Filecoin Project

18 Sep Filecoin Project

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Filecoin Project

Project Description

What are the purposes, goals, or scope of the project? If there are metrics to measure success, what are they?

The Mission of Filecoin is to create a decentralized, efficient, and robust foundation for humanity’s information.

What, if any, are the coordinating entities, and what are their functions? (For example, a foundation, software development corporation, DAO, etc.)

Filecoin Foundation

Implementation teams (Protocol Labs, ChainSafe, IPFSForce, Soramitsu)

Mining businesses (many)

Ecosystem development businesses (Textile, Infinite Scroll, etc)

 

How are participants and users of the project identified? (For example, by public/private cryptographic keypair, wallet number, government ID, etc.) Are there restrictions on who can participate? If so, how are they implemented?

MinerID: https://filfox.info/en/ranks/power

ClientID: https://filfox.info/en/deal

No restrictions to participation.

Filecoin+: https://fil.org/filplus/

Stakeholder Groups

Does the project’s software code delineate groups with particular functions? (For example, those who can propose changes, arbitrate disputes, or vote tokens on behalf of others.)

Within the Filecoin Economy, there are three distinct markets, and participants in the network exchange different goods or services. In the storage market, storage miners offer to rent out digital storage that will be verified by the Filecoin Network. Conversely, storage clients offer filecoin to have their data stored. This storage is priced based on the amount of storage space used and the duration of the contract in time. There is a retrieval market, where clients pay filecoin to retrieval miners to provide them with a copy of the data. Lastly, token exchanges could enable participants to trade to put filecoin in the hands of clients, miners, and other token holders.

https://filecoin.io/2020-engineering-filecoins-economy-en.pdf

Are there other important groups either constituted informally, specified through contractual arrangements, or based on geography/choice of law?

FIP Editors: https://github.com/filecoin-project/FIPs/blob/master/FIPS/fip-0001.md#fip-editors

Filecoin Core Devs: All implementation devs + members of core research Labs (cryptoecon, proofs, network research, etc)

 

Goals and Implementation

What behaviors does the project seek to encourage, or discourage? How are such behaviors incentivized?

Adding capacity to the Filecoin network: block reward

Storing useful data on the Filecoin network: FIL+ multiplier on block reward

Creating applications on Filecoin to boost utility of the ecosystem: Hackathons, devgrants, accelerators, and ecosystem funds

Loaning Filecoin tokens to miners: APY on lent filecoin

(For operational projects): How well are the incentives and governance mechanisms functioning in practice? Are there metrics to measure the effectiveness of governance?

https://github.com/filecoin-project/FIPs - the majority of proposed FIPs have been accepted, FIP authorship extends across 6+ different organizations

Are there systems to pay for infrastructure, protocol upgrades, development work, network enhancements and/or other work deemed to be in the interest of the network? If so, how do they operate?

Devgrants from the Filecoin Foundation pay for many infra services, dev projects, etc. https://fil.org/grants/

Governance Powers

What makes a governance decision associated with this project legitimate or illegitimate?

FIPs are the official decision-making venue for protocol upgrade decisions and organizational process decisions that affect the entire community.

Who has power to introduce governance proposals, and how does that process operate?

Anyone can ship a new FIP

Who has policy-setting (“legislative") power to decide on proposals, and how does that process operate?

FIPs must be valid/complete and get approval from the community and core devs to be accepted.

Who has implementation (“executive”) power to execute proposals once decided upon, and how does that process operate?

Core devs are responsible for implementing technical FIPs (across implementations) once accepted.

Who has interpretive (“judicial”) power to resolve disputes over application of a policy to a specific instance, and how does that process operate? What can the interpretive power be used to mandate?

There is a polling tool, but there isn't an explicit judiciary process yet.

What checks and balances, or systems of accountability, exist among these governance powers?

Anyone can propose a FIP, core devs have a check on community proposals for what gets implemented in official releases (they hold each other in check), miners decide which new implementation releases they accept (holding the core devs in check).

Governance Procedure

Governance Procedure

Are there systems for non-binding signals or binding votes on governance decisions? If so, please describe them in detail.

There is a polling system for miners/clients/ecosystem devs to signal their support (or rejection) for a FIP: https://filpoll.io/

Are there distinctions between decisions made by ordinary processes (for example, majority votes) and those which require extraordinary processes (for example, supermajority votes)? Or are there non-standard processes you would, or have, used in emergency situations? Explain as appropriate.

In emergency situations, we don't wait the full timeline between posting/accepting/shipping a FIP across implementations.

Are there aspects that can never be changed through governance processes, short of a contentious hard fork of the network? If so, how is that ensured?

No? FIPs can cover any aspect of technical or governance process.

Are there mechanisms that make changing the project easier or harder?

Having multiple independent implementations requires more agreement and alignment between core devs on the problems to solve and how.

What revisions to governance mechanisms have been made, or are under consideration, and why?

There are new organizational FIPs in the works to upgrade existing documentation/FIPs.

Other Information

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