Topic of this issue: With the mainnet launch imminent, will Filecoin mining popularity surpass Bitcoin?

Fang Jun: Hello everyone, I am Fang Jun, Chairman of Interstellar Alliance. I am very happy to be invited to share with you today the relevant situation of Filecoin, a star project that has attracted worldwide attention.

Since its establishment, Interstellar Alliance has been backed by technology and focused on blockchain technology research and development, focusing on building a global IPFS ecosystem around IPFS-Filecoin, and providing mining machines, mining farms, hosting, data, applications and knowledge services. Headquartered in Shanghai, the team is composed of key members from Internet giants such as Microsoft, AMD, Alibaba, Tencent, SAP, Huawei, KPMG, Shanda and Inventec, and has a mature and complete industrial supply chain. At the same time, it has many branches and partners at home and abroad.

Filecoin is a blockchain project, a decentralized storage market where both supply and demand parties can buy and sell storage space and other resources. Miners are distributed all over the world, contributing storage space and broadband resources in mining machines, and everyone in the world can freely use the resources in this network. The Filecoin system can make storage cheaper, more efficient, and more permanent, and it can prevent attacks and ensure data privacy and security.

Fang Jun: IPFS is the Interstellar File System in Chinese. Specifically, it is a protocol and a P2P network, similar to the current BT network, but with more powerful functions. IPFS was created to replace the existing HTTP protocol of the Internet and create a better Web environment for us.

In layman's terms, IPFS is a protocol or software. When each of us has this software installed on our computers or devices, our computers can communicate with each other. These computers with the protocol installed are linked into a network. People can use the storage, broadband and other resources in this network, but those who install the software and contribute resources will not get any rewards.

But with the incentive mechanism of Filecoin, who contributed how much resources and who used how much resources can be accurately calculated, and sales and purchases can form a decentralized storage trading market. Filecoin is a distributed storage network created based on IPFS, and the incentive layer token is also called Filecoin (FIL for short).

IPFS and Filecoin are both projects of Protocol Labs. The two complement each other, so if you want to do Filecoin well, you must first do IPFS well.

Fang Jun: Filecoin is a blockchain version based on the IPFS protocol developed by Juan's Protocol Lab. The blockchain version mainly uses incentives to attract more hardware space holders and real storage demanders to enter the network and use the Filecoin protocol, and on this basis, develop and expand the Web3.0 ecosystem, such as search websites, video websites, music websites and various apps developed based on Filecoin. As the ecosystem gradually expands, and Filecoin miners, as the infrastructure of Filecoin, continue to strive for FIL rewards and optimize their own hardware and networks, thereby improving the computing and storage speed of the entire Filecoin storage market. Of course, this is a decentralized storage market, and no third party can influence the entire network. An important feature of Web3.0 is decentralization. It is a freer and more open network, and Filecoin is an important milestone in the realization of Web3.0.

Fang Jun: Blockchain has the advantages of distributed decentralization, information transparency and non-tamperability, which is why blockchain technology will subvert the traditional Internet. Blockchain technology is very powerful, but facing the huge storage space in the world, blockchain will encounter development bottlenecks in storage capacity. Especially for many basic public chains at present, how to store a large amount of data on their own main chain is an urgent problem to be solved, and the distributed storage capacity of the Filecoin network can effectively solve this problem. Therefore, Filecoin not only has all the advantages of blockchain, but is also the only project that can solve the bottleneck of blockchain development, and has more room for development in the future than other blockchain projects.

Fang Jun: First of all, we must understand that Filecoin is a mainstream currency, and its level is similar to that of ETH at that time. All major mainstream exchanges will take the initiative to list the currency as soon as it is launched, because Filecoin was privately funded in accordance with the legal and compliant methods of the United States at that time, and all investors who participated in the investment were qualified investors. In particular, Coinbase, the largest legal and compliant exchange in the world, has promised to list Filecoin. Currently, Filecoin futures have been launched on multiple platforms, mainly GATE.io futures, which are mainly futures made from some private placement shares at that time. As long as the main network is launched, almost all exchanges will list Filecoin for free. It is expected that the circulating market value of Filecoin after its launch will reach 10 billion to 20 billion yuan, easily ranking in the top 10 of the market value rankings.

For the first mine of Filecoin, this is a battleground, because no matter which mining project, the number of coins mined by miners in the early stage must be more than what they will mine in the future, because the number of mining is decreasing linearly every day, and the number of people coming to mine is increasing, so it is certain that everyone will mine less and less, so the first mine must be fought for, and this is what every miner must strive for. The bonus is the largest at this time, and most of the coins mined are hoarded, and the benefits in the later stage will be very high.

Why is it a must-fight?

(1) The official solution to the mortgage coin problem. Filecoin has a mortgage mechanism. It provides corresponding mortgages for the space provided by miners. Miners who come to mine a few months after the mainnet is launched must prepare mining machines and mortgage coins, while miners who come to mine at the beginning are exempt from mortgage. At present, the official will solve this problem for the initial miners.

(2) The initial computing power is likely to be permanent computing power. We must understand that Filecoin is a consensus on storage power. Storage demanders need to place orders in the Filecoin storage market, and then miners will accept the orders. Demanders pay by time, space, and bandwidth speed. It is not permanent storage. This is the state that will appear after the network is stable.

In the early stages, Filecoin's network requires a large amount of computing power to ensure network security and prevent arbitrary 51% attacks. This requires that miners in the early stages need to flush a large amount of data to accumulate effective computing power, and then continue to grow to ensure the security of the Filecoin network.

(3) Small initial investment, high returns. Mining means that the output of a mining machine in the initial stage is more than the coins mined by 20 machines a year later. Start early and arrive early, plan ahead, and don't panic.

Fang Jun: The total amount of Filecoin is constant, totaling 2 billion, 70% of which are mined by miners. In other words, 1.4 billion are used to reward miners. Although the total number is so large, just like Bitcoin, during the use process, there will be problems such as token loss and account sealing, which will lead to the loss of Filecoin. In other words, in the future, when Filecoin goes online, its number will only decrease, not increase.

We know that the main channel for purchasing FIL is the exchange, but FIL has a lock-up period and gradual unlocking rules, and the price cost is significantly higher than the incentive mechanism, and the risk is also greater than the incentive mechanism. For investors, participating in the FIL incentive mechanism is actually a more reliable choice and it is easier to get rich returns. Therefore, buying coins is not as good as mining.

So, for investors, what are the highlights of FIL’s incentive mechanism?

(1) In addition to promoting Filecoin's network ecology, Filecoin miners will also receive more FIL rewards, including block rewards, transaction fees, storage fees, and retrieval fees.

(2) With the advent of the Internet digital wave and the 5G era, the data storage market will usher in a new round of explosion. Based on the strength and attention of the Filecoin team, participating in the Filecoin incentive mechanism is indeed the best way to invest at present.

(3) Most Filecoin investors are well aware of the appeal of cryptocurrency investment. Therefore, only by logging into the StarPool APP and checking your own digital currency can you experience the excitement of the mining machine generating daily income.

Fang Jun: In fact, this issue is also a concern of many miner friends. Let me express my own views on this point.

(1) Clarify the concepts of capacity and effective storage. Some competitors in the market will promote that the larger the capacity, the more packaging rights they can obtain. In fact, this is a misunderstanding. Filecoin's computing power is effective storage, not storage capacity. If the storage capacity is not converted into effective storage, it will be a waste in the early stage and a thankless task.

(2) Mining machine configuration. That is to say, the higher my configuration, the better my performance. Then I have more chances to obtain the packaging right.

(3) Cloud computing power has its own advantages and disadvantages compared to selling mining machines. Currently, there are not many people selling computing power. Some of the early sellers of computing power later promoted mining machines. I personally think that it is not the right time to sell computing power. Besides, computing power is also accumulated by mining machines. It is just a different way of selling. There is also the ownership and usage time of computing power. For example, I bought 1T, but is this 1T storage space or effective computing power? It is storage space. In the early stage, you need to brush data to convert it into effective computing power, but after the one-year contract period is up, this effective computing power no longer belongs to you. Moreover, it is unknown what proportion you account for in cloud computing power, so the authenticity of the income distribution is also unknown.

Therefore, when choosing a mining machine, we cannot blindly pursue high configuration, but we must choose an optimal solution to improve our overall profit efficiency. For example, our Star Alliance's Iron Box Miner is an optimal configuration.

Fang Jun: In fact, there is a view in the industry that Filecoin is the real "Bitcoin". Because in the future, Bitcoin will be eliminated by blockchain 2.0 and 3.0. I personally have two projects that I recognize the most in the blockchain field. One is Bitcoin, which is very valuable, and the other is Filecoin, whose application field is difficult to match with other blockchain projects. If you miss mining Bitcoin and Ethereum, you must not miss mining Filecoin. Filecoin has greater room for appreciation in the future. It may be said that there are still many areas that need to be improved, so Filecoin has made an extension under the guidance of Bitcoin ideas and truly realized some of the things that Bitcoin wants to achieve.

In addition, many people now want to use blockchain to do some big data applications, some music sharing, etc., but in fact, the blockchain block can only store some order information, that is to say, if you want to store a movie on it, it is actually impossible, it cannot carry more data, which is also the bottleneck of the current blockchain. Now many public chains say that they are going to solve the bottleneck of blockchain. They start from two points, one is to solve the transaction speed, and the other is to solve the large amount of data storage. Filecoin is to solve the problem just mentioned.

Once the Filecoin mainnet is launched, its popularity will surely reach its peak. Bitcoin, which has been in a lukewarm state, has almost no hot spots except for the "halving" event, so it will inevitably be slightly inferior to Filecoin in momentum by then.

Fang Jun: Regarding suggestions, I have three: participate, definitely participate, and must participate!!! Important things should be said three times!

Let me share the logic of why you must participate. The way to participate is mining and buying coins in the secondary market. Buying coins is very simple, just like buying Bitcoin. It depends on whether you are optimistic and have a good judgment on the market. I will mainly share mining here.

First of all, Filecoin mining is empowering the entire entity, it is not a simple invalid hash calculation. I personally think that Filecoin is the first landing application of blockchain. Now the main network is not online, and the current participants are basically the earliest participants. It is like going back to 2009 and 2010, would you participate in Bitcoin mining? Will you choose to miss the first mining bonus?

The first halving of Filecoin will be in the sixth year since the mainnet was launched. In the early stage, there are more people waiting and watching, and fewer participants. The more rewards there are, the higher the returns will be.

Here are some suggestions on how to get involved.

(1) First of all, it’s about hardware. You must pay attention to the price-performance ratio, rather than blindly choosing high or low prices. A high price may not necessarily bring you a return that matches the price, and a low price may mean that you cannot participate and lose all your money.

(2) The second thing is to pay attention to the mining strategy. Professional and efficient mining strategies can improve our mining efficiency. A good mining machine with a good mining strategy can get a good return.

(3) The third suggestion is that you must have a professional operation and maintenance team. Our mining machines are placed in a professional IDC computer room, and we also have our own professional operation and maintenance team, so of course there is no problem.

If you want to manage it yourself, you must consider environmental factors, such as bandwidth, operation and maintenance, etc. Only by leaving professional matters to professionals can you get better returns. Another thing is that the early storage is provided by the government or yourself, but in the later stage, the network needs to generate real market storage orders to obtain effective computing power, and a dedicated trading network is also required to provide this service. This places higher requirements on the storage environment and operation and maintenance.

(4) The fourth suggestion is to maximize the benefits of capital allocation. How to understand it? That is to say, do not excessively pursue high performance and high storage capacity, because it takes a long time to accumulate effective computing power in the early stage. If a large number of hard disks are invested in the early stage, it will occupy funds but have no effect on the increase of income, which is a waste. Instead of doing this, it is better to buy more mining machines in the early stage and expand the capacity when they are full in the later stage. In this way, the benefits can be maximized with the same amount of capital invested. If you have any questions about the allocation of funds, please feel free to consult the Interstellar Alliance at any time, and we will provide you with an optimal configuration plan.