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Filecoin, which raised $200 million, announced the launch of its mainnet in October, but is now facing a potential fork crisis initiated by miners.

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Filecoin, which raised $200 million, announced the launch of its mainnet in October, but is now facing a potential fork crisis initiated by miners.

In 2017, the ICO project Filecoin raised $200 million in funding. After a duration of 3 years, it finally announced that it would transition to the mainnet phase on October 15th. However, the project may face a potential fork crisis initiated by miners once the mainnet goes live.

The Long-Delayed Filecoin

The decentralized file storage protocol Filecoin aims to create a distributed network for storing files. The ecosystem introduces a token (FIL) mining reward mechanism to incentivize users to contribute excess storage space, thereby promoting wider adoption on a large scale. The project is led by the Protocol Labs foundation and raised over $200 million during its ICO in 2017, with notable venture capitalists such as Digital Currency Group, a16z, and Sequoia Capital investing $50 million at the time.

Currently, most people host their files on servers provided by cloud service providers (such as Amazon, Microsoft, Dropbox, and other large tech companies). However, Filecoin offers a new solution where individuals (miners) can choose to contribute their unused storage space for users to store files and earn FIL tokens. For users, since files are stored in a decentralized manner and all information is encrypted, no one can access them without authorization except the users themselves.

Initially, Filecoin estimated that its testnet would launch by the end of 2018, with the mainnet following in 2019. However, the development of the mainnet has been repeatedly delayed, and it was not until the end of last year that the testnet was finally released. This led to the project being jokingly referred to as "a $200 million air."

However, for Filecoin investors, the long-awaited day is finally approaching.

Official Launch on October 15

Recently, the official launch date for the mainnet has finally been set by the project. According to Filecoin'sannouncement, the project will transition to the mainnet phase when the testnet reaches block height 148,888. Based on the current block production speed, the mainnet launch date is estimated to be around October 15. Filecoin stated in the announcement:

"In the coming weeks, various groups in the Filecoin community – including miners, users, storage providers, applications, network services, and more – will join the network before the mainnet starts. We call this pre-launch phase the mainnet ignition phase, allowing network participants time to initialize, learn, set up their systems, and optimize their deployments."

Source: Filecoin

Potential Forking Crisis After Mainnet Launch

Although the likelihood of Filecoin's mainnet launch is high, it doesn't mean smooth sailing ahead. Chairman of MIX Group Han Weiping announced at the World Mining Conference in Xiamen on September 18 that they will fork Filecoin, with several teams potentially announcing forks of the project in the future.

The forking trend stems mainly from consensus differences between miners and the development team. Han Weiping pointed out that the development team disregards the community's feedback and ignores many improvement suggestions for the protocol. Additionally, the extremely harsh economic model proposed by Protocol Labs in early September, as reported by Chinese media Wu Shuo Blockchain, with factors like extremely low mining release, high upfront collateral, and severe penalties for technical errors, could render up to 80% of miners unprofitable.