Filecoin

Filecoin Review

When investing in virtual currency, you need to do your research. We provide you with reviews of each world top cryptocurrency out there, so that you can find the best crypto coins to invest in for you. This is a review of Filecoin.

Background

In 2017, a company called Protocol Labs launched an ICO with a decentralized storage solution. The plan was to distribute 10% of their tokens to the public, and then sell out the rest to early investors and advisors. Little did they know at the time that it would become the largest token sale in the history of cryptocurrencies, bringing in$257 million in public investment. Since then project is still under development and they have yet to release an alpha. Although, they are currently testing a sandbox-network with miners and storers alike. Read the teams latest technical update here.

However, there is still a very good reason to anticipate this project to be very successful. The company behind, Protocol Labs, a well respected team in the industry with several successful projects in the past. Also they have secured from some top venture capitalists and funds in Silicon Valley including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, Y Combinator and Winklevoss Capital. The magnitude of these investors paired with the team behind it, gives Filecoin a type of legitimacy that hasn’t really been seen in the cryptocurrency space.

The big data storage companies today, like Amazon and Google suffer the vulnerability of centralisation. Lately, there have been one too many high-profile security breaches to enforce this precedent. In addition to this, humanity is creating immense amounts of new data every year, so obviously the demand for a secure and reliable data storage solution will only be ramping up. Filecoin’s main angle is to capitalize on this increasing demand and utilize blockchain technology to make it a secure process. Therefore, storage will rely on a peer-to-peer network based on nodes, also called “Proof-of-Storage”.

How it works

When your using the system, you basically pin-point the file you want to upload, pay a small transaction fee (like any other blockchain) to upload the request in the Filecoin storage exchange. Once here, the corresponding nodes in the network will bid on the license to store your files, and the lowest price offered will basically win the auction. Thus, the orderbook of the exchange resides entirely within the Filecoin Blockchain, just any other decentralized exchange.

Once this exchange is completed, the blockchain will encrypt your file and split it in to many different segments. Where the segments are sent to different points on the network to host the file. In order for the user to recall all the fragments of the original file, one must remember the files private key. Just like a cryptocurrency wallet, you and you alone will be the only one with access to the private key.

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