3 Takeaways from the Filecoin Community at Consensus

Last week, the Filecoin community convened in Austin against the backdrop of Consensus to hear from some of the ecosystem's leading voices and check out the latest projects building on the network. The Filecoin Foundation team took the stage at events across town to highlight what the ecosystem is working on and to underscore the innovation happening throughout the network. 

The Filecoin Network is Critical Infrastructure for Decentralized Compute & DePIN

FF Founding Officer Megan Klimen joined the R3al World DePIN House @ Consensus 2024, where she spoke on how protocols like Filecoin are redefining conventional infrastructure frameworks, with data stored on a network of computers around the world.

In today's digital age, data is the lifeblood of nearly every industry, and the demand for computing resources is skyrocketing. As AI continues to generate data and consume compute resources, Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN) like Filecoin will become even more important. Recently, IoTeX and WeatherXM completed a proof of concept with Basin, a new data L2 delivering hot, fast storage to DePIN, compute, and AI networks powered by Filecoin for long-term data availability and dispute resolution. This highlights the growing demand for scalability, security, and resilience that DePINs offer over centralized solutions, and Filecoin’s unique position to empower other DePINs. 

The Filecoin network can broker computational resources, incentivize compute execution, distribute workloads across available storage providers, and prove the validity of the computation's results. By harnessing the power of global networks, Filecoin can foster a more open, resilient, and democratized computing ecosystem.

The Filecoin x AI Opportunity

No protocol is better positioned to support the data economy than Filecoin: the key to data provenance, authenticity, and verifiability in the high-frequency information age. FF Head of Community Porter Stowell demoed AI agents built for Filecoin at Theoriq’s AI Odyssey event. He highlighted 4 reasons why Filecoin will power the data economy:

• Transparency, Provenance, and Authentication: An open and robust record of AI data provenance and lineage, and assurance that data has not been tampered with, combats bias and promotes auditability and trust. 

• Immutability and Proof of Storage: Filecoin’s Proof-of-Spacetime mechanism constantly verifies that data is stored correctly and securely, providing proof that it has not been tampered with, helping those building AI models with compliance, and fostering user confidence in how AI models operate.

• Scale: The exponential growth of AI data requires a solution that can scale. ChatGPT3.5 was trained on 570 GB of text datasets, and the data needs of AI grow exponentially as images, videos, and other media are introduced into training sets. Right now, Filecoin’s storage capacity is enough to train ChatGPT3.5 12 million times.

• Resilience: Decentralized storage technologies like Filecoin rely on a robust network of storage providers around the globe to store multiple copies of data, rather than large corporations susceptible to single points of failure. 

These points combined with the proliferation and capabilities of AI agents will dramatically increase the usability and trust of data globally to unlock a new era of analytics and insights.  

Storage is Just the Start

FF Founding Officer Clara Tsao spotlighted Filecoin's value proposition in her presentation Charting the 2024 Filecoin Road Map, where she highlighted how the network can be the foundational storage layer for a wide range of applications across Web2, Web3, and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and decentralized computing. 

Through focusing on three community growth areas, including deals, onchain activity, and concrete examples of value-add over other storage alternatives, the network is primed to thrive in 2024 and beyond. Filecoin complements emerging compute protocols, where companies like Lighthouse and Akave are making it the go-to solution for secure and decentralized data storage and archiving. As new blockchain networks and layer-2s gain traction, Filecoin can be deeply embedded within their architectures, serving as a reliable and trustless storage layer. With the emergence of more AI tools, every AI marketplace could offer Filecoin as the default storage option for this data verifiability and traceability, creating an opportunity for DePIN and compute networks to build on and build with Filecoin.

With a thriving ecosystem of developers, storage providers, and partners, the Filecoin network is positioned to drive widespread adoption and become the foremost decentralized storage infrastructure for the data economy. It’s an indispensable tool for all companies that rely on big data – across Web2, Web2.5, and Web3. 

Network News

The Defiant’s ETHDenver documentary is now stored on Filecoin. On a recent DWeb Decoded episode, The Defiant team uploaded their documentary – Meet The Gigabrains Shaping The Future Of Web3 – to the Filecoin network. Decentralized storage provides media organizations with increased data security and redundancy, ensuring that their valuable files are protected against single points of failure or data breaches.

Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web and Artizen announced the Filecoin Fund for Cultural Preservation. The fund supports projects that use decentralized storage technologies to archive, preserve, and disseminate cultural works and emphasize the critical role of decentralized storage technologies in safeguarding human creativity. Learn more. 

Build With Us 

Help us improve Filecoin Docs! Filecoin Foundation is looking to support projects that enhance existing Filecoin documentation or create new educational resources. We’ve introduced a new grant category called Documentation Enhancement, and we’re looking for proposals that fit within the focus areas of tutorial creation, comprehensive developer guides, and interactive learning resources, with grants up to $5,000. Filecoin Foundation’s flagship grants program, Open Grants, supports novel ideas that advance the Filecoin ecosystem, bring significant new usage, or directly advance the idea of preserving humanity’s information, with funding available up to $50,000 per project.

Secure your spot at FIL Brussels. The Filecoin community is headed to Brussels, Belgium from July 8-10, alongside EthCC, for an exploration of decentralized AI, DePIN, and compute. Join us for insightful talks, hands-on workshops, networking opportunities, and can’t-miss announcements from trailblazing Filecoin ecosystem teams building at the forefront of the data economy. 

Registration is open for FIL Dev Summit. FIL Dev Summit in Brussels is a gathering of developers, builders, and engaged community members who want to contribute to the core protocol and network evolution of Filecoin. This summit is more than just a meetup — it’s a place for meaningful and impactful conversations that help push Filecoin forward. Check out the schedule. 

Can you hack it? Join a hackathon and shape the future of the web to make it more decentralized, robust, and secure. 

Ecosystem Spotlight 

Textile Basin

Textile launched Basin on May 23, a groundbreaking solution for high-throughput, decentralized data storage, featuring cutting-edge decentralized application development using Basin’s simple object storage (S3 compatible) protocol, powered by the Filecoin network. Basin is designed to overcome the limitations of traditional cloud storage, providing a scalable, secure, and verifiable data management solution and ensuring data availability and scalability through its subnet architecture, offering storage atop Filecoin’s exabytes of storage capacity.

Governance 

Rolling applications for new Filecoin Plus Allocators are open! Check out the FIDL guide on how to apply.