Distributed storage is an important part of Web3.0, and the importance of IPFs is self-evident.
The ipfs.cn of time-space blockchain (ipfs.cn) makes a complete analysis of the advanced information related to filecoin through refining content. This paper will analyze the elements and important knowledge points of filecoin from the perspective of knowledge popularization.
Category 1: what is filecoin?
Filecoin is a peer-to-peer network for storing files, which has built-in economic incentive mechanism, which can ensure reliable storage of files over time.
Miners on the filecoin network can obtain fil by providing storage to customers. Instead, customers can store or distribute data by spending fil hiring miners. Filecoin includes blockchain and native cryptocurrency (FIL). The storage miners earn fil by storing files, and the blockchain of filecoin records the transactions to send and receive fil, as well as the certificates from the storage miners to prove that they have correctly stored the files.
For users
Filecoin enables users to store their files at a highly competitive price and verify that their files are stored correctly.
Users can choose the best mining machine suitable for their storage requirements, choose their favorite compromise between cost, redundancy and speed, and the filecoin application can negotiate with any miner on the network for storage. Unlike centralized storage systems, filecoin distributed storage does not need to implement different APIs for each provider. Users can verify that their files are stored correctly by checking the certificates on the filecoin blockchain at any time.
For storage providers
Filecoin enables storage providers to sell their storage on the public market.
The storage provider is the person and organization that runs the miner and thus obtains the filecoin token. Miners can be any networked computer with spare disk space or a dedicated system with large amount of storage built for filecoin.
Once the storage provider implements the filecoin protocol, they can access the entire market of filecoin users. Providers don’t need to design their own storage API or advertise their products, because it is handled by filecoin protocol and network. Filecoin effectively eliminates the barriers of threshold and breaks the pain point of centralized storage.
New features of Web3
Web3 is the next era of the Internet. Web3 is a movement in the field of software development. It is transforming centralized application into distributed protocol. The application built on Web3 architecture does not have to have a single control point, but can eliminate centralized control. Web3 is an open protocol world, which allows users to own ownership and recover control over their data.
Web3 essentially allows the existence of filecoin by allowing files to be shared between peers.
Category 2: how filecoin works
Filecoin node
Filecoin node refers to the global distributed running server that maintains filecoin network. They synchronize filecoin blockchain and verify messages in each block. Once applied, they will provide global status. The node can manage the filecoin wallet and receive fils on it.
Filecoin nodes can also broadcast different types of messages to the network. For example, a client can publish a message to send fil from one address to another. Nodes can propose to filecoin miners to store and retrieve transactions and pay for them at execution time.
In addition, nodes can also participate in the retrieval contract, provide users with specified documents to obtain fil. At present, filecoin team is developing more node roles, such as nodes that promote self-healing of network, etc.
Filecoin miner
The customer will send the file information and a small amount of token information to the storage market for quotation. Storage miners submit inquiries, and competition between miners can provide low-cost storage. The customer and miner agree on storage and complete the matching process.
After the buyer and the supplier have reached a transaction, the customer sends the file to the storage miner, the miner adds the file to the disk partition, the partition is sealed by encryption, and the verification information is sent to the blockchain.
When miners store files in their own storage space, miners constantly prove that they are honest in storing their customers’ documents through time-space certification and copy proof. The fees paid by customers to miners are paid by installment. The miner side will not only get the fil income paid by the customers but also get the block reward of the network over time.
Miner type
The filecoin network will have a variety of miners:
Store miners, responsible for storing files and data on the network.
Retrieve miners, providing fast access to retrieve documents.
Repair the miners, to be implemented.
The storage miner is the heart of the network. They verify that the cross time storage can earn filecoin by storing data for clients and calculating encryption proof. The probability of earning block rewards and transaction costs is proportional to the amount of storage contributed by miners to filecoin network.
Searching miners is the vein of the network. They earn filecoin by winning the bidding price and mining fee for a specific document, depending on the market value of the size of the document. Retrieving the miner’s bandwidth and the bid / initial response time (i.e. wait time and proximity to the customer) will determine their ability to complete the retrieval transaction on the network. Retrieving the maximum bandwidth of the miner will determine the total number of transactions that they can make.
transaction
Filecoin has two main types of transactions: store transactions and retrieve transactions.
Storage transaction is a protocol between client and storage miner, which is used to store some data in the network. Once the transaction begins, and the miner has received data storage, it repeatedly proves the chain, it is still storing data according to the agreement so that it can collect rewards. Otherwise, the miners will be punished and lose fil.
Retrieval transaction is a protocol between client and retrieval miner to extract data stored in the network (in a fast and reliable way). Unlike storage transactions, these transactions are realized by using payment channels to pay for the received data in incremental way.
Gas cost
Gas was originally implemented on Ethereum blockchain, which is used to measure the computing and storage resources consumed by messages. Gas is a method to measure the resource consumed by information. The cost of gas consumed by a message directly affects the cost that the sender must pay for the miner to be included in the new area.
Filecoin is an economy based on blockchain, and participants trade on distributed networks. Update the network state by the excavators to record and process messages in the blocks they are mining. Gas can be used to measure the resources consumed by messages. The “gas” consumed by messages directly affects the cost that the sender pays to submit the message to the blockchain.
Category 3: why filecoin
market overt
In filecoin, file storage and retrieval transactions need to be negotiated in the open market, and anyone can join the filecoin network without permission. Only Internet connection and spare disk space are needed for the operators to participate in filecoin network. By lowering the access threshold, filecoin can create a truly decentralized Internet.
Competitive price
The price of storage and retrieval is determined by supply and demand, not by the pricing department of the enterprise. Filecoin provides reliable storage at a competitive price, and miners compete based on their storage, reliability and speed, rather than by marketing or locking users.
Reliable storage
Because storage is paid, filecoin provides a viable economic reason to keep files available over time. The files are stored on a reliable and well connected computer.
Self healing
Filecoin network constantly verifies that the files are stored correctly. Filecoin blockchain has built-in self repair process, in which the failed miners can be detected and their files can be redistributed to reliable miners.
Category 4: comparing filecoin
Filecoin vs. Amazon S3, Google cloud storage
Filecoin vs bitcoin
Category V: common problems of filecoin
Will storing data on filecoin be cheaper than other centralized cloud services?
Filecoin creates a competitive market for data storage. There will be many miners on the Internet offering many prices, not a fixed price. Officials expect that filecoin’s unlicensed mode and lower access threshold will have some very effective operation mechanisms and low-cost storage solutions.
If an unexpected sector is lost, what can be done?
If the user loses the data itself, there will be no way to recover it and the user’s reward will be cut. However, if the data itself is recoverable (for example, the user just missed windowpost), the recovery process can regain the sector.
Why is filecoin mining the best on AMD?
Currently, replication proof of filecoin (porep) tends to run on AMD processors. For more information, see the instructions for filecoin seal. More precisely, it runs much slower on Intel CPUs. It has a high level of competitiveness on some ARM processors, such as those in newer Samsung phones, but they lack ram to seal larger sectors. The main reason we see this advantage on AMD processors is that they execute Sha hardware instructions.
Which lotus or Venus is better for miners?
Lotus is the main reference implementation of filecoin protocol. At this stage, we recommend that most miners use lotus to participate in the filecoin network.
How fast is retrieval from filecoin network?
If you want to retrieve data from an IPFs or remote fixed layer (such as FPS), retrieval should take millisecond orders of magnitude in the worst case. The latest tests retrieved from filecoin networks directly indicate that the sealed sector that holds the data takes about an hour to unseal. From department unsealing to data delivery, the best implementation is estimated to be 1–5 hours. If you need to retrieve data faster for applications, it is recommended that users build storage on Powergate or FPS.
What penalty mechanism can be used in data storage if data is lost or data cannot be accessed? What is the impact on the server cluster operators?
It will lead to mortgage loss, clear the effective storage, zero calculation, affect the reputation of server cluster operators, and have a great adverse impact on the server cluster operators.
Knowledge point finished, hurry to point to see collection!
With the continuous evolution of blockchain technology, the continuous improvement of IPFs filecoin ecology has attracted many developers in the field of encryption, and distributed storage will play an increasingly important role in the coming Web3.0 era.
