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Filecoin isn't a currency. It's a token that proves "I replicated x amount of data, y reliably, for z amount of time", and (protocol-wise) can be exchanged for

by dTal 7y ago

Filecoin isn't a currency. It's a token that proves "I replicated x amount of data, y reliably, for z amount of time", and (protocol-wise) can be exchanged for file storage services only. The market decides how much file storage is actually worth, by arbitrage. The same principle goes for Namecoin, incidentally. The token embodies the value of the resource. I actually think this kind of thing is a much more stable base for a currency than Bitcoin's "it's valuable because we say so" system.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ca98am79 7y ago
It isn't valuable because "we" say so (whoever "we" is). One reason it is valuable is because millions of dollars of energy resource is put into it to ensure that it is decentralized
- ForHackernews 7y ago
  That's a ridiculous misunderstanding of value. Just because you waste valuable resources to produce something doesn't mean the thing you produce is now valuable. If I feed my dog millions of dollars worth of beluga caviar, it doesn't mean his dogshit is now worth millions. To the degree that bitcoin is valuable today, it's because speculators think somebody else will pay them more for it in the future.
  - ca98am79 7y ago
    Did you read the last part of my statement "to ensure that it is decentralized"? True decentralization at this level is why it is valuable
    - ForHackernews 7y ago
      The fact that you have to waste ever-escalating amounts of electricity to make bitcoins doesn't ensure that it's decentralized. If anything, it means that economies of scale will favor larger organizations. In fact, that's what we see, with a few large Chinese mining syndicates controlling a majority of the hashrate: https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/mining/china/ https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/mining/china/ Compare bitcoin to a real decentralized system like bittorrent, or hell, email.
marknadal 7y ago
We don't need tokens. We need P2P stuff that works. Like https://github.com/webtorrent/webtorrent https://github.com/webtorrent/webtorrent and https://github.com/amark/gun https://github.com/amark/gun They're both run in production, at scale (millions of users), and do NOT require any tokens.
- jasode 7y ago
  >, and do NOT require any tokens. You're looking at it from a pure technical perspective of pushing bytes around in a decentralized way. What the folks pushing "tokens" are trying to solve is the game theory of financial incentives to store & serve those decentralized bytes. In contrast, things like Bittorrent/Beaker/webtorrent/etc depend on others' "altruism" to host and serve files. Because altruism doesn't scale, that's why nobody wants to seed my 100 gigabytes of personal vacation photos. Sure, they'll be happy to seed & disseminate the latest cracked copy of Adobe Photoshop or a bluray rip of the latest Marvel Avengers movie. But my personal files are uninteresting to the current decentralized web. (But I'm not claiming Filecoin actually solves the incentive puzzle. I'm merely pointing out that the "problem" Filecoin tries to solve is at a higher abstraction level (the economics) than webtorrent (the protocol).)
  - marknadal 7y ago
    I agree, the problem is that Bitcoin and Filecoin (per author's IPFS scaling issues) do NOT scale though. You must solve the technical scaling problem first, then sure, heck, add tokens if you dandy. WebTorrent/GUN/etc. do scale. Add economics to that. Preferably, add something that is time-scarce so people do not have to lose money (they don't pay FB or Google! If they have to pay Filecoin, they'll still choose free FB), something like BAT or Pirate Booty ( https://hackernoon.com/hollywood-crypto-behavioral-economics-of-piracy-netflix-and-the-future-73f093e56130 https://hackernoon.com/hollywood-crypto-behavioral-economics... ).
    - dTal 7y ago
      You can't always just "layer economics" on top. Sometimes the problem is economical. Consider what it would take to replace DNS with a distributed system. In a global namespace, names have value. You can't just operate on first-come first-served - there needs to be a system that ensures that names go to whoever wants it most. In other words, the challenge to be solved there isn't the technical one of having a DHT - that's a mostly solved problem - it's how the hell to make the names cost money, and who the money goes to. (And if you don't think the names should cost money, how do you propose allocation should work?)
mishmosh 7y ago
It’s worth noting that Filecoin and IPFS are independent, but mutually beneficial projects and networks. Using IPFS and Filecoin together is completely optional - as you can see by projects like Pinata, OpenBazaar, Qri, and DTube already using IPFS in the wild today. By design, the Filecoin Network stores data on Filecoin nodes — not IPFS nodes. While we want to make these two networks even more interoperable (https://github.com/filecoin-project/specs/issues/143 https://github.com/filecoin-project/specs/issues/143) — so that, for example, you could choose to supplement IPFS nodes with Filecoin nodes — we want to leave the choice up to users. There is a big opportunity to have a distributed marketplace for ensuring IPFS persistence, and multiple solutions optimizing for different use cases will likely coexist.

by dTal 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

ca98am79 7y ago

It isn't valuable because "we" say so (whoever "we" is). One reason it is valuable is because millions of dollars of energy resource is put into it to ensure that it is decentralized

ForHackernews 7y ago
That's a ridiculous misunderstanding of value. Just because you waste valuable resources to produce something doesn't mean the thing you produce is now valuable. If I feed my dog millions of dollars worth of beluga caviar, it doesn't mean his dogshit is now worth millions. To the degree that bitcoin is valuable today, it's because speculators think somebody else will pay them more for it in the future.
- ca98am79 7y ago
  Did you read the last part of my statement "to ensure that it is decentralized"? True decentralization at this level is why it is valuable
  - ForHackernews 7y ago
    The fact that you have to waste ever-escalating amounts of electricity to make bitcoins doesn't ensure that it's decentralized. If anything, it means that economies of scale will favor larger organizations. In fact, that's what we see, with a few large Chinese mining syndicates controlling a majority of the hashrate: https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/mining/china/ https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/mining/china/ Compare bitcoin to a real decentralized system like bittorrent, or hell, email.

marknadal 7y ago

We don't need tokens. We need P2P stuff that works. Like https://github.com/webtorrent/webtorrent https://github.com/webtorrent/webtorrent and https://github.com/amark/gun https://github.com/amark/gun They're both run in production, at scale (millions of users), and do NOT require any tokens.

jasode 7y ago
>, and do NOT require any tokens. You're looking at it from a pure technical perspective of pushing bytes around in a decentralized way. What the folks pushing "tokens" are trying to solve is the game theory of financial incentives to store & serve those decentralized bytes. In contrast, things like Bittorrent/Beaker/webtorrent/etc depend on others' "altruism" to host and serve files. Because altruism doesn't scale, that's why nobody wants to seed my 100 gigabytes of personal vacation photos. Sure, they'll be happy to seed & disseminate the latest cracked copy of Adobe Photoshop or a bluray rip of the latest Marvel Avengers movie. But my personal files are uninteresting to the current decentralized web. (But I'm not claiming Filecoin actually solves the incentive puzzle. I'm merely pointing out that the "problem" Filecoin tries to solve is at a higher abstraction level (the economics) than webtorrent (the protocol).)
- marknadal 7y ago
  I agree, the problem is that Bitcoin and Filecoin (per author's IPFS scaling issues) do NOT scale though. You must solve the technical scaling problem first, then sure, heck, add tokens if you dandy. WebTorrent/GUN/etc. do scale. Add economics to that. Preferably, add something that is time-scarce so people do not have to lose money (they don't pay FB or Google! If they have to pay Filecoin, they'll still choose free FB), something like BAT or Pirate Booty ( https://hackernoon.com/hollywood-crypto-behavioral-economics-of-piracy-netflix-and-the-future-73f093e56130 https://hackernoon.com/hollywood-crypto-behavioral-economics... ).
  - dTal 7y ago
    You can't always just "layer economics" on top. Sometimes the problem is economical. Consider what it would take to replace DNS with a distributed system. In a global namespace, names have value. You can't just operate on first-come first-served - there needs to be a system that ensures that names go to whoever wants it most. In other words, the challenge to be solved there isn't the technical one of having a DHT - that's a mostly solved problem - it's how the hell to make the names cost money, and who the money goes to. (And if you don't think the names should cost money, how do you propose allocation should work?)

mishmosh 7y ago

It’s worth noting that Filecoin and IPFS are independent, but mutually beneficial projects and networks. Using IPFS and Filecoin together is completely optional - as you can see by projects like Pinata, OpenBazaar, Qri, and DTube already using IPFS in the wild today. By design, the Filecoin Network stores data on Filecoin nodes — not IPFS nodes. While we want to make these two networks even more interoperable (https://github.com/filecoin-project/specs/issues/143 https://github.com/filecoin-project/specs/issues/143) — so that, for example, you could choose to supplement IPFS nodes with Filecoin nodes — we want to leave the choice up to users. There is a big opportunity to have a distributed marketplace for ensuring IPFS persistence, and multiple solutions optimizing for different use cases will likely coexist.