Filecoin (⨎) is an
open-source, public
cryptocurrency and digital
payment system
A payment system is any system used to settle financial transactions through the transfer of monetary value. This includes the institutions, instruments, people, rules, procedures, standards, and technologies that make its exchange possible.Bia ...
intended to be a
blockchain-based
cooperative digital storage and data retrieval method.
It is made by
Protocol Labs
The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a protocol, hypermedia and file sharing peer-to-peer network for storing and sharing data in a distributed file system. IPFS uses content-addressing to uniquely identify each file in a global namespac ...
and shares some ideas from
InterPlanetary File System
The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a protocol, hypermedia and file sharing peer-to-peer network for storing and sharing data in a distributed file system. IPFS uses content-addressing to uniquely identify each file in a global namespace ...
allowing users to rent unused hard drive space. A blockchain mechanism is used to register the deals.
Filecoin is an open protocol and backed by a blockchain that records commitments made by the network’s participants, with transactions made using FIL, the blockchain's native currency. The blockchain is based on both proof-of-replication and
proof-of-spacetime.
History
The project was launched in August 2017, and raised over $200 million within 30 minutes.
Philanthropy
In April 2021, the Filecoin Foundation donated 50,000 filecoins worth $10,000,000 to the
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...
. In addition, Internet Archive's founder
Brewster Kahle and director of partnerships Wendy Hanamura joined the boards of advisors of Filecoin and the Filecoin Foundation for the
Decentralized Web
The decentralized web is research program which proposes to reorganize the Internet using peer-to-peer infrastructure rather than centralized data hosting services. Interest in the decentralized web arose due to the lack of trust in network maint ...
.
Network total storage power
As of February 2022, the total storage capacity was 19.1 EiB, and total data stored was 430 PiB.
See also
*Distributed data store
References
External links
*
2017 software
Cloud applications
Cryptocurrency projects
Data synchronization
Distributed data storage
File hosting for Windows
Peer-to-peer computing
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