Filecoin Roadmap Update August 2020

Our August 2020 roadmap update covers the progress made since our last roadmap update - specifically celebrating today’s launch of our incentivized testnet competition, Filecoin Space Race. The project has made incredible progress over the past two months - here are some highlights:

Space Race

? Space Race . Earlier today, we launched the Filecoin Space Race , our collaborative 3-week competition to stress-test the network, encourage participants from around the world to participate, and give miners a chance to test-drive Filecoin before mainnet launch. This is a huge milestone for the Filecoin project - marking our last major update before Mainnet launch, and the culmination of months of hard work to get the Filecoin protocol and Lotus implementation into a “Mainnet-ready state.” We expect to continue to make many advances throughout the competition as miners stress-test the network and help identify issues.

? Calibrating Devnet . Our month-long calibration period helped miners prepare for the Space Race by successfully completing real storage and retrieval transactions and executing the entire industry lifecycle. Over the course of this period, we saw miners achieve a 97% success rate on retrieval transactions - and ^24/50 top miners achieved a 100% success rate _on their storage transactions.

⛏ Mining . The mining community continues to grow rapidly as miners around the world store petabytes of storage onto the Filecoin Testnet. In the past month, they have reached a new high of >25PB of verified storage capacity - a nearly 3x improvement from our last roadmap update! The calibration devnet is also seeing super-fast sealing - over 5PB per day! The Filecoin Testnet was updated to the latest Space Race code at 3pm PST (10pm UTC | 6am IST) today - and miners have already started competing. ?

Mainnet Features

? Mainnet enhancements . A major focus of our work has been on strengthening the lifecycle of storage and retrieval transactions in the Filecoin blockchain - including upgrading committed space with real transactions, storing multiple transactions in a sector , requesting quick retrieval from miners via unsealed copies , and exchanging Filecoin for successful transactions via payment channels (which brings huge improvements). We also launched a "real" gas fee VM implementation ⛽ - including one of the first implementations of EIP1559 . See the Lotus 0.5.0 release for more details .

?Drand Mainnet . The Filecoin network uses Drand, a production-grade distributed random beacon network, as an external source of randomness for consensus. Since the launch of the drand mainnet, this randomness network now includes all participants in the Entropy Alliance, such as Cloudflare, Ethereum, Chainsafe, EPFS, UCL, Truffle, and others. Learn more about drand here , and learn how Filecoin uses drand here .

? Phase 2 Trusted Setup . We completed phase 2 of our Trusted Setup Ceremony — participants from around the world contributed their resources to help generate security parameters for the Filecoin network and public proofs available for anyone to verify. We had 15-25 unique participants per circuit (6 circuits total), including organizations like the Ethereum Foundation, Consensys, Supranational, Ocean Protocol, IPFSMain, Sigma Prime, and more. More features coming soon — including instructions for any third party to verify the trusted setup outputs.

?Mainnet Final Proofs . Based on the outputs of the Phase 2 Trusted Setup, we published the final SDR Proof of Replication parameters for mainnet launch. These proofs have been audited for correctness, completeness, and integrity. You can find them at https://proofs.filecoin.io . Note : Miners should expect Filecoin to regularly upgrade its proofs after launch.

⚖️ Filecoin’s Cryptoeconomic Construction . We’ve made significant improvements to defining and solidifying Filecoin’s cryptoeconomic structure — including updating the live code in our latest devnet. As part of this, we’ve created an in-depth explanation of how the Filecoin economy works, which we’ll share with miners during Space Race and at the CryptoEcon Deep Dive . We ’re still doing extensive modeling and testing to finalize parameters, and expect to make more changes for mainnet launch.

Ecosystem Highlights

???? Filecoin ecosystem. There are now over 70 meaningful organizations building on and working with the Filecoin testnet. Here are some recent updates:

• Powergate by Textile: Powergate is an API-driven solution for deploying multi-layer storage based on IPFS and Filecoin into systems and applications. Developers can persist data on Filecoin, ensure availability on IPFS, manage one or more Filecoin addresses with access control, monitor long-term storage transactions, use multiple supported clients and libraries, and more!

• Truffle: Truffle announced its partnership with Filecoin and released the truffle preserve command, which allows developers to preserve application data in the Truffle CLI. Next up is the Filecoin-flavored Ganache , which developers can use to launch a Filecoin simulator. With one command, you get both a Filecoin (simulated Lotus) node and an IPFS server, automatically configured and ready to use. You can use this simulator instead of an actual Lotus node or Powergate's localnet to speed up development and unit testing. More updates are coming!

• Space: The Fleek team announced their newest product, Space , an open source file storage, sharing, and collaboration platform built on the distributed web. You can think of Space V1 as a private, encrypted, p2p version of Dropbox or Google drive, and you can use Space just like you would use those products. The biggest benefit of using Space over other products is that you don’t need to sacrifice your privacy and allow those companies to spy on you and control your files/data, because with Space, everything is private, user-owned, end-to-end encrypted, and peer-to-peer!

• Retrieval Market: Chainsafe recently demonstrated an initial implementation of a retrieval market at HackFS . Their retrieval tool incorporates a Lotus node into a peer-to-peer network based on libp2p gossip . The network allows clients to request files from either the peer-to-peer network or a Lotus node and its storage miner peers. Check out their code on Github .

• Custody Support: Token custodians Gemini , Coinbase , and Anchorage all announced support for custody of Filecoin tokens at mainnet launch. Anchorage will also support unlock contracts for Filecoin at launch. If you plan to hold Filecoin, check out these custodian options for more information.

? Filecoin Ignite . Filecoin Ignite continues to provide the community with a series of hackathons and learning events to support the rapidly growing Filecoin ecosystem. HackFS was our first event and it was a huge success.

• HackFS : HackFS was a 30-day virtual hackathon in partnership with the ETHGlobal team that helped bring over 130 projects to the decentralized web. More than 470 hackers from 50 countries across 19 time zones participated in the event . Dive into the stories behind the 10 teams that participated in the hackathon , revisit the HackFS Finale to find out which teams won the grand prize, or learn more about all 134 final projects in the HackFS Showcase .

• The Spark University Hackathon is a 6-week virtual hackathon hosted by Encode Club , an online community of university students, academics, and developers building in blockchain. 50 teams from universities around the world responded to two Filecoin challenges, and the winners will be announced at a live final next Monday, August 31st.
  

• Apollo : APOLLO is a 6-week program run by Gitcoin to empower the community of builders and makers in the Filecoin ecosystem. Think of it as mission control for the top InterPlanetary Filecoin developers across space and time! Over 150 amazing builders will have the opportunity to become pioneers of the Filecoin and Web3 ecosystem together. Applications close on Friday, August 28th - sign up here today .

• Filecoin Launchpad : The Filecoin Launchpad Accelerator is a full-time, fully remote program specifically for startups building for the distributed and decentralized web. Fifteen to twenty teams will enter the program and will go through twelve weeks of fundraising, mentorship, and programming around business and blockchain-specific problems, culminating in a Demo Day. Teams leverage access to the ConsenSys and Protocol Labs network and expertise, from entrepreneurs and legal advisors to groundbreaking technology researchers. Each team will receive $80,000 in investment. The application deadline has now been extended to August 28th!

• Reach out and let us know if you’d like to host an Ignite event! With over 4 million FIL and $250,000 in prizes to be distributed across events, now is a great time to get started building on Filecoin. ?

? Randomness Summit . To celebrate the release of the League of Entropy’s production-grade drand beacon, the Randomness Summit took place on August 13th. Featuring speakers including Brian Ford, Joseph Bonnar, Justin Drake, Kelly Olsen, and Vitalik Buterin, as well as representatives from LoE partners Cloudflare, Kudelski Security, Protocol Labs, and the University of Chile, presentations ranged from the foundations of randomness to the future of VDFs. A full summit recording is available on the Protocol Labs YouTube channel.

💪 Filecoin DevGrants Wave 4 in the works . We’ve received an overwhelming response from our community for Wave 4 of the RFP , which has 28 proposals so far. New proposals are still being accepted on a rolling basis as we prepare for mainnet. The full list of funded projects will be released soon, and so far, winning Wave 4 proposals include Snarks as a service for miners, integration with Ceramic Protocol and OrbitDB, improvements to the Bellman library used by Filecoin Proofs, ENS support for Filecoin addresses, and the ability to search and archive national legislative documents on Filecoin. More amazing proposals are currently being reviewed. Wave 5 proposals for the Filecoin DevGrants program are due on October 1st, and a new Wave 5 RFP will be released soon. – Apply here !

? Community Events. The community will continue to meet regularly to share progress and new ideas. Over the past two months, the dapp developer, miner, and ecosystem client communities have held a number of meetups:

• Storage Devs Show & Tell : In the third installment of the Filecoin Storage Dev Show & Tell, we had demos from across the ecosystem. The team at BlockRocket showed us the NFT Snapshot Bot, MetaMask previewed Filecoin Snaps, we learned that Filecoin has been added to the Ocean Protocol public marketplace, and got a sneak peek at the Space Race dashboard and bots. Leandro Barbosa walked us through a Voodfy video transcoding demo on IPFS and Filecoin, followed by a Filecoin wallet demo from OpenBazaar — a recording of the Dev Show & Tell is available on the Filecoin Youtube channel .

• Filecoin Virtual Community Meetup: Filecoin Community Meetups are an opportunity to get together the Filecoin community and showcase the many tools and projects being built in our ecosystem. This month’s meetup featured Figment Networks talking about Hubble, a reputation system for validators and Datahub that helps developers build on the blockchain faster. Then , the team from Fleek previewed Space Storage , a new file storage, sharing, and collaboration platform with a focus on privacy. We then heard from Gitcoin, who gave us an overview of Initiative APOLLO, your mission control for engaging with builders and doers within the Filecoin community. The meetup ended with an overview of the Space Race from Mosh. You can catch up on all the presentations on the Filecoin Youtube channel and register for the next meetup on September 15th.

• Mining Community Call : In last month’s Mining Community Call, we heard from the Filecoin team. Colin shared an ecosystem update and outlined all the progress made since the last Mining Community Call in May. Ian and Molly discussed how to prepare for Space Race, the incentivized testnet competition that kicked off this week, and we finished with a Q&A session moderated by Aayush. A recording of the Mining Community Call can be found on the Filecoin Youtube channel. We have a number of great events scheduled for the mining community as part of Space Race, too. You can find more here .

• Filecoin Masterclass : On August 17th, we kicked off the Masterclass series by demonstrating how to use the Slate API with Filecoin and IPFS . Part 2 of the Masterclass series will cover building decentralized applications with Fleek’s Space Daemon, including a live demo, on Tuesday, September 1st at 9am. Register here .

• Chinese Community Events : Colin and Keren spoke at multiple blockchain community events in China , including the IPFS Ecosystem Industry in Hangzhou Summit , Greater Bay Area Blockchain Summit in Shenzhen , and POW'ER in the IPFS Era - New Mining Power Industry Summit in Shanghai . We shared a burgeoning ecosystem for Filecoin with highlights from the Filecoin meetup. Colin gave us an update on recent community events and discussed the Filecoin Ignite program, including Space Race, HackFS, Project Apollo, and more! Keren shared an overview of the Filecoin project, recent achievements, and different ways for community members to join the Filecoin ecosystem. Ecosystem projects including Textile, Truffle, Fleek, and Filecoin's winning team also showcased their products and latest progress on the stage.

Coming soon: Mainnet launch

That’s it! Our last remaining milestone is the launch of the Filecoin mainnet in mid to late September .

As before, we will update the public project roadmap Gantt chart with the final burndown steps and latest estimates . There has been amazing progress across the Filecoin ecosystem over the past month - miners keeping up with weekly network updates on DevNet, competitions like Filecoin Ignite being developed, hundreds of amazing projects, events, and improved tools to celebrate.

So many teams have been a part of this new phase for the Filecoin network. Huge thanks to:

• Over the past 1.5 years , much of the mining community has helped test and improve Filecoin in both devnet and testnet.

• Ecosystem developers like Textile, Open Work Labs, Fleek, Truffle, Figment, Zondax, Digital Mob, and others have created tools and infrastructure to make the Filecoin network more powerful and more accessible to many developers.

• The Filecoin implementation teams , Chainsafe and Soramitsu, who have been working hard with the Forest and Fuhon implementations to reach full interoperability with Lotus.

• Network clients and partners who are using Filecoin to create extraordinary applications for decentralized storage , like Starling , Space , Slate , and all the great projects at HackFS .

• Community organizers such as EthGlobal, Gitcoin, Tachyon, Encode Club, and others brought this community together and helped bring on many new contributors.

• And of course the broader community - they help improve Filecoin in many ways (from documentation, to communications, to community support).

You all are what makes this network so awesome - we're honored to work with you. 👍️