Filecoin, the decentralized storage network, today announced the opening up of several repos on GitHub. Those interested can now learn about Filecoin, play with the code, and contribute to development.
Filecoin is a decentralized storage network that turns cloud storage into an algorithmic market. Miners earn the native protocol token (also called “filecoin”) by providing data storage and/or retrieval. Conversely, clients pay miners to store or distribute data and to retrieve it. “Filecoin” can refer to a) the network, b) the protocol, c) the token powering the network, and d) the project.
The team of Filecoin decided to start its repos privately to avoid distractions and develop quickly. Now, Filecoin has reached its next big milestone. If you are a developer, researcher, adventurous miner or user, or just want to support the Filecoin efforts, this is an exciting time to now get involved.
Release Highlights
Just now, the Filecoin team opened up the Filecoin Project repos on GitHub, development networks (the user and nightly devnets), chat channels (Slack, Matrix, IRC coming soon), discussion forum, and project management tools.
What this means:
- Dive into Filecoin’s codebase (go-filecoin, rust-proofs)
- Contribute to the Filecoin Project by filing issues and submitting PRs
- Ask any and all questions on the forum and collaborate with others working on the Filecoin Project
- Read and fully participate in all of our research and dev team’s conversations on the chat channels
- Install go-filecoin and set up a Filecoin node for testing
- Connect to a devnet and make experimental deals with other nodes on that devnet
- Use dev tools – a network statistics dashboard and a block explorer – to see what is happening on the different devnets
- Test and benchmark Filecoin’s proofs-of-replication (PoReps) on your own machine
- Compete in the Replication Game
Notable repos opening up:
- filecoin-project/go-filecoin: the first implementation of the Filecoin Protocol
- filecoin-project/specs: the specification of the Filecoin Protocol
- filecoin-project/rust-fil-proofs: proof-of-replication and other crypto components
- filecoin-project/replication-game: proof-of-replication optimization competition
- filecoin-project/research: open problems, ideas, and discussions
- and more
Note: Filecoin is in heavy development. The code is changing drastically from day-to-day. At this stage, the repos, devnets, and other resources are for development. This release is aimed for developers, researchers, and community members who want to help make Filecoin. Miners and users who seek to use Filecoin will want to wait for a future release (likely, the testnet milestone).
In the updated Filecoin roadmap, they have made the following schedule adjustments:
| Milestone | Old ETA | New ETA |
| Launching the first public Filecoin testnet: | Q1 | Q2 |
| Testing with sets of large scale miners: | Q1 | Q2 |
| go-filecoin v1.0.0 feature freeze: | Q1/Q2 | Q2/Q3 |
| Security Review & Audit: | Q1/Q2 | Q2/Q3 |
| Launching the Filecoin mainnet: | Q2/Q3 | Q3/Q4 |