
IPFS and Filecoin Token – a p2p decentralised replacement for HTTP - Osiris30
http://avc.com/2017/07/video-of-the-week-ipfs-and-filecoin/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AVc+%28A+VC%29
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StavrosK
I find IPFS very interesting, and I actually just created an IPFS pinning
service with a friend ([https://www.eternum.io/](https://www.eternum.io/)). I
hope Filecoin will be as well-run as the IPFS project is, it certainly looks
very interesting.

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CraigRood
Very interesting indeed. I can see an era where the bandwidth used is paid for
by the end user (low cost).

Data between seeds could also be chargeable but at a lower level than the end
user - allowing the node to 'seed' the content and collect the bandwidth. This
incentives the network to sustain itself and get rewarded for increasing
availability.

ISPs and/or even access points like Cafes and Hotels can seed for themselves
getting the bandwidth $$

My understanding is Eth blockchain could also allow part of the 'coins' be
given back to content creators? though I also understand there may be scaling
issues.

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jstanley
> My understanding is Eth blockchain could also allow part of the 'coins' be
> given back to content creators?

I doubt it. How do you prove (to a smart contract) that you're the creator of
the content and not just the first person to put the content on IPFS?

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albertgoeswoof
You can have original creators do an out of band verification, e.g. by signing
their hash. You would then need a community to vote / decide on the right
hash. Given anyone can upload to IPFS, 99% of the data will be junk so you
will always need an incentive based quality control system to categorise and
curate content.

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nabla9
From economics perspective this is this is terrific idea in general.

Instead of wasting electricity and resources to generate _' consensus based
artificial scarcity'_ fiat money like BTC, monetize digital assets available
in the net with cryptoderivatives.

\---

Terminology question: Are all 'cryptosecurities' going to be called coins or
currency? Technically Filecoin is commodity derivative or asset-backed
security.

~~~
davidgerard
> From economics perspective this is this is terrific idea in general.

> Instead of wasting electricity and resources to generate 'consensus fiat
> artificial scarcity' based money like BTC. Monetize digital assets available
> in the net with derivatives.

... or you could just not do that, and save even more resources.

This is BitTorrent with cryptocurrency micropayments bolted on the side. It's
literally an "x but with Bitcoin" idea.

~~~
nabla9
Taking illiquid assets and transforming them into a security to be sold in
markets is the mark of mature industry.

Internet has created large pool of digital commodities to be sold: file
storage, computing power, network bandwidth, regional caching and content
delivery. Wrapping them up into financial instruments under common protocols
is the way to go.

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hellbanner
Has anyone tried [https://storj.io/](https://storj.io/) "Decentralized storage
based on the blockchain" ?

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jondubois
It's an interesting idea to have a coin that is backed by something that has
real tangible value in the industry (storage space)... I'd like to know
whether or not the intrinsic value behind Filecoin (in terms of $ worth of
storage space) will be worth the cost of operating the network (in $ terms).

As a buyer of storage space, if you need storage, isn't it always going to be
cheaper, faster and more convenient to use your own hard disks or a
specialised service like S3?

Will people actually have an incentive to use Filecoin as a storage service
instead of S3? If they don't, then the coin has no advantages over Bitcoin.

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zzzcpan
Owning hard disks is the only way to get cheap storage today. Specialized
services like S3 are pretty expensive in comparison, even the cheapest ones,
like Backblaze or OVH.

As I see it peer-to-peer storage could force everyone to compete globally on
price and compete directly for the data, not the customers. Kind of like
automatically choosing during upload the cheapest offering available on the
global market at any given time, except that the players themselves are aware
of the mechanism and know they are competing solely on efficiency, making them
pursue efficiency. Eventually this could even put significant amount of
storage into the countries with cheap electricity, labor and internet, making
storage costs lower than otherwise possible.

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xfer
efficiency is not the only metric, reliability is a huge factor in any kind of
digital resource.

~~~
zzzcpan
Reliability is what software is for.

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NKosmatos
How is this different from Siacoin [http://sia.tech/](http://sia.tech/) Great
idea anyhow and backed by Protocol Labs.

