As a part of the Space Race events program, the Filecoin team are hosting weekly live AMA’s with the Filecoin community. On September 30th our team hosted our fifth AMA answering 20+ questions on Space Race 2, Filecoin mining and Mainnet Liftoff.
A summary of the most popular questions and answers is below. We look forward to hosting more sessions like this as mainnet launch approaches! In the meantime, stay tuned for updates on the Filecoin Community Slack. You can also find us on Wechat (Filecoin-Official), and Twitter.
Summarized Questions and Answers
Most questions and answers are quoted directly, some are edited for readability.
When will Filecoin go live?
The Filecoin Mainnet will go live on epoch 148,888.
When will I be able to mine Filecoin?
The Filecoin network is currently in its “Mainnet Ignition” phase, where miners, clients, and other network participants are onboarding ahead of Mainnet Liftoff. If you’d like to get started mining Filecoin - now is a great time to get set up on the network.
Will all storage power in Space Race be transferred to the Mainnet? Will testnet FIL be transferred to the Mainnet too?
We plan to transfer all sectors from Space Race 1 and 2 to mainnet. 🎉 The pledge collateral for these sectors and earned block rewards will also be transferred to reward dedicated miners who helped stress-test and improve the protocol throughout the Space Race competition, and set them up for a strong Mainnet Liftoff. We plan to do other state upgrades that may adjust or redistribute balances between now and mainnet launch.
Is there more information on deal types, verified deals? When they will start and how will they affect a miner’s block production?
More details around Verified Client and its principles and processes will be announced soon. The specific mechanics of how they will impact block production is already in the code. The mechanism will only go live after those details are announced and multiple verified clients exist on the network.
Will Protocol Labs visit China during the Wanxiang Blockchain Summit this October?
We would love to attend the Wanxiang Blockchain Summit in person, however with the global pandemic that isn’t possible right now. We plan to participate virtually in a number of talks and panels, and we are looking forward to visiting China sometime next year once the situation improves.
Will there be major updates or lotus upgrades during this golden week in China?
No! We’re being careful to avoid having any mandatory upgrades during Golden Week. We are planning a new consensus-breaking release of Lotus towards the end of Golden Week, with an upgrade epoch late on Friday, October 9th.
Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! 中秋节和国庆节快乐！
How will miners make the Discover HDD data available on the Mainnet? Will we need to seal the 5 to 8 TB of data or can we use sectors we have already sealed?
Filecoin Discover will be one of many verified clients when the mechanism is deployed. Discover disks are just means for data transport and it’s the verified client deals that will give miners higher quality-adjusted power.
Who is now stewarding the go-filecoin implementation?
There was an RFP proposal here for a community maintainer: https://github.com/filecoin-project/devgrants/issues/140 - IPFSForce applied for this RFP and was accepted through the Filecoin DevGrant application process. IPFSForce has been an engaged and reputable member of the community and we are very happy to have this team improving and stewarding the go-filecoin implementation. Don’t miss out on the next RFP!
Can miners use apps other then lotus to mine during SR2?
Not yet, unfortunately, though we certainly encourage folks to write their own node and miner implementations.
Our external implementations are close to being able to mine and validate the ignition network, but they’re not there quite yet. Stay tuned for updates!
How can I show up on one of the various miner lists so Slingshot clients can make storage deals with me?
This list is generated by a community member who sends query-ask messages to active miners and attempts to make storage deals with each of them. If a miner accepts a deal and begins sealing it, the status will be marked ‘active-sealing’. In order for your miner to show up on this list, please make sure you are configuring your mining node in a way that allows you to be dialable and to accept storage deals from clients. We have put together a small script that you can use to make some deal-acceptance changes on the fly without having to restart your node. This replaces the previous jq-based deal acceptance logic. For example, you can download the script (https://gist.github.com/ribasushi/53b7383aeb6e6f9b030210f4d64351d5#file-dealfilter-pl), make it executable (chmod 755 dealfilter.pl), and point your miner at it so you don’t have to restart your node for future deal acceptance changes!
Additional instructions can be found in this Filecoin Slack message: https://filecoinproject.slack.com/archives/C019UFEACBT/p1601061393028300