Ride the upcoming Filecoin Mining Wave with 6block, a one-step mining solution provider
Now is the best time to learn about Filecoin mining.
Filecoin and IPFS are complementary protocols, both developed by Protocol Labs. IPFS addresses and moves content; Filecoin is the incentive layer.
Filecoin can also refer to the token(FIL) used to power the protocol.
As we are approaching the launch of Filecoin Testnet Phase II on May 11th, now is the best time to learn about Filecoin mining.
Token Vesting and Price Forecast
Filecoin has a thriving mining community in China. Miners invest in Filecoin mining rigs because they believe will be it is profitable, at least in the initial stage, with a comparatively low total hash rate. Also, a favorable price forecast is another factor.
First, let’s look at the initial token supply when the main net launches. Filecoin has raised $ 52 million from ~150 investors, including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, Winklevoss Capital, and about 100 individual high-profile Silicon Valley investors.
The ICO opening on August 10th, 2017, started at $1 per token (also with discounts for extended vesting) and increased by a dollar for every USD 40M raised — with a cap around 6 dollars per token. The ICO ended on September 7th, 2017, with approximately $205.8 million raised. The ICO price ranges from around~1 to 5 USD, with an average price of around USD 2.5.
Some people might worry that the early investor would pump and dump their tokens as soon as it’s listed. However, the Filecoin vesting mechanism will prevent that from happening. According to Coinlist, the vesting schedule for each participating group is as follows: for advisor pre-sale one-year minimum and public sale investors 6-month minimum up to 3 years. The initial scarcity of tokens will avoid large scale pump and dump, and protect the interest of average traders.
There have been FIL futures trading on a few exchanges. Although the prices vary among the exchanges, it is a good indicator of market expectation. The futures prices below are generally 2–3 times of ICO price, showing a very buoyant market sentiment.
Support from Top Institutions
Another reason that attracts miners to Filecoin is the support from top tier exchanges such as Coinbase and Gemini.
In 2019, Coinbase announced that they are exploring support for assets that have not launched, including Filecoin.
On April 29th, 2020, Coinbase Custody announced “at-launch support for FIL,” which means “ their customers will be able to safely store these assets on the Coinbase Custody platform from the moment each of these networks goes live.”
Filecoin mining has a high entry barrier for individual miners.
The initial stage of Filecoin mining is highly desirable for the mining communities. For Filecoin miners, there are three types of token reward: block reward, storage reward, and inquiry reward.
Block reward is proportionate to miner’s valid storage; therefore, miners with large storage capacity and mining pools will have a higher probability to mine new blocks.
However, because of its technical and token economics design, Filecoin mining has a very high entry barrier in hardware deployment and maintenance.
Miners are required to lock up collateral, which they lose if they fail to prove that they’re storing the files. Such design requires miners to have steady 24/7*24 electricity and internet connection, which is difficult for household miners. Filecoin mining is more suitable for dedicated extensive mining facilities with solid tech know-how. For average individuals who want to participate, hosting mining is the best choice.
And it is also uncertain whether the initial deployment can scale.
Another Chinese dominated market?
Since the inception of the project, Filecoin has seen enormous support from the Chinese community. There are also reports of Chinese miners buying up storage arrays. Searching online in Chinese, you will find dozens of IPFS dedicated organizations and news websites. Some of them have deployed mining facilities and offer hosted mining services. But these are are difficult for non-Chinese speaking westerners to navigate, or even participate in without being Chinese citizens, so instead we will focus on 6block, which is in English and targeted on western markets.
There are a dozen of Chinese IPFS communities, IPFS Force, IPFS.CN and IFPS Union, all of which are voluntary communities not officially recognized. Those communities are all created by corporations. On the websites, they publish mostly translated content to educate the mass and almost all of those such communities have their Filecoin mining services.
Take IPFS Force, for example, it is said to be one of the leading such ‘communities’.
It’s a purely third party organization with no official recognition from the Protocol Labs. IPFS Force opiates a website with educational content. They launched a Filecoin explorer in January 2020, and also operates a Filecoin pool, the sales of which were opened in early January 2020. It’s a bit too early to sell mining pool services since Filecoin Test net phase II has been postponed to May, and the main net launch is scheduled for August 2020. The website only has a Chinese version.
6block, Trustworthy Filecoin Mining Solutions for the west.
Back to Filecoin mining, are there any trustworthy mining services that are accessible to the west? Yes, 6block will be a great choice.
6Block focuses on “Unicorn” projects in the blockchain area, providing solutions for cryptocurrency mining, including highly efficient mining programs, mining pools, hardware, cloud mining, and wallets.
Unlike other mining pools, 6block focuses on the western community, with over 70% of users from non-Chinese regions. 6block positions itself to focus on Unicorn projects and has been the larger mining pool of Handshake in the first week. And now, even with rising hash rate brought by more experienced mining pools, 6block is still the 6th largest mining pool for Handshake.
6block has a solid technical background and a professional maintenance team
As we are approaching the Filecoin test net phase II, 6block recently announced Filecoin mining solutions.
As I mentioned earlier in the article, now is the best time to learn about Filecoin mining. If you are interested, feel free to find out more about 6block here:
https://6block.com/en. You can also follow us on twitter
https://twitter.com/6block2 and communicate directly in our telegram group
https://t.me/sixblock
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