Much anticipated Filecoin mainnet launch will happen today

Exchanges Kraken and OKEx have already announced that they will be supporting Filecoin trading as soon as the mainnet has launched

Filecoin is a decentralised storage network that provides a service for the storage and retrieval of data. It builds on top of the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), a peer to peer file sharing network which, like Filecoin, is also made by Protocol Labs.

The large centralised cloud storage providers like Google, Dropbox and Amazon have cornered the market on file storage, allowing them to dictate price. Filecoin’s vision is a new model of hyper local and efficient storage on an open market.

Their white paper promised competitive prices as miners compete to win storage contracts, and increased robustness as the network can detect missing nodes and reallocate the files they stored to other miners, meaning no central point of failure (unlike the aforementioned centralised storage providers).

The Filecoin mainnet launch has been much anticipated since their record-breaking $257 million Initial Coin Offering (ICO) back in 2017, and the wait will finally be over on block 148,888 (a number chosen as it means ‘prosperity for life’ in Chinese numerology – an acknowledgement of the contribution by Filecoin’s Chinese mining community), which is expected to arrive at some point today.

Filecoin’s founder, Juan Benet, said in an address to IPFSUnion on Tuesday: “I am very excited about the upcoming mainnet launch on October 15th. This will be the culmination of many years of hard work for developers, researchers, miners and all Filecoin community members.”

As soon as the mainnet is launched, Filecoin tokens (FIL) will become available for trading, with both OKEx and Kraken having already announced they will be listing it, and no doubt more to follow suit. It’s already listed on CoinMarketCap, which, at time of writing, has its price at $27.89.

There will be a total supply of 2 billion FIL to be released over decades, similar to Bitcoin, with 70% allocated to miners.

To celebrate the launch, Filecoin will be hosting Liftoff Week, a series of talks, workshops and events by the web3 community from October 19 to 23.