Filecoin is a peer-to-peer network that stores files on the Internet, with built-in financial incentives to ensure that files are reliably stored over time.

Filecoin's mission is to create a decentralized, efficient and robust infrastructure for human information.

Storing data in a centralized storage organization (such as AWS) is at risk of data loss and tampering, and costs are high because the pricing power is in the hands of enterprises.

Filecoin creates a distributed storage network that allows anyone in the world to store or retrieve files. Helps decentralized storage service providers compete directly with well-known centralized services, provides a common interface for providers of all sizes, and greatly reduces migration and transaction costs, making storage cheaper and more reliable.

Filecoin has three types of users: client, storage miner, and retrieval miner. The customer pays the cost of storing and retrieving the data. They can choose from available service providers. If they want to store private data, they need to encrypt it before submitting it to the provider. Storage Miners store customer data to earn rewards. They decide how much space they are willing to reserve for storage. After agreement is reached between the customer and the miner, the miner is obligated to continually provide evidence that he stored the data. You can look at the proof and make sure that the storage miner is reliable. Retrieve miner to provide customer data upon customer's request. They can get data from customers or storage miners. Retrieved miners and customers exchange data and coins using micropayments: the data is divided into several parts and the customer pays a small amount of coins for each part. Retrieved miners can also be used as storage miners. Finally, the network represents all complete nodes that validate client and miner behavior. These nodes count available storage, check storage proofs, and repair data failures.

1. Pledge to participate in mining; 2. Pay storage fees; 3. The gas fee.

Proof of replication (PoRep), proof of space-time (PoSt), expected consensus (EC).

Filecoin's biggest feature is that the entire distributed storage network is no longer controlled by some centralized organization but by a combination of blockchain. With a special encryption method, you can verify that data is stored, but not what. In this way, there is no need for any organization or node to audit the content in full, which greatly improves the storage efficiency of the entire network.

The cast limit is 2 billion Filecoins, called FIL_BASE. In Filecoin's genesis allocation, 10% of FIL_BASE is allocated to financing, of which 7.5% is sold in 2017, and the remaining 2.5% will be used for ecodevelopment, follow-on financing, and/or other purposes described in 2017. Fifteen percent of FIL_BASE is allocated to protocol LABS (including 4.5 percent to lab teams and contributors) and five percent to the Filecoin Foundation. The remaining 70% is allocated to Filecoin miners as mining incentives to provide data storage services, maintain blockchain, distribute data, run contracts, etc." Over time, these awards will support multiple types of mining, so this section will be subdivided to cover different types of mining activities.

An optimized network: Filecoin and the peer-to-peer distributed network protocol IPFS are combined to create a more efficient and secure network that does not require enterprise control. Competitive storage pricing: The Filecoin network allows anyone to become a storage provider and compete for business to achieve economies of scale. Provable security and authenticity: Content addressing and cryptographic storage certificates ensure that data is stored securely and correctly over a long time horizon.

Miners are encouraged to contribute their own storage servers to build distributed storage networks through block rewards.

Filecoin is not the first blockchain-based distributed storage project, and there are several before it. What sets Filecoin apart is that Storj, Sia, MaidSafe, and Filecoin all have storage marketplaces built locally, Users and miners can buy and sell storage space in this market, and they all support the reputation system. Filecoin and Sia both support smart contracts that set storage rules and requirements on the blockchain, while Storj does not. All four projects support erasure encoding, but only Filecoin's erasure encoding is adjustable by the user. Storj is more like a centralized storage company, managing a decentralized storage network and settling monthly at market prices and Storj prices at the time. Sia is actually mining by way of proof of work, providing storage services does not earn much Siacoin, and Siacoin is hard forked out in 4 currencies due to ASIC issues of the parent company.

Filecoin's economic model is problematic, and fluctuations in the price of FIL tokens make storage costs hard to predict. When all blockchain projects transitioned to DAOs, Filecoin protocol governance was handled entirely by protocol LABS and the roadmap was not clearly defined.

With the rise and popularity of non-homogeneous tokens (NFT) and people looking for immutable, decentralized file hosting solutions, Filcoin's value is well worth looking forward to.