Filecoin (FIL) is an OG project that took the crypto industry by storm in 2017. Since then, it’s been building out a decentralized, dynamic market for shared cloud storage.
Filecoin is a decentralized data storage platform that allows users to monetize spare storage on their hard drive. Those wanting to store data on the decentralized cloud can do so at a fraction of the cost of centralized providers like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.
By using a distributed, blockchain-based system built using the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), Filecoin is able to solve several of the major challenges of using centralized cloud services:
Filecoin is a decentralized alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), which makes up 33% of the cloud (followed by Microsoft Azure at 22% and Google Cloud at 9%).
Their vision is to “Democratize open knowledge to preserve humanity’s most important information.”
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Making headlines
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Competitiveness
Generally regarded as the #1 decentralized storage solution, Filecoin’s market cap of $2+ billion far outweighs the second biggest project, Airweave, which has a market cap of under $500 million.
A Messari report outlined Filecoin's recent growth:
Hiring?
166 positions are listed through Protocol Labs, the builders of Filecoin. 47 are engineering roles.
Social traction
Interestingly, Filecoin’s overall social following totals about 215,000, much lower than other major cryptocurrency platforms. This hints at 100% organic engagement and/or a stronger focus on building product over building engagement.
Ever been hacked?
In 2021, a double spend of FIL worth millions was reported to have happened on Binance. The double spend (which was more of a “double deposit” and was off-chain) was able to occur on an exchange due to Filecoin’s faulty remote procedure call (RPC) code. As a result, Filecoin deposits were halted on several exchanges, including Binance (confirmed) and a few others (unconfirmed) until a patch was deployed.
The Filecoin ICO that began on October 15th of 2017 was one to remember. After already raising $52 million from presale investors like Sequoia and Andreesen Horowitz, the public ICO raked in ~$200 million from 2100 accredited investors, creating a new ICO record by beating Tezos’ total fund raise of $232 million from a few months prior.
During the ICO, Filecoin experienced a few glitches, including a problem with the ticker that tracked the sale. It ultimately had to be reset several times. After only 30 minutes, the sale was halted, with users also having issues accessing the platform. Eventually, the issues were resolved and the ICO ran for 4 weeks.
The FIL cryptocurrency is the native token of the Filecoin Network and the monetary tool for paying for storage, data retrieval, transaction fees, and provider and miner rewards.
Total supply
252,294,393 FIL
Filecoin (FIL) has a fixed max supply of 2 billion tokens, which releases over decades.
Token distribution & Vesting
70% - Filecoin Miners/Block Rewards: Asymptotic vesting (like Bitcoin)
15% - Protocol Labs: Linear vesting, 6 years*
10% - Filecoin Foundation: Linear vesting, 6 years*
5% - Investors: Linear vesting, 6-month minimum for presale, 1-year minimum for public sale, issued per block*
*All of these tokens were issued at the Genesis block with hard-coded vesting. Investors had a choice of vesting schedules. The longer the term, the bigger the discount, up to 20% for 3 years.
FIL Token utility
Because of the dynamics of users sharing their computing power and clients paying for data storage, Filecoin has set an interesting example of decentralized supply and demand forces.
Filecoin’s main utilities include:
Funding
Filecoin raised a total of $258.2 million over 6 rounds, including:
Decentralized?
A huge part of the ethos around Filecoin is being as decentralized as possible. While their public token offering may not have been a highly distributed event (open only to accredited investors), the entire premise of the project is to build a decentralized data storage cloud that rewards its ecosystem and provides an alternative to centralized cloud providers like AWS.
According to a Filecoin block explorer, there are about 4000 active FIL miners.
Burning Mechanism
Filecoin introduced EIP-1559 (which is an Ethereum standard) to remove FIL from the supply through burning. Overall, the more transactions on the network, the more tokens will be burned.
Code Audit
Multiple audits have been conducted. You can find the reports here.
Team Transparency
Other than CEO/Founder Juan Benet, the teams at Filecoin and Protocol Labs are somewhat non-transparant. Neither entities mention their team members on their website. LinkedIn shows 64 profiles of people who list their employment at Filecoin, and 284 for Protocol Labs.
Bug bounty?
Yes.
There are three main areas of development for Filecoin in 2022, as stated in a roadmap video:
Website
$FIL on Coingecko
Filecoin Whitepaper
Source Code
Twitter
Forum
WeChat
Filecoin is a decentralized data storage platform that allows users to monetize spare storage on their hard drive. Those wanting to store data on the decentralized cloud can do so at a fraction of the cost of centralized providers like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.
By using a distributed, blockchain-based system built using the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), Filecoin is able to solve several of the major challenges of using centralized cloud services:
Filecoin is a decentralized alternative to Amazon Web Services (AWS), which makes up 33% of the cloud (followed by Microsoft Azure at 22% and Google Cloud at 9%).
Their vision is to “Democratize open knowledge to preserve humanity’s most important information.”
Sign up for the Crypto Weekly newsletter to get our weekly Coin Profile!
Team
Making headlines
It’s really hard to trade crypto emotions-free. Let Quadency’s trading bots handle the ups and downs. Get started today!
Competitiveness
Generally regarded as the #1 decentralized storage solution, Filecoin’s market cap of $2+ billion far outweighs the second biggest project, Airweave, which has a market cap of under $500 million.
A Messari report outlined Filecoin's recent growth:
Hiring?
166 positions are listed through Protocol Labs, the builders of Filecoin. 47 are engineering roles.
Social traction
Interestingly, Filecoin’s overall social following totals about 215,000, much lower than other major cryptocurrency platforms. This hints at 100% organic engagement and/or a stronger focus on building product over building engagement.
Ever been hacked?
In 2021, a double spend of FIL worth millions was reported to have happened on Binance. The double spend (which was more of a “double deposit” and was off-chain) was able to occur on an exchange due to Filecoin’s faulty remote procedure call (RPC) code. As a result, Filecoin deposits were halted on several exchanges, including Binance (confirmed) and a few others (unconfirmed) until a patch was deployed.
The Filecoin ICO that began on October 15th of 2017 was one to remember. After already raising $52 million from presale investors like Sequoia and Andreesen Horowitz, the public ICO raked in ~$200 million from 2100 accredited investors, creating a new ICO record by beating Tezos’ total fund raise of $232 million from a few months prior.
During the ICO, Filecoin experienced a few glitches, including a problem with the ticker that tracked the sale. It ultimately had to be reset several times. After only 30 minutes, the sale was halted, with users also having issues accessing the platform. Eventually, the issues were resolved and the ICO ran for 4 weeks.
The FIL cryptocurrency is the native token of the Filecoin Network and the monetary tool for paying for storage, data retrieval, transaction fees, and provider and miner rewards.
Total supply
252,294,393 FIL
Filecoin (FIL) has a fixed max supply of 2 billion tokens, which releases over decades.
Token distribution & Vesting
70% - Filecoin Miners/Block Rewards: Asymptotic vesting (like Bitcoin)
15% - Protocol Labs: Linear vesting, 6 years*
10% - Filecoin Foundation: Linear vesting, 6 years*
5% - Investors: Linear vesting, 6-month minimum for presale, 1-year minimum for public sale, issued per block*
*All of these tokens were issued at the Genesis block with hard-coded vesting. Investors had a choice of vesting schedules. The longer the term, the bigger the discount, up to 20% for 3 years.
FIL Token utility
Because of the dynamics of users sharing their computing power and clients paying for data storage, Filecoin has set an interesting example of decentralized supply and demand forces.
Filecoin’s main utilities include:
Funding
Filecoin raised a total of $258.2 million over 6 rounds, including:
Decentralized?
A huge part of the ethos around Filecoin is being as decentralized as possible. While their public token offering may not have been a highly distributed event (open only to accredited investors), the entire premise of the project is to build a decentralized data storage cloud that rewards its ecosystem and provides an alternative to centralized cloud providers like AWS.
According to a Filecoin block explorer, there are about 4000 active FIL miners.
Burning Mechanism
Filecoin introduced EIP-1559 (which is an Ethereum standard) to remove FIL from the supply through burning. Overall, the more transactions on the network, the more tokens will be burned.
Code Audit
Multiple audits have been conducted. You can find the reports here.
Team Transparency
Other than CEO/Founder Juan Benet, the teams at Filecoin and Protocol Labs are somewhat non-transparant. Neither entities mention their team members on their website. LinkedIn shows 64 profiles of people who list their employment at Filecoin, and 284 for Protocol Labs.
Bug bounty?
Yes.
There are three main areas of development for Filecoin in 2022, as stated in a roadmap video:
Website
$FIL on Coingecko
Filecoin Whitepaper
Source Code
Twitter
Forum
WeChat
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