The Filecoin network announced its much-awaited mainnet launch on the 15th of October at 3 PM at block 148,888. However, that did not deter the platform’s popularity. Announcing the same, Filecoin thanked researchers, experts, developers, Filecoin mining community, Filecoin storage clients, collaborators as well as the community.
The Filecoin Network has passed epoch 148,888 ?? — the rocket has lifted off ?? So far, the network is stable and community members are reporting successful operations #FilecoinLiftoff https://t.co/zxzc28D8ia
— Filecoin (@Filecoin) October 15, 2020
Its official blog post stated,
“This moment marks the culmination of years of innovation and hard work. From the early days designing the novel proofs of storage and replication that are fundamental to trustlessly incentivize storage growth, to the advanced systems engineering required to bring such a complex decentralized marketplace into existence, to the amazing ecosystem of tools and projects that have integrated with Filecoin to make the network more powerful and accessible — we have come so far as a community.”
Filecoin essentially lets anyone participate as a storage provider, monetize their open hard drive space, and “help store humanity’s most important information”. This, in turn, offer a vital incentive layer for IPFS [InterPlanetary File System], thereby strengthening the existing web3 storage infrastructure already used by thousands of projects and developers.
Popularity in China
The project, which was first introduced three years back, witnessed significant delays. At that time, it was backed by top names in venture capital such as Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz, $200 million was secured in a funding round. Following the ICO testnet was postponed until 2019. Protocol Labs initially promised the mainnet launch in the first quarter of 2020 but then pushed it to the fourth quarter.
But this factor has failed to deter its popularity especially in China wherein investors started speculating on the network’s mining hardware and its token prices soon after Protocol Labs, the foundation behind Filecoin, rolled out a ‘Testnet Incentives’ program in the first week of June. Considering the already existing popularity of cryptocurrency mining in China, it is not surprising that miners are hyped about Filecoin which does not require any specialized mining devices for access and much simpler compared to mining Bitcoin where ASICs are used.
Listing
Filecoin’s native FIL token rose to prominence even before the mainnet of the platform went live as exchanges flocked in. Coingape had earlier reported that the token saw an astonishing price rise of 270.96% a day after popular crypto exchange, Gemini announced its listing. In the latest update, BINANCE announced listing of the FIL token at the time of the Filecoin Mainnet 148,888 Epoch.
Deposits for @Filecoin $FIL are now open.
Anyone that deposits 100 or more #FIL will share a prize pool of $100,000 in #BNB! https://t.co/U8eNmEqvSr
— Binance (@binance) October 15, 2020
This was followed by COINBASE Custody’s announcement to support of FIL.
Coinbase Custody now supports Filecoin ($FIL) https://t.co/y4NV8jgtUP pic.twitter.com/KjknMCd6hx
— Coinbase Custody (@CoinbaseCustody) October 15, 2020