Filecoin mainnet celebrates its third anniversary: NFT data stored has exceeded 100 million entries, and ecological projects have surpassed 3,000
This spring, the Filecoin Virtual Machine (FVM) was launched on the Filecoin network, solidifying the unique positioning of the Filecoin network as L1 and powering the open data economy.Author: Filecoin Network
On October 15, the Filecoin Foundation celebrates the third anniversary of the Filecoin network mainnet launch. Our vision for a better, more distributed network has never been more urgent.
The current internet is largely centralized, and most people express discomfort with their personal data being held by a few powerful companies. In fact, according to a survey by the Filecoin Foundation in 2022 (https://fil.org/blog/new-survey-american-consumers-are-ready-to-change-up-to-web3/), 65% of Americans stated that they cannot control how their information is used when shared with websites and companies.
Since 2020, the Filecoin open ecosystem, composed of developers, storage providers, storage users, and other network participants, has become the world's largest distributed storage network:
Massive Data
The current storage capacity of the Filecoin network has exceeded 10 EiB (https://dashboard.starboard.ventures/capacity-services)
Over 3,300 storage providers (https://filecoin.io/blog/posts/filecoin-news-75/)
1.6 EiB (https://dashboard.starboard.ventures/capacity-services) of data stored on the network
50 million transactions (https://dashboard.starboard.ventures/market-deals)
130.4 million NFTs (https://nft.storage/stats/)
Strong Ecosystem Momentum
Over 14,700 contributors on GitHub
More than 3,050 ecosystem projects
Over 450 organizations building on the network
Community Highlights
In the past three years, the community has rapidly grown and achieved some incredible milestones. Here are some recent highlights of data stored on the network:
UC Berkeley partnered with Seal Storage to store physics research results on the network (https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/uc-berkeley-engages-seal-storage-web3-technology-to-advance-innovative-neutrino-physics-research-883282087.html).
The Atlas Experiment at CERN collaborated with Seal Storage on a pilot project to explore distributed cloud storage as an efficient and economical option for archival data storage. In this R&D project, Seal Storage Technology provided 10 pebibytes (PiBs) of cloud storage capacity for the ATLAS Experiment.
GenRAIT is using Filecoin to store critical genomic data (https://fil.org/blog/case-study-genrait-leverages-filecoin-network-for-greater-visibility-access-and-storage-of-genomic-data/).
Starling Lab and Rolling Stone created an interactive Web3 archive (https://investigation.rollingstone.com/dj-photo-war-crimes-bosnia/) to verify and preserve records of alleged war crimes, with complete digital records stored on Filecoin and IPFS.
The fastest-growing photo, illustration, and vector file website in China, Ewesion, is using Filecoin to preserve data (https://filecoinfoundation.medium.com/storage-company-ewesion-leverages-filecoin-network-for-data-preservation-e36cecc84e0e).
DeSci Labs is using (https://fil.org/blog/case-study-desci-labs-and-filecoin-enabling-a-future-of-open-science/) Filecoin and IPFS to address the "replication crisis" in scientific research. Results reported in scientific papers often cannot be replicated and independently verified by other researchers—DeSci is using distributed data storage to help solve this issue.
Democracy's Library has uploaded over 1PB of datasets to the Filecoin network (https://fil.org/blog/democracy%E2%80%99s-library-announces-more-than-a-petabyte-of-government-data-uploaded-to-the-filecoin-network/), including information collected by the Internet Archive in a sixteen-year project called "End of Term Crawl," which captures and preserves U.S. government websites at the end of presidential terms.
The Filecoin Foundation (FF) is one of many contributors to the Filecoin ecosystem, promoting governance of the Filecoin network, funding research and development projects, and supporting the growth of the Filecoin ecosystem and community.
Over the past three years, to incentivize more builders to participate in the Filecoin network, FF has awarded grants to hundreds of developers. The Filecoin Foundation and its distributed network project partners (https://ffdweb.org/), such as Distributed Press, Guardian Project, OpenArchive, MuckRock, and Prelinger Archives, are creating and supporting better technologies to protect humanity's most important information.
The Road Ahead
Humans only generated 1 ZB of data by 2011. Today, according to predictions by Holon Global Investments (https://holon.investments/the-holon-data-report-part-3-a-history-of-data-storage-and-a-closer-look-at-data-centres/#:~:text=Reports-,The%20Holon%20Data%20Report%20Part%203%3A%20A%20history%20of%20data,closer%20look%20at%20data%20centres&text=It%20took%20humankind%20until%202011,systems%20used%20to%20store%20data.), by 2040, humans will generate 75,000 ZB of data. Data drives advancements in artificial intelligence and computing, and distributed storage offers a fairer and more reliable solution for handling massive amounts of data.
Filecoin Virtual Machine (FVM)
This spring, the Filecoin Virtual Machine (FVM) was launched on the Filecoin network, solidifying the unique positioning of the Filecoin network as L1 and powering the open data economy. As data, AI, and computing evolve, FVM will continue to develop!
For more information, please visit https://fvm.filecoin.io/.
Retrieval
The Saturn project is a Filecoin-based distributed CDN network launched in 2022, aimed at democratizing the CDN market. In less than a year, the Saturn project's global presence points have exceeded 4,800, capable of serving 478 million requests daily, with an impressive first-byte time of 80 milliseconds for IPFS content.
For more information, please visit https://retrieval.market/.
Data Computing
Data computing (CoD) platforms like Bacalhau aim to shift computing resources to where data is stored, rather than moving data for processing. This approach, especially when deployed on distributed protocols like Filecoin, provides a flexible and scalable solution for data processing, offering a more effective alternative to traditional centralized systems in the era of big data and AI.
For more information, please visit https://www.cod.cloud/.
Interplanetary Consensus
Interplanetary Consensus (IPC) is the next frontier for Filecoin's scalability, unlocking unparalleled capacity and customizability while enabling new use cases.
For more information, please visit https://fil.space/.
Governance
The FIP001v2 plan is a project led by the Filecoin Foundation aimed at modifying the Filecoin Improvement Process (FIPs) and governance processes.
Acknowledgments
We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to storage providers, builders, researchers, businesses, users, and everyone who has helped build a better internet and preserve humanity's most important information!
To celebrate this occasion, we are offering a 10% discount at the Filecoin Foundation Swag Store (https://swag.fil.org/) with the code HBDFILECOIN (valid until Friday, October 20).
Please join us from November 14 to 16 at the Filecoin Foundation Network Base in Istanbul for LabWeek and Devconnect to celebrate this milestone together. Register now (https://networkbase.io/register-istanbul/).
