11 ms·

Filecoin is a great example of raising a lot of money slowing a project down. They did a $200m ICO in 2017 and they still haven't shipped a 1.0, while smaller,

Filecoin is a great example of raising a lot of money slowing a project down. They did a $200m ICO in 2017 and they still haven't shipped a 1.0, while smaller, much less well funded projects (Sia, Arweave, ...) have made a lot more progress.

neckardt 6y ago
Are any of these projects ready for personal backup use, or still experimental?
- RL_Quine 6y ago
  The chance of "filecoin" or whatever else existing 12 months into the future is astonishingly low. The "completion" rate on ICOs is close to zero. > "Obviously it could fail and become worthless. But if it works it could be huge, like Google-scale huge, which is why this became so contentious," a different investor explains. That anybody put money into such a bleak concept is still beyond me.
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    > But if it works it could be huge, like Google-scale huge Or tulip-huge, the first shitcoin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
  - cjbprime 6y ago
    I can generally agree about random ICOs, but for what it's worth the Filecoin team is world-class distributed systems talent. I wouldn't say this about any other ICO. (I don't own Filecoin tokens and have nothing to gain by the project being successful, I'm just a fan of that team.)
    - kevingadd 6y ago
      If you're investing in a business venture, the distributed systems talent doesn't matter nearly as much as their ability to build and maintain a successful business without it falling over. If they've got millions USD worth of cash in the bank, they can hire talented engineers, but if they don't have any idea how to run a business no algorithm is going to fix that.
      - cjbprime 6y ago
        I'm responding to: > The chance of "filecoin" or whatever else existing 12 months into the future is astonishingly low. I actually think the chance of Filecoin existing in a year is close to 1. It's not due to a prediction of a wildly successful corporate structure. It's mainly about the tech.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    Seems roughly in like with most startups
- koeng 6y ago
  I’ve found Sia to be quite good. Their “skynet” system is really cool.
  - really3452 6y ago
    ScPrime has been looking really good too!
    - fishbed4 6y ago
      i'll look into SCP. thanks. love all the storage coins. always looking for another to add to the portfolio.
    - koeng 6y ago
      Any reason the fork is better than the main project?
- yupyup54133 6y ago
  Sia (and its Skynet product) have been working great for me for the last 6 months!
- shakezula 6y ago
  Storj, Sia, and a few others minor players are in production. Each have their tradeoffs.
- companyhen 6y ago
  Arweave has a pay once, store forever model where after the initial payment to upload (~$0.005/MB) the file is stored forever on the permaweb. You can get started with some free tokens to play with arweave here: http://tokens.arweave.org/ http://tokens.arweave.org/ I also suggest you check out the latest Arweave x Gitcoin Open Web Incubator Demo Day from last week to see the latest stuff being built. Looking forward to ArDrive, Verto, WeaveID and more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slzyw1w5Ric&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slzyw1w5Ric&feature=youtu.be One further advantage of decentralized UI hosting on Arweave is simply resilience to website outages: https://twitter.com/rleshner/status/1278444807011139585 https://twitter.com/rleshner/status/1278444807011139585
  - wmf 6y ago
    Interesting that this is 1,000 times the price of B2 per month, so if you're willing to pre-pay for 1,000 months (83 years) of service you get the "rest" for free.
    - lazzlazzlazz 6y ago
      You're not paying for storage. You're paying for permanent, guaranteed immutable, community-programmable storage immune to seizures, platform changes, manipulation, and censorship. For the right use cases, that's a bargain.
      - theamk 6y ago
        It is only immutable and immune to manipulation while there are enough miners, and there are no hard forks. While it may look good now, there is a non-zero chance it will disappear within 5 years for some reason or other. So if your data is really important, better make a backup copy of it somewhere safe, like in B2.
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
> Filecoin is a great example of raising a lot of money slowing a project down. I wouldn't assume the money was the cause of the slowdown. More likely, raising huge amounts of money was the goal in the first place. From the article: > But multiple sources say that a large percentage of those tokens had been unilaterally distributed by CEO Juan Batiz-Benet to himself and early employees for less than a penny each, and that he has continued to make such distributions in the years since. > Sources also say that no tokens were distributed to shareholders and that it often was difficult to get questions answered.
- shakezula 6y ago
  There's a good argument to be made that the money made it slower. They hired a TON of engineers at once and after looking at their code, you can tell it's a too-many-cooks situation. Raising huge amounts of money certainly was the goal but that doesn't mean it couldn't have detrimental effects past their bank accounts.
john_moscow 6y ago
It is unsurprising given that the raison d'etre for Filecoin was never the demand for decentralized storage, or backup, or anything else. It was started with the sole purpose of raising money, because of the overwhelming demand for hype-driven investment opportunities that tick the typical checkboxes. And that was delivered perfectly. Releasing an actual product is more of a side product. If you don't develop or release anything, and just buy yourself Porsches, it's textbook embezzlement. But if you spend the money in a plausible way, you're mostly safe, even if the product turns out a major flop. Unless you get greedy and start doing too shady stuff, like issuing yourself tokens under the table, that the founders apparently did.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  This isn't true of Protocol Labs. They have already shipped IPFS, which is already in substantial use. Filecoin's testnet is live now, they have not shipped mainnet yet, but it's pretty imminent at this point. There are certainly some ICO scams out there, but I do not believe Filecoin was one of them. I still think $200m was too much, too soon. However, they didn't issue the tokens to themselves under the table. They issued a SAFT agreement for tokens to accredited investors in the United States, abiding by SEC regulations. They allocated 10 percent to investors, 15 percent to themselves, 5 percent to the Filecoin foundation, and 70 percent for Filecoin miners. That was all part of the upfront ICO. It could turn out to be a flop, but the only people that would lose would be accredited investors who, according to regulations, should know better. I would say Filecoin has at least as good of a chance of succeeding as any ordinary VC investment.
  - john_moscow 6y ago
    What is the actual IPFS user base besides curiosity traffic and crypto speculators?
    - chrisco255 6y ago
      IPFS is an independent protocol from Filecoin. It is not a cryptocoin in and of itself. It is an alternative addressing system for content on the web. The idea is that files are organized by their contents (using a cryptographic hash of those contents) rather than by IP address. You can pin content with your own independently run IPFS node using any tech stack of your choosing. You can spin up a website powered by IPFS today and many people are already doing that. https://ipfs.io/images/ipfs-applications-diagram.png https://ipfs.io/images/ipfs-applications-diagram.png for some examples of applications using IPFS. Visit https://ipfs.io/ https://ipfs.io/ for more info.
vagab0nd 6y ago
It would be interesting to know what life is like for a developer on such a team. Is it like a full time job? A demanding one? Less?
rasz 6y ago
? raising a lot of money WAS the project

neckardt 6y ago

Are any of these projects ready for personal backup use, or still experimental?

RL_Quine 6y ago
The chance of "filecoin" or whatever else existing 12 months into the future is astonishingly low. The "completion" rate on ICOs is close to zero. > "Obviously it could fail and become worthless. But if it works it could be huge, like Google-scale huge, which is why this became so contentious," a different investor explains. That anybody put money into such a bleak concept is still beyond me.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  > But if it works it could be huge, like Google-scale huge Or tulip-huge, the first shitcoin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
- cjbprime 6y ago
  I can generally agree about random ICOs, but for what it's worth the Filecoin team is world-class distributed systems talent. I wouldn't say this about any other ICO. (I don't own Filecoin tokens and have nothing to gain by the project being successful, I'm just a fan of that team.)
  - kevingadd 6y ago
    If you're investing in a business venture, the distributed systems talent doesn't matter nearly as much as their ability to build and maintain a successful business without it falling over. If they've got millions USD worth of cash in the bank, they can hire talented engineers, but if they don't have any idea how to run a business no algorithm is going to fix that.
    - cjbprime 6y ago
      I'm responding to: > The chance of "filecoin" or whatever else existing 12 months into the future is astonishingly low. I actually think the chance of Filecoin existing in a year is close to 1. It's not due to a prediction of a wildly successful corporate structure. It's mainly about the tech.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  Seems roughly in like with most startups
koeng 6y ago
I’ve found Sia to be quite good. Their “skynet” system is really cool.
- really3452 6y ago
  ScPrime has been looking really good too!
  - fishbed4 6y ago
    i'll look into SCP. thanks. love all the storage coins. always looking for another to add to the portfolio.
  - koeng 6y ago
    Any reason the fork is better than the main project?
yupyup54133 6y ago
Sia (and its Skynet product) have been working great for me for the last 6 months!
shakezula 6y ago
Storj, Sia, and a few others minor players are in production. Each have their tradeoffs.
companyhen 6y ago
Arweave has a pay once, store forever model where after the initial payment to upload (~$0.005/MB) the file is stored forever on the permaweb. You can get started with some free tokens to play with arweave here: http://tokens.arweave.org/ http://tokens.arweave.org/ I also suggest you check out the latest Arweave x Gitcoin Open Web Incubator Demo Day from last week to see the latest stuff being built. Looking forward to ArDrive, Verto, WeaveID and more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slzyw1w5Ric&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slzyw1w5Ric&feature=youtu.be One further advantage of decentralized UI hosting on Arweave is simply resilience to website outages: https://twitter.com/rleshner/status/1278444807011139585 https://twitter.com/rleshner/status/1278444807011139585
- wmf 6y ago
  Interesting that this is 1,000 times the price of B2 per month, so if you're willing to pre-pay for 1,000 months (83 years) of service you get the "rest" for free.
  - lazzlazzlazz 6y ago
    You're not paying for storage. You're paying for permanent, guaranteed immutable, community-programmable storage immune to seizures, platform changes, manipulation, and censorship. For the right use cases, that's a bargain.
    - theamk 6y ago
      It is only immutable and immune to manipulation while there are enough miners, and there are no hard forks. While it may look good now, there is a non-zero chance it will disappear within 5 years for some reason or other. So if your data is really important, better make a backup copy of it somewhere safe, like in B2.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

> Filecoin is a great example of raising a lot of money slowing a project down. I wouldn't assume the money was the cause of the slowdown. More likely, raising huge amounts of money was the goal in the first place. From the article: > But multiple sources say that a large percentage of those tokens had been unilaterally distributed by CEO Juan Batiz-Benet to himself and early employees for less than a penny each, and that he has continued to make such distributions in the years since. > Sources also say that no tokens were distributed to shareholders and that it often was difficult to get questions answered.

shakezula 6y ago
There's a good argument to be made that the money made it slower. They hired a TON of engineers at once and after looking at their code, you can tell it's a too-many-cooks situation. Raising huge amounts of money certainly was the goal but that doesn't mean it couldn't have detrimental effects past their bank accounts.

john_moscow 6y ago

It is unsurprising given that the raison d'etre for Filecoin was never the demand for decentralized storage, or backup, or anything else. It was started with the sole purpose of raising money, because of the overwhelming demand for hype-driven investment opportunities that tick the typical checkboxes. And that was delivered perfectly. Releasing an actual product is more of a side product. If you don't develop or release anything, and just buy yourself Porsches, it's textbook embezzlement. But if you spend the money in a plausible way, you're mostly safe, even if the product turns out a major flop. Unless you get greedy and start doing too shady stuff, like issuing yourself tokens under the table, that the founders apparently did.

chrisco255 6y ago
This isn't true of Protocol Labs. They have already shipped IPFS, which is already in substantial use. Filecoin's testnet is live now, they have not shipped mainnet yet, but it's pretty imminent at this point. There are certainly some ICO scams out there, but I do not believe Filecoin was one of them. I still think $200m was too much, too soon. However, they didn't issue the tokens to themselves under the table. They issued a SAFT agreement for tokens to accredited investors in the United States, abiding by SEC regulations. They allocated 10 percent to investors, 15 percent to themselves, 5 percent to the Filecoin foundation, and 70 percent for Filecoin miners. That was all part of the upfront ICO. It could turn out to be a flop, but the only people that would lose would be accredited investors who, according to regulations, should know better. I would say Filecoin has at least as good of a chance of succeeding as any ordinary VC investment.
- john_moscow 6y ago
  What is the actual IPFS user base besides curiosity traffic and crypto speculators?
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    IPFS is an independent protocol from Filecoin. It is not a cryptocoin in and of itself. It is an alternative addressing system for content on the web. The idea is that files are organized by their contents (using a cryptographic hash of those contents) rather than by IP address. You can pin content with your own independently run IPFS node using any tech stack of your choosing. You can spin up a website powered by IPFS today and many people are already doing that. https://ipfs.io/images/ipfs-applications-diagram.png https://ipfs.io/images/ipfs-applications-diagram.png for some examples of applications using IPFS. Visit https://ipfs.io/ https://ipfs.io/ for more info.

vagab0nd 6y ago

It would be interesting to know what life is like for a developer on such a team. Is it like a full time job? A demanding one? Less?

rasz 6y ago

? raising a lot of money WAS the project