Two days after the Filecoin mainnet went live, news of a miner “shutdown” spread widely. According to the news, a number of leading miners collectively stopped mining or reduced their computing power and “demonstrated to the authorities.”
Subsequently, Lai Chuhang, the chairman of Space Cloud Technology, denied the “demonstration” in the Moments of Friends. The reason he complained about stopping mining was that everyone did not have the currency for mortgage mining.
According to Filecoin’s economic model, miners need to provide FIL as collateral before encapsulating sectors (mining), and the block rewards obtained will also take 180 days to gradually release linearly. This means that if miners do not go to the secondary market to buy FIL, it is difficult to have enough FIL for mortgage mining in the early stage. When evaluating this economic model, Lai Chuhang exploded angrily.
A confrontation against the economic model unfolds. On October 18th, Filecoin officially announced the FIP0004 proposal, which revised the block reward to 25% for direct release, and the other 75% of the reward was released at a rate of 180 antennas. If supported by the community, this proposal is expected to be implemented next week.
“A one-time release of 25% is good for miners,” said Hong Rui, a partner of Golden Computing Cloud. This can to some extent alleviate the current situation of miners’ “lack of currency”, but at the currency price level, there is a short-term risk of selling pressure. On the other hand, as FIL tokens continue to fall, the outside world continues to question Filecoin’s official token sale, and some people have begun to take the opportunity to fork Filecoin.
Under various disputes, Filecoin’s road to decentralized storage has been twists and turns.
Miners “shut down” pressure established economic model
Filecoin On the evening of October 19th, Filecoin founder Juan Benet (Juan Benet) appeared on the social network and sent more than 40 tweets in response to many controversies since the Filecoin mainnet went live.
He claimed that the claim that the miners “strike” is “pure nonsense”, the Filecoin network is not abnormal, and the miners are making money. Then, he seemed to point out that many people hope to get rich quickly by using Filecoin without contributing value to the network. This is not how it works, nor is it a reward for the protocol.
Juan believes that the current objective situation is that the growth of network computing power is slower than that of the testnet before the mainnet launch. This is mainly because the network no longer subsidizes the mortgage and fee costs of miners. Now miners use real gold and silver to mine, and miners need to match their computing power growth and token flow.
According to the data of the FILscout browser on October 20, the total computing power of Filecoin’s entire network is 605.4 PiB, which is only a slight increase of 4.6% from the 578.38 PiB the day after the mainnet launch. Judging from the network operation conditions in the past few days, the Filecoin mainnet is fairly stable, but under the current economic model, it is indeed an indisputable fact that miners are “lack of coins”.
Interstellar CEO Zhan Xiaoming revealed that the current economic model cannot enable miners to run full of computing power, and miners have no money to buy coins, so the growth of network Power is slow. The current strategy adopted by Starland is to use some released tokens for mortgage mining every day to gradually increase computing power.
In fact, this economic model has long been written into the Filecoin white paper. “I am not surprised by this result,” Zhan Xiaoming said.
Judging from the collective “shutdown” of many top miners, it seems that they hope to put pressure on the government in this way to speed up the release of block rewards. “There are too many mining machines, without enough coins, it is impossible to start them all. The willingness of miners to buy coins in the secondary market is not strong, and aiming at the established economic model has become the only option.” The reporter said.
Hufu Exchange also provides IPFS computing power services. According to its calculations, currently every T effective computing power requires pre-staking about 7 FIL. The exchange issued an announcement on October 20 stating that due to the strict official economic model, “the amount of collateralized currency is large and the release is insufficient”, it is difficult to increase computing power. “Referring to the existing economic model for trial calculations, it will take about 90 to 100 days to reach the balance period of output and pre-staking.”
Faced with the “confrontation” of miners, Filecoin officially announced the FIP0004 proposal recently. It is proposed to change the release rules of blockchain rewards. The original block rewards released with 180 antennas will be released immediately 25%, and the other 75% will be released linearly, so that miners can enrich the token flow in their hands. If all goes well, this proposal is expected to be implemented next week.
Juan said that this move was not a sudden reaction, but the result of several weeks of discussions. He believes that the revision of the economic model requires careful consideration, “unless there is a security breach, no major changes are expected.”
In addition, Juan also talked about loan solutions. Some miners hope to use USDT or BTC, etc., to lend FIL for staking instead of buying at a high point in the market. Juan revealed that he has cooperated with relevant partners to provide small loans and only allows miners to borrow loans for pledge. However, he did not further disclose specific data such as specific quotas and interest rates.
The new proposal can relieve the “near thirst” FIL deposit pressure risk?
Industry figures such as Mr. Xiao, the founder of Filecoin Yaochi, and Hong Rui, a partner of Golden Computing Cloud, believe that the FIP0004 proposal will help miners alleviate the “shortage of coins”. But the problem that follows is that the faster release of block rewards means that there is more selling pressure, which has fallen a lot of FIL, and there is a risk of further downside.
According to data from Huobi Global, on October 20, FIL was quoted at $32, which was 85.45% lower than the high of $220 on the day of launch.
The implementation of the FIP0004 proposal may trigger another game in the secondary market due to changes in the supply and demand structure of tokens.
Wang Chunhua, co-founder of Hufu, believes that if 25% of the block rewards for storage miners are released immediately, it will form a huge selling pressure. Any modification of the economic model will have an impact on the order balance of the secondary market, and an increase in output will inevitably increase selling orders. He suggested that the miners should not be too rushed. The sudden increase in output may be a bottle of poison.
OKEx Chief Strategy Officer Xu Kun analyzed that if the proposal to release 25% block rewards is passed, it will not cause a lot of selling pressure on the whole, because the demand for FIL is still strong in the short term, and the currency price will decline in the short term. The risk is low. But in the long run, if market demand is not enough to support the market value, the value of FIL tokens will be reassessed.
It is not difficult to see that if the FIP0004 proposal is successfully implemented, it will be a “near thirst” for miners, but the impact of this economic model change on the long-term development of Filecoin is still uncertain.
Official selling controversy ferments Filecoin into a fork crisis
Since the Filecoin mainnet went live on October 15th, this highly anticipated decentralized storage project has had a long history. Except for the miners’ “shutdown”, the controversy about the official token sale has not subsided.
On October 15th, an unknown account obtained 1.5 million FIL tokens, which flowed to Huobi and other exchanges. According to the unlocking plan, early investors, officials and miners should unlock only 500,000 in the first day.
Filecoin officials later explained that these coins are mainly used for market making to maintain price stability. However, from the disk perspective, the price of FIL has experienced violent fluctuations. After a surge, it fell sharply and is still at a low point.
On October 20th, according to the FilFox browser, the above-mentioned “market-making” address once again transferred 30,000 FIL, and the selling dispute continued to ferment.
Under the reality of the currency price plummeting and miners “stopping”, Filecoin is facing a lot of negative public opinion. Just then, Justin Sun, the founder of TRON, also came out to add fire. He said on Twitter that he hopes the SEC will investigate the case of Filecoin’s official selling of 1.5 million FIL.
“Brother Sun will never be absent from every hot spot,” some netizens joked. However, in Juan’s view, Justin Sun’s remarks may be to take the opportunity to fork Filecoin. He also unceremoniously said on Twitter that Justin Sun is not the savior. Just look at Hive and you will know, “Are you going to be victims of the fraud project?”
Although Justin Sun has not made any real moves on the forking of Filecoin, some people can’t help it.
On October 17, the project named Mingzhi Protocol released an economic white paper and proposed the concept of “IPFS+DAO”, claiming to fork Filecoin. In response to the current Filecoin economic model and other issues, the Mingshi Protocol proposes to improve with less pledge and fairer governance.
In fact, before the launch of the Filecoin mainnet, there were two fork projects, Filecoin Vision and Filecash, but they did not attract much attention.
An indisputable fact is that less than a week after the Filecoin mainnet went live, the “fork” speech has spread, which is obviously not conducive to the stability and unity of the community. Previously, Lai Chuhang, chairman of Space Cloud, said that if officials ignore the status of the miner community, a consensus split in the community may occur, and the project may be worrying.
Currently, despite the emergence of forked projects one after another, Filecoin is still the choice of most people. However, there have been concerns that if Filecoin cannot break free from the current negative vortex as soon as possible, a real fork may eventually occur.
