Filecoin is a token on IPFs, and filecoin is a way to reward miners by contributing idle hard disks. Filecoin adopts a new algorithm (proof of workload). Simply put, if you have enough hard disk capacity, you will get more filecoin rewards.

What is IPFs?

The full name of IPFs is inter planetary file system, which is generally translated as “interstellar file system”. It is proposed by protocol lab and is a peer-to-peer (P2P) distributed file system.

However, although it is a file system and a technology used to store data, IPFs is more accurately a transmission protocol. IPFs regards HTTP as its opponent and publicizes that it should benchmark HTTP, and HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is one of the most commonly used transport protocols at present. If we want to find the content we want on the Internet, we need to enter the web address, which mostly starts with HTTP. HTTP transfers through domain name, IP and multiple central servers, and then uploads and downloads files. The contribution of HTTP is irreplaceable. Now we all rely on HTTP to surf the Internet. However, HTTP also has some problems, such as low performance efficiency, over reliance on central servers and backbone networks, and so on.

Compared with IPFs, it is a multi centralized solution. Content addressing is not through domain name and IP, but through a unique hash key. IPFs is a distributed file storage system. File data is not stored in a centralized server, but in all qualified computers on the network.

Of course, IPFs is more than that. There are many other features, and the level and scope of application also exceed the simple P2P download.

There is an incentive mechanism in IPFs – filecoin. Participants (miners) can get the cryptocurrency filecoin reward by contributing storage space and bandwidth.

Relationship between IPFs and filecoin

Although IPFs has been hot for three or four years, many people still fail to understand the concepts of IPFs and filecoin and the relationship between them. Many people confuse IPFs and filecoin. “IPFs mining” and “IPFs mining machine” are typical misconceptions.

Protoco LBAs, also known as protocol laboratory, was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area in May 2014 and was founded by Juan benet, a Stanford graduate. Juan benet, from California, USA, graduated from Stanford University with a master’s degree in computer science. He co founded a mobile ar game company (Loki Studios) with his partners, which was later acquired by Yahoo. He then settled in startx, a non-profit startup accelerator at Stanford University, where he started his career. In 2014, he founded the IPFs project and received investment from his alma mater. In January 2015, the official version of IPFs project was released.

IPFs and filecoin are both projects created by the protocol laboratory. IPFs is a point-to-point, versioned and content addressed hypermedia transmission protocol. The benchmark is the traditional Internet Protocol HTTP. What it wants to build is a distributed Web 3.0.

But IPFs is only an open source Internet underlying communication protocol, and everyone can use it for free. At present, all IPFs nodes provide storage space, and other nodes are also needed to help them store resources.

In essence, IPFs transforms the on-demand download of P2P software into long-term storage of resources. Long-term storage requires quality of service assurance. Otherwise, no user is willing to store their valuable data or resource content requiring quality of service assurance into IPFs. Then, for a loose IPFs network, the random withdrawal of users, the uncertainty of network quality, the uncertainty of storage geographical location, the uneven performance of hardware resources and the performance jitter of hardware resources all make IPFs unable to store the resource storage with strong demand for service quality, in other words, there is no way to use it in the commercial field.

Therefore, IPFs uses filecoin’s incentive mechanism to attract a group of professional storage service providers to provide more professional, secure and stable storage services.

Filecoin is a decentralized storage network based on IPFs. It is the only incentive layer on IPFs and a pass issued based on blockchain technology. Miners in the filecoin network can obtain fil by providing customers with storage and retrieval services. On the contrary, customers can hire miners to store or distribute data by spending fil.

Filecoin promotes the development of IPFs through economic incentive mechanism. At the same time, filecoin network also needs IPFs to provide ecological support for the development of its market.

The more IPFs networks are used, the greater the demand for filecoin; The more filecoin miners, the greater the support for IPFs network. Therefore, IPFs and filecoin form a symbiotic relationship.

Filecoin was born to support the development of IPFs. IPFs also needs filecoin to enrich its ecology. The more IPFs is used, the greater the demand for filecoin; The more filecoin miners, the greater the support for IPFs.

The success rate of data retrieval was 98%.