Damocles hanging over the node participants. Its function is to check whether the node continues to store the corresponding data as required.
The period of WindowPoSt is one day, divided into 48 windows (Window), each window is 30 minutes. The more sectors and volume of node participants, the higher the number and difficulty of challenges. Node participants must complete the data verification challenge within the specified time, and any unsuccessful one will be punished and lose computing power.
System stability and system repair capabilities are critical
Because Filecoin has extremely high requirements for network stability and storage availability, Filecoin node participants are always under great pressure: on the one hand, operation and maintenance are more difficult than traditional operation and maintenance; on the other hand, once an abnormality occurs, WindowPoSt is not completed on time. It will suffer a real asset loss.
In the above figure, three top-ranked nodes participating in the space race are selected. From the computing power curve, it is not difficult to see that all three nodes have lost computing power, and most likely they have been punished. There are many reasons why a node fails to complete WindowPost within the specified time, such as network transmission problems, disk damage, and software bugs. Especially the problem of disk damage, even if the damage rate is small, a certain number of hardware devices will still be damaged due to the size, which is inevitable. How to deal with these problems is a great challenge to the operation and maintenance capabilities of miners.
In order to ensure that they are not penalized and their computing power is not reduced, node participants not only need software optimization, but also high-standard operation and maintenance support. These include but are not limited to: software algorithm optimization, shortening WindowPoSt time; monitoring system, real-time monitoring of the stability of network transmission and the condition of hardware equipment; redundant backup, dealing with disk failure problems, ensuring that data will not be lost, etc.
But can 100% system stability be guaranteed by doing this? Of course not, even the world’s leading Internet companies such as Ali, Tencent, and Amazon dare not guarantee this.
The above figure shows two nodes that are ranked high on the ranking list. It is not difficult to see from this that some nodes have a very small proportion of error sectors in all sectors, while some nodes have sector errors as high as tens of thousands. huge. So many sector errors naturally lead to huge loss of computing power. Therefore, ultra-fast system repair capabilities are also particularly important for nodes. Even if there is a very small probability of emergencies, the quick repair system will minimize the loss to ensure the single-T revenue, block generation efficiency and overall FIL revenue are maximized. This is also the case for miners during the space race and after the mainnet launch The top priority.
to sum up
If the rules of post-staking are only strict requirements for the output of node participants, then the punishment for node participants’ mistakes and evils can even be described as “terror”.
At present, the effective storage of the entire space race network has reached 148 PiB, and the first node that crosses 10 PiB is about to appear. 10 PiB will be a greater technical test for each node. As mentioned above: the more sectors and volume of node participants, the higher the number and difficulty of challenges.
10PiB effective storage is a big threshold. It has high requirements for server volume, mine stability, and underlying code storage solutions. If it is not done, it will not be broken, and computing power will be lost. Each punishment is like staring at the pledged coins in the hands of node participants, and nodes that are not technically capable are easily eliminated at this stage.
In addition, when the official updated the Filecoin economic model coefficients on September 8th, there was a mention: The sector failure fee is actually low, but due to the early stage of the network, it will not be adjusted temporarily. It is not difficult to guess that the official purpose of this article is to increase the penalty for sector failures in the Filecoin incentive model, so that node participants can notice the seriousness of this problem. However, the network is still in its early stages, and it is still difficult to judge the level or limit of the sector failure rate, so it will not be increased for the time being, but it may be increased significantly in the later period.
From the official strict pledge and punishment mechanism, we can see that Filecoin officials attach great importance to the stability and security of node participants in the mining process, ignore their own stability and security, and blindly pursue the behavior of computing power. It is undesirable, and it is easy to be punished and eliminated in the subsequent mining process.
Despite many changes in the economic model, effective storage of data has always been the focus of official emphasis. From the recent official constant adjustment of economic coefficients and the performance of each node, after the Filecoin mainnet is launched, the low error rate of the system, fast technical repair, and strong stability will become the biggest competitive advantages of each node.
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