9 ms·

IPFS, CoinList, and the Filecoin ICO [audio]

170 points by craigcannon 9y ago

Confiks 9y ago
I'm excited to see that the Filecoin project is getting an update. It long seemed to be stale, with IPFS being the main priority. While a new shiny website and this podcast is up, the new promised Filecoin paper isn't yet public. It will be interesting to see how it compares to Maidsafe. A notable difference is that Filecoin uses a transaction ledger, while Maidsafe promises to use groups of nodes 'close by' to maintain a consensus: https://blog.maidsafe.net/2015/01/29/consensus-without-a-blockchain/ https://blog.maidsafe.net/2015/01/29/consensus-without-a-blo...
jzelinskie 9y ago
A lot of the early discussion about P2P dark periods is largely ignoring the usage for internal networks rather than being the basis of customer facing applications. Many large companies (fb, twitter) use P2P protocols for internal distribution of resources. They can make far more assumptions about network topology when they control the network thus these aspects of P2P algorithms don't get applied to the general internet. I'd argue this period was when people really figured out the value of BitTorrent and decided it was often too difficult to expose to the end user. FWIW, I built a BitTorrent tracker "framework" (chihaya.io) that a few orgs use to get the advantages of P2P with whatever extra middleware they need for their use cases.
- amelius 9y ago
  Nice. By the way, it would be interesting to see a Bittorrent tracker ported to WASM, so it can run in the browser.
wyager 9y ago
Have any of these storage coins figured out how to deal with the fact that it's easy to collude with yourself and efficiently pull off a Sybil attack to make it look like you're hosting lots of data?
- _prometheus 9y ago
  That's precisely one of the innovations in the new Filecoin paper :) -- we call it Proof-of-Replication. Papers coming soon.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- Taek 9y ago
  On Sia, contracts are direct been renters and hosts. Hosts can collude with themselves to make it look like they are storing lots of data, but to what end? Renters on Sia only pay for the data they are directly storing. For the Sybil attack, Sia uses proof of burn. Hosts provably burn money to demonstrate legitimacy. A Sybil attacker would have to spend real resources to appear as many hosts, and as the network grows, the required burn grows as well.
  - wyager 9y ago
    Then why use the Sia coin instead of just paying someone to (provably) host your stuff using Bitcoin? Not being snide, I just don't know what the platform offers if you're just doing direct contracts anyway.
    - Taek 9y ago
      In Sia both the renter and the host pay up front (host is putting up collateral). The payment is held for the duration of the contract (typically 12 weeks), and then the host only receives the full payment if they complete a proof of storage on the blockchain. This means the host is guaranteed to get paid even if the renter disappears forever on week 2. You can't set that up on Bitcoin.
      - philtable 9y ago
        Sia is quite volatile. If the payment is held for 12 weeks, the host has no idea what that payment will be worth. Do you have a mechanism preventing this issue?
atomical 9y ago
How can Filecoin compete with Amazon?
- aoeusnth1 9y ago
  By - Not having ridiculous profit margins on bandwidth - Having the profit margin of a commodity (storage), instead of the profit margin of company in monopolistic competition (GCP, AWS, Azure) Why would you imagine it hard to compete with Amazon?
  - pigpigs 9y ago
    How would availability of the data compare? Will the stored files be available at all times & under high loads?
    - thatcat 9y ago
      There are tiers of hosts/miners with different options.
_prometheus 9y ago
Thanks Craig and YC. Ton of fun.
- free2rhyme214 9y ago
  Out of curiosity, can you clarify how Filecoin is different than Sia or will I need to wait for your new whitepaper?
  - lgierth 9y ago
    There are a ton of technology differences which the upcoming Filecoin v2 paper will address (very soon!). On the conceptual layer there's a difference in that Sia and Storj seem to be a bit more geared towards consumers and file storage, while IPFS+Filecoin's aim is to be infrastructure in the commons. (Disclosure: IPFS & libp2p dev)
    - free2rhyme214 9y ago
      I thought Sia is focused on the enterprise? Either way, thanks for replying. I'm looking forward to reading the new whitepaper soon.
- craigcannon 9y ago
  same here. thanks for stopping by!
xur17 9y ago
One thing I don't fully understand about Filecoin (or siacoin for that matter): can I utilize this as a service provider to directly host and deliver content to my users, or do I need to sit in the path of the traffic, and retrieve the content for them? Or does this not fit into the traditional hosting model at all? Filecoin mentions the retrieval market, but I'm struggling to find more details. A concrete example would be a file or image hosting service. I can pay to store my content using Filecoin, but am I required to retrieve the content and transfer it to my users?
- Taek 9y ago
  Sia has not finished this part of the code, but in Sia it's possible to operate like a CDN. The user asks you for content, and then you point them to the host that they download from. The user still needs to be told where the file is, but this info is a few kb, and the file can be any size. The download is direct from host to user.
  - xur17 9y ago
    Very cool. That means you could have your webserver grab the URL from sia, and render it into the website (assuming users can download the content via normal http). Is there documentation on this anywhere yet?
- lgierth 9y ago
  You won't have to sit on the retrieval path with Filecoin. Nodes participating in the retrieval market will probably simply expose a Filecoin-enabled version of the HTTP-to-IPFS gateway. The v2 paper will have more details very soon. Interesting to note is also that, if you want to deliver content yourself, you can just run IPFS nodes on their own, without Filecoin. IPFS has been working fine for the past two years.
  - xur17 9y ago
    I can't wait to try this out. Sounds very interesting.
  - 9y ago

170 points by craigcannon 9y ago

I'm excited to see that the Filecoin project is getting an update. It long seemed to be stale, with IPFS being the main priority. While a new shiny website and this podcast is up, the new promised Filecoin paper isn't yet public. It will be interesting to see how it compares to Maidsafe. A notable difference is that Filecoin uses a transaction ledger, while Maidsafe promises to use groups of nodes 'close by' to maintain a consensus: https://blog.maidsafe.net/2015/01/29/consensus-without-a-blockchain/ https://blog.maidsafe.net/2015/01/29/consensus-without-a-blo...

jzelinskie 9y ago

A lot of the early discussion about P2P dark periods is largely ignoring the usage for internal networks rather than being the basis of customer facing applications. Many large companies (fb, twitter) use P2P protocols for internal distribution of resources. They can make far more assumptions about network topology when they control the network thus these aspects of P2P algorithms don't get applied to the general internet. I'd argue this period was when people really figured out the value of BitTorrent and decided it was often too difficult to expose to the end user. FWIW, I built a BitTorrent tracker "framework" (chihaya.io) that a few orgs use to get the advantages of P2P with whatever extra middleware they need for their use cases.

amelius 9y ago
Nice. By the way, it would be interesting to see a Bittorrent tracker ported to WASM, so it can run in the browser.

wyager 9y ago

Have any of these storage coins figured out how to deal with the fact that it's easy to collude with yourself and efficiently pull off a Sybil attack to make it look like you're hosting lots of data?

_prometheus 9y ago
That's precisely one of the innovations in the new Filecoin paper :) -- we call it Proof-of-Replication. Papers coming soon.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
Taek 9y ago
On Sia, contracts are direct been renters and hosts. Hosts can collude with themselves to make it look like they are storing lots of data, but to what end? Renters on Sia only pay for the data they are directly storing. For the Sybil attack, Sia uses proof of burn. Hosts provably burn money to demonstrate legitimacy. A Sybil attacker would have to spend real resources to appear as many hosts, and as the network grows, the required burn grows as well.
- wyager 9y ago
  Then why use the Sia coin instead of just paying someone to (provably) host your stuff using Bitcoin? Not being snide, I just don't know what the platform offers if you're just doing direct contracts anyway.
  - Taek 9y ago
    In Sia both the renter and the host pay up front (host is putting up collateral). The payment is held for the duration of the contract (typically 12 weeks), and then the host only receives the full payment if they complete a proof of storage on the blockchain. This means the host is guaranteed to get paid even if the renter disappears forever on week 2. You can't set that up on Bitcoin.
    - philtable 9y ago
      Sia is quite volatile. If the payment is held for 12 weeks, the host has no idea what that payment will be worth. Do you have a mechanism preventing this issue?

atomical 9y ago

How can Filecoin compete with Amazon?

aoeusnth1 9y ago
By - Not having ridiculous profit margins on bandwidth - Having the profit margin of a commodity (storage), instead of the profit margin of company in monopolistic competition (GCP, AWS, Azure) Why would you imagine it hard to compete with Amazon?
- pigpigs 9y ago
  How would availability of the data compare? Will the stored files be available at all times & under high loads?
  - thatcat 9y ago
    There are tiers of hosts/miners with different options.

_prometheus 9y ago

Thanks Craig and YC. Ton of fun.

free2rhyme214 9y ago
Out of curiosity, can you clarify how Filecoin is different than Sia or will I need to wait for your new whitepaper?
- lgierth 9y ago
  There are a ton of technology differences which the upcoming Filecoin v2 paper will address (very soon!). On the conceptual layer there's a difference in that Sia and Storj seem to be a bit more geared towards consumers and file storage, while IPFS+Filecoin's aim is to be infrastructure in the commons. (Disclosure: IPFS & libp2p dev)
  - free2rhyme214 9y ago
    I thought Sia is focused on the enterprise? Either way, thanks for replying. I'm looking forward to reading the new whitepaper soon.
craigcannon 9y ago
same here. thanks for stopping by!

xur17 9y ago

One thing I don't fully understand about Filecoin (or siacoin for that matter): can I utilize this as a service provider to directly host and deliver content to my users, or do I need to sit in the path of the traffic, and retrieve the content for them? Or does this not fit into the traditional hosting model at all? Filecoin mentions the retrieval market, but I'm struggling to find more details. A concrete example would be a file or image hosting service. I can pay to store my content using Filecoin, but am I required to retrieve the content and transfer it to my users?

Taek 9y ago
Sia has not finished this part of the code, but in Sia it's possible to operate like a CDN. The user asks you for content, and then you point them to the host that they download from. The user still needs to be told where the file is, but this info is a few kb, and the file can be any size. The download is direct from host to user.
- xur17 9y ago
  Very cool. That means you could have your webserver grab the URL from sia, and render it into the website (assuming users can download the content via normal http). Is there documentation on this anywhere yet?
lgierth 9y ago
You won't have to sit on the retrieval path with Filecoin. Nodes participating in the retrieval market will probably simply expose a Filecoin-enabled version of the HTTP-to-IPFS gateway. The v2 paper will have more details very soon. Interesting to note is also that, if you want to deliver content yourself, you can just run IPFS nodes on their own, without Filecoin. IPFS has been working fine for the past two years.
- xur17 9y ago
  I can't wait to try this out. Sounds very interesting.
- 9y ago