The Latest from ThreeFold - Foundation

Last week, we shared an update on what’s new in TF Grid 3.0.1 – and the path to mainnet! There’s been a lot of exciting progress by the team, and we wanted to share with you some more specifics where we can – starting with the admin portal!

🔗What is the admin portal?

One of the requests from farmers and grid users was a to have a simpler user experience. The admin portal (aka TF Chain UI) is a response to that feedback, a graphical user interface for farmers and grid users on top of the TF Chain.

The admin portal is the starting point for anyone to start working with the TF Grid. For Farmers in particular they now have a much simpler way to create a farming identity and then connect their infrastructure to the ThreeFold Grid 3.0. It is a one stop shop to start a farm. Beyond that, it’s a way for any TF Grid user to create their account on the TF Chain, get a Twin, and get started (testing for now) on the TF Grid 3.0 devnet or testnet.

Find links to get started at the bottom!

🔗What does the admin portal do?

The admin portal is a place for TF Grid users to:

Create an account on the TF Chain and a digital twin to start smart contracting on TF Chain (allowing you to also link to your IP address for added security).

Operate a bridge between Stellar and TF Chain on Parity Substrate (deposit TFT from Stellar, or return unused TFT to the Stellar chain, the bridge is active in both directions)

For farmers: create and manage your farm(s), provide IPv4 addresses available for your farm(s), attach a Stellar wallet for TFT payouts, and a link to download the bootloader for testnet and devnet (mainnet is on its way).

The portal also links to the new capacity explorer, which we’ll share more about early next week.

🔗How is this an improvement over the old process?

Previously, all of these tools existed, but not always in the same place or with a clear and easy-to-use UX/UI. We’ve tested this portal with people of all technical levels, and the response has been great! We believe the portal is a huge step forward for anyone using or managing the ThreeFold Grid.

More improvements will come in the next versions. As an example, we’re planning for you to be able to see the connected nodes linked to your farm with their status, earned tokens, etc.

🔗Get started

The portal is currently available on devnet and testnet. You can also find information on the portal in our library here. Please note, you’ll need to install the Polkadot{.js} extension and create or import an account in order to get started.

Visit our forum to discuss you experiences with the new admin portal here.

Welcome to the fourth part of our journey through the decentralization space. After exploring Dfinity, Akash, and most recently Filecoin, we’ll now explore Storj to find out what we have in common and where ThreeFold stands out. Here we go!

🔗Storj & how the project compares to ThreeFold

Storj is a decentralized cloud storage (DCS) solution founded in 2014 by Shawn Wilkinson, offering cloud object storage on its network of nodes and ISPs spread across different countries.

ThreeFold and Storj are both open source projects that view transparency as an integral part of their business philosophy. Actually, ThreeFold is the first full-stack blockchain-enabled cloud to be made open source – all of our code is open source and available for everyone to review or use.

Another similarity is that security and privacy are crucial aspects of our projects. Both are private by design and believe it’s vital that every person has total control and ownership over their data – not even Storj or ThreeFold can access the data of users within their respective ecosystems, creating trustless environments. Storj provides security and privacy by encrypting the data by an Uplink client before it is uploaded to its DCS. The data is then split into pieces which are distributed across different nodes and ISPs connected to Storj’s cloud network. At ThreeFold, we’re creating an entirely secure, peer-to-peer IT ecosystem that empowers users and gives them back control and ownership of their own data. We’re secure across all dimensions of our solutions – from our operating system Zero-OS to Quantum Safe File System (QSFS) and Planetary Network.

While Storj does not have its own operating system, we’ve built our Zero-OS from scratch. It allows servers to run autonomously and workloads to be hosted securely, preventing them from administrative exploits and errors. The self-driving and self-healing features of Zero-OS eliminate backdoors, reduce the hacking surface and remove the need for human involvement.

Both projects are compatible with certain IT tools and protocols. While Storj is S3-compatible and integrates a couple of developer tools like FileZilla or Fastly, ThreeFold is highly compatible with leading industry standards and tools from S3 to Docker containers, Kubernetes and more. Moreover, ThreeFold can run anything that runs on Linux, allowing for a seamless migration of any digital workload, even from traditional cloud providers like Microsoft Azure or AWS.

A difference between the projects is that Storj focuses on providing the storage layer for developers to build storage applications like Dropbox upon, rather than offering such services themselves, whereas our energy-efficient full stack cloud infrastructure includes solutions like the ThreeFold Marketplace of ready-made peer-to-peer applications that runs on our Edge Virtual Data Center (eVDC). Moreover, we’re working with innovative teams and developers to develop self-sovereign alternatives to commonly used applications (e.g. video conferencing, office tools).

🔗Network & Storage

On Storj’s decentralized network, uploaded data is automatically spread across nodes in different countries. The storage capacity on Storj’s network is increased whenever a new node is connected to it. There are roughly 9,6 Petabyte of data stored on Storj with nodes in more than 80 countries, whereas roughly 85 Petabyte of storage, compute, and network capacity are deployed on the ThreeFold Grid. Currently, the nodes connected to our Grid are spread over more than 50 countries.

While Storj only offers storage capacity, ThreeFold provides storage, compute, and network capacity. Moreover, our system is endlessly scaleable, whereas Storj’s scalability is limited as it does not empower people without technical skills to contribute and has more complex structures, such as its Satellite component which will be explained further down. We’re continuously extending our reach and our system is capable of seamlessly growing on demand, as it enables anyone to become a 3Node on our ThreeFold Grid. Moreover, our self-driving and self-healing technology is unique in the space and removes the need for monitoring and maintaining the nodes.

Storage nodes on Storj are responsible for storing and returning data reliably. While Storj generally allows anyone with the excess capacity and bandwidth to run a node on its network, the project does not offer certified hardware. With Storj, anyone who wants to become a node operator has to build their own nodes which have to meet the specific hardware requirements of Storj. At ThreeFold, our technology was designed to scale to anywhere electricity and bandwidth can be found to meet local digital infrastructure needs, to empower the unconnected and to drive our vision of an interconnected world. This is also why we’re working with certified hardware partners to provide plug-and-play 3Nodes. These 3Nodes enable even people without technical skills to join and contribute to what we like to call the People’s Internet, as we believe that everyone should be given equal chances and that Internet access is a human right.

Next to the storage nodes, there are two other main components of the Storj network: Uplink and Satellite. Uplink is Storj’s umbrella term for any application that stores or retrieves data and encrypts, encodes, and coordinates data with other services. Storj’s Satellite consists of a set of storage node services like storage node reputation, data repair, billing and more. Storj users have to sign up for accounts on Satellites and pick a specific Satellite to trust. While any user could run their own Satellite in theory, Storj recommends users to create an account on a Satellite that is hosted by a third party like Storj Labs to reduce complexity. This approach, however, fosters centralization, whereas our peer-to-peer infrastructure is an open system where anyone can provide and utilize cloud resources without any intermediaries. On top of that, we’ve implemented cryptographically-secured deployment specifications, called Smart Contracts for IT, to ensure that workloads run as intended in a tamper-proof way, and allow systems to scale and heal autonomously without intermediaries.

🔗Tokenomics & Payment Methods

Both projects have native utility tokens. While the Storj token is an Ethereum-based token that represents a unit of storage capacity on the Storj network, ThreeFold Tokens (TFT) can represent either a unit of compute, storage or network on the ThreeFold Grid. Some Storj community members criticize a lack of utility of the Storj token, as storage capacity on Storj can be purchased and paid for not only in Storj token but also using fiat payment options like credit card or invoice. However, Storj themselves don’t see this as an issue and state that the intention behind their tokens is to facilitate the provision and receipt of data storage and not to create a digital currency or any other kind of financial instrument. In contrast, our ThreeFold Tokens are the fuel for IT capacity, as they allow people to hold current and future cloud capacity on the ThreeFold Grid. Moreover, a limited supply of four billion ThreeFold Token has been set to keep the currency scarce, while the burning mechanism simultaneously ensures continuous rewards for current and future nodes. Find out more about our two algorithms, Proof-of-Capacity (PoC) and Proof-of-Utilization (PoU), in our tokenomics.

By connecting storage nodes to Storj’s network and providing storage capacity to others, node operators get rewarded with Storj tokens which they receive from Storj Labs as a centralized payment operator, whereas ThreeFold Token are already rewarded upon the connection of capacity to our Grid. Moreover, storage capacity on Storj’s network can only be purchased with a subscription-based model. With ThreeFold, anyone can become a farmer and be rewarded income in the form of ThreeFold Tokens for expanding the Internet by contributing cloud capacity. ThreeFold Tokens incentivize an open and autonomous peer-to-peer system free from any type of intermediary. We’re enabling anyone to become an independent farmer, as we believe in empowering people and that no single entity should have the power to control systems. Based on our ThreeFold Blockchain, which will be released on Testnet 3.0 soon, a new discount as well as billing model will be introduced. The latter will allow users to authorize smart contracts to automatically deduct their wallets according to the capacity they use.

🔗Conclusion

In summary, we both share the same vision of a decentralized Internet. The biggest difference between Storj and ThreeFold is that Storj is focused on providing storage, whereas ThreeFold does not only provide storage but also compute and network capacity. While Storj seeks to be the storage layer for the decentralized Internet, ThreeFold provides the low-level primitives for a truly decentralized Internet: compute, storage and network.

While we’re the largest, most advanced peer-to-peer cloud infrastructure in the world and are expanding fast, some aspects of Storj’s storage network still function in a rather centralized manner, such as their payment model and Satellites. In addition to that, we’re providing the ideal infrastructure for edge workloads. The project could therefore benefit from moving on top of our fully decentralized, highly energy-efficient and autonomous infrastructure. Together, we could drive the decentralization of storage capacity all over the world. We believe in a world without boundaries, where people are able to share information, value and knowledge without limits nor intermediaries. To achieve this vision and to effect change at a large scale it takes collaboration.

Thanks for coming along and joining me on this journey through the decentralization and blockchain space. After four stops, we’re taking a break. If you’d like us to continue this journey, let us know and feel free to make suggestions for our next stops here!

Tim Berners-Lee created the web server and browser in 1990. Back then, the web was of a free, rather decentralized nature in which no single entity was to control the access to it. With the client-server architecture of the web, however, centralization came about. Nowadays, the web as well as the Internet in general are highly centralized. There are only a few companies acting as gatekeepers to large parts of today’s Internet. The Internet as we know it is continuously struggling with issues related to its centralized nature – from censorship and attacks on net neutrality to manipulation attempts from companies with monopolistic power. These issues are systematic and major players like Amazon or Facebook are benefitting from the situation as it is. This business model is also highly reliant on centralized hyperscale data centers that also come with a whole set of issues, from their vulnerability and limited scalability to their extremely high energy consumption and more.

People have become the product of a business model where companies offer their services in exchange for personal data – in order to capitalize on and exploit the data, basically squeezing people out for their data like oranges for juice. In times where data exploitation is the norm, it makes sense that data is often referred to as digital oil or gold. Moreover, algorithms of social media platforms increasingly lead to content provoking controversy and addictive engagement as this type of content tends to increase the time people spend on the platforms – with shocking impacts like The Wall Street Journals’ investigation “The Facebook Files” and The New York Times’ audio series Rabbit Hole show.

All of these issues have strengthened the push towards decentralization, mainly associated with the blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. However, many of the projects in the decentralized space still rely on centralized providers or structures to some degree. The second most-popular blockchain in the world, Ethereum, for example, has 60% of its nodes run on centralized cloud providers with 25% of them running on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Akash, a blockchain-based cloud computing platform, prevents unutilized capacity from centralized cloud computing services from going to waste. Leveraging this underutilized cloud capacity, however, also causes Akash to be highly dependent on centralized capacity. Dfinity’s platform for decentralized apps (dApps) is based on an ecosystem of independent data centers, which makes it rather centralized on an infrastructural level.

While the previously mentioned projects are all seeking to push decentralization, they all have one thing in common: they rely on centralized structures or providers at least to some degree and therefore, are not fully decentralized yet. So, what does true decentralization look like?

🔗How ThreeFold is Changing the Game

It is our mission to transform the Internet and Cloud and to create borderless opportunities for humanity. Therefore, we‘re truly committed to decentralizing the infrastructure behind the Internet to scale current and future digital workloads. At Threefold, we’re building an entirely new infrastructure from the ground up, starting with a Grid of new, neutral capacity and our operating system Zero-OS. Our ThreeFold Grid, based on open-source technology, enables an autonomous, secure, and energy-efficient infrastructure that allows for unlimited scalability while remaining affordable. Our Grid is the largest and most advanced peer-to-peer infrastructure in the world, already available in more than 50 countries and keeps expanding fast. With our energy-efficient full stack cloud infrastructure, uniting compute, storage, and network, we are much more comprehensive than other projects.

At ThreeFold, we believe in giving power to the people by developing technologies that empower individuals, enable social participation, and foster collaboration. We’re enabling even people without technical skills to join the network with plug-and-play 3Nodes offered through our certified hardware partners. The ThreeFold Grid is therefore more inclusive and allows any individual to participate. Our peer-to-peer nature removes the need of centralized servers and any type of intermediary, allowing applications and data to live closer to where they’re being utilized.

In addition to that, we believe that no one but you should own your data. Our technology empowers every user to be data sovereign, giving them full control over their own data by using a variety of innovative technologies, such as autonomous IT, blockchain, and peer-to-peer networking. This way, our technology is turning traditional IT upside down, enabling a data-sovereign Internet that gives users control and ownership of their data in an entirely secure, peer-to-peer IT ecosystem.

All in all, we provide the low-level primitives for a decentralized world, enabling any project to run on a fully decentralized, energy-efficient, and self-healing infrastructure. As we truly believe in collaboration to effect change at a large scale to fully decentralize the Internet and Cloud, our partnership ecosystem keeps growing. Most recently, we announced a strategic partnership with ownCloud, an alternative to public clouds with more than 200 million users worldwide, that aims to advance the decentralization of the consumer cloud.

So, we’d like to invite you to join forces with us to further push the decentralization of the Internet together – whether by becoming a 3Node or building on our ThreeFold Grid, by buying our ThreeFold Token (TFT), our currency for a decentralized world, or by testing our P2P Cloud. Let’s revolutionize the Internet together!

As we’ve recently been exploring decentralized projects to see where ThreeFold is in the space and where we stand out, we thought it’s a good time to also look into how we compare to traditional, centralized cloud providers.

The cloud market is a highly complex and competitive one, currently dominated by the market leaders Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure who account for more than half of the worldwide cloud revenues. This centralized nature of today’s cloud as well as its hyper-scale data center model are the cause for various issues, ranging from the monopolistic power of the few big market players and vendor lock-in effects to the incredibly high energy consumption of data centers and the limited scalability of the current model. Moreover, traditional data centers are more prone to outages and cyber attacks. We believe the ThreeFold Grid built by independent farmers around the globe and our ThreeFold P2P Cloud provide a solution to all of these issues.

While centralized cloud providers do offer some benefits, such as robust feature sets and huge customer service teams, there are a few key and important differences we think any customer would care about:

🔗Decentralization

This is the biggest and most obvious difference. Today, big tech holds a monopoly on the Internet and Cloud markets, meaning they somehow became the gatekeepers of what was originally intended to be a distributed, neutral Internet. When using AWS or Google Cloud, the data is stored in centralized data centers owned by private corporations. These data centers are susceptible to hacking and outages that can take down massive chunks of the Internet. In this system, people have become products, as they exchange their data for “free” online experiences. With ThreeFold, data is stored fully decentralized on the peer-to-peer ThreeFold Grid, where the physical hardware is owned by independent ThreeFold Farmers, and the data is owned by as well as only accessible to the person(s) who put it there. So, hackers can’t get in and due to the decentralized nature of the ThreeFold Grid, large-scale outages would be much less likely as well. Further, no organization or entity needs to be trusted and people are not treated as products – with ThreeFold’s infrastructure, the Internet is owned by the people.

🔗Limitless Scalability at the Edge

Our lightweight operating system Zero-OS makes it possible and even easy to install a node close to where the data is being consumed. There is no need for large servers, nor for heavy power supply installations. Together with our hardware partners, we’re offering 3Nodes with plug-and-play functionalities, allowing anyone to participate. This makes our model infinitely scalable at the edge. Hyper-scale data centers are not able to provide these levels of scalability and edge benefits. In order to scale their operations, centralized cloud providers need to build more data centers and take care of the related maintenance which takes time and costs billions. The traditional data center model also isn’t well suited for the edge, as this requires flexibility and close proximity to the respective data.

🔗Security

Centralized clouds are secure, but vulnerable. At ThreeFold, we pride ourselves on the levels of security we’re providing. The peer-to-peer nature of our technology means end-to-end transmission of data between parties (with no middlemen). This is a big one: Nothing is being stored or copied in central servers. Moreover, ThreeFold’s self-driving and self-healing IT removes the need for human intervention and eliminates the many back doors present in current architecture. So, security issues caused by human error and hacking possibilities both diminish greatly. In addition to that, there is the distributed storage algorithm which makes it nearly impossible for data to be lost. And much more. You can find more info on our wiki or in this forum post.

🔗Privacy

The fact that you own your data and nobody – not even us – can get access to it is key to making ThreeFold much more private than centralized cloud providers. On top of that, connections within our global overlay network, the Planetary Network, are peer-to-peer and end-to-end encrypted.

🔗Affordability

In the end, the centralized cloud is quite expensive, whereas our ThreeFold P2P Cloud is much more cost-effective. Learn more about this in our cloud pricing comparison here.

🔗Energy Efficiency

While electricity for storing and transporting data, administration, human resources, and even gas (to transport physical data-holding devices) lead to a very high energy consumption, our dispersed storage model and peer-to-peer infrastructure allow for significant energy savings. So, another big difference between ThreeFold and centralized cloud providers is that we’re up to 100x more energy-efficient.

All in all, the combination of our ThreeFold Grid and ThreeFold P2P Cloud provide significant advantages over centralized cloud providers with their hyper-scale data centers. From decentralization and infinite scalability at the edge to considerable energy savings and cost effectiveness as well as data privacy and security, our solution has much more value to offer, while solving critical issues related to centralized clouds. If you’d like to test our cloud solution yourself, take a look here. You can also start participating in our decentralized ecosystem by becoming a 3Node on our ThreeFold Grid.

An example to illustrate this challenge is the fact that up to 60% of Ethereum (the world’s second most-popular blockchain) nodes run on centralized cloud providers and 25% of them run on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

While the topic is being addressed, it isn’t being solved at scale. The good news is that ThreeFold can play a large part in solving it.

🔗Why should blockchains make this move?

The blockchain movement, as mentioned, is very heavily tied to the movement around decentralization. Cryptocurrencies represent the move away from centralized banks as the authorities and gatekeepers around money – just as ThreeFold and similar projects represent the move away from centralized clouds as the authorities and gatekeepers around data. The thing is, if blockchains are to rely on centralized cloud for hosting, they aren’t truly embodying decentralization.

Understandably, many blockchains have chosen centralized cloud providers in the past because there wasn’t much of an alternative. But now, the Decentralized Cloud (DeCloud) movement has changed all of that.

Here is how some specific audiences can benefit:

🔗For Node Operators

Any full node or validator node can run on ThreeFold’s Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Cloud, making that particular Blockchain even more community-owned, and more decentralized from an IT/cloud level. Any node operator can choose to run their nodes from any farmer location on the ThreeFold Grid, totally peer-to-peer between the chosen farmer and the node operator. The deployed workloads are computed in a P2P manner, no middle party involved.

🔗For dApp Developers

Web3/Blockchain developers can use ThreeFold’s P2P Cloud - offering both compute and storage - to build and power their applications in a truly decentralized cloud infrastructure, both blockchain-native and cloud-native. A strong advantage here is that developers have the ability to leverage Kubernetes, Docker, S3, and other cloud-native tools (all compatible / integrated with the ThreeFold) to power and optimize their data processing capabilities, as well as the overall functionality of their dApps. But the sweet spot is that it is deployed on a decentralized IT infrastructure, close to where users would be located.

🔗But why choose ThreeFold over other DeCloud projects?

There may be bigger names in the space, but ThreeFold’s technology and offerings are much more comprehensive than the rest. ThreeFold provides decentralized storage, compute, and network all under one roof (whereas most other projects offer only one of the three) and as mentioned, we have created an environment for developers which is highly-compatible to the developer tools and solutions they use today. Further, ThreeFold is building new infrastructure from the ground up (rather than relying on extra space in data centers) and the technology is truly peer-to-peer.

We already have a number of partners in the space who recognize these advantages.

Any blockchain protocol or dApp, whether operating DeFi, NFTs, DEXs, etc, will at some point need to leverage the power of the decentralized cloud and escape from centralized cloud providers. We’re seeing some of that adoption from a decentralized storage side with IPFS, which has been adopted by many dApps, and others – but as a developer, you will have to think twice, not just about where your/your users’ data is being stored, but also about how (and where) your app is computed and powered.

Participate now in our quest to fully decentralize the Internet by becoming a node on our grid or buying TFT.

Welcome to the third stop on our journey that aims to better understand the space we operate in and how ThreeFold stands out. After exploring Dfinity and Akash, I will now take a closer look at Filecoin to discover the similarities as well as differences of their project and ThreeFold. Let’s dive right in!

🔗Filecoin & how the project compares to ThreeFold

Filecoin is a global decentralized storage network and marketplace, founded in 2014 and based on the peer-to-peer protocol IPFS. The open-source project is one of the most popular providers of decentralized storage, with people storing files reliably on their mainnet. Like IPFS, Filecoin was founded by Protocol Labs.

IPFS and Filecoin are two separate but complementary open-source protocols. IPFS enables users to store, request, and transfer their data on Filecoin in a reliable way and directly from the IPFS network. As we deeply care about data security and privacy, I’d like to point out that IPFS does not provide a privacy layer and that, subsequently, “all traffic on IPFS is public” – meaning there is no guarantee that your data would be stored privately and confidentially. At ThreeFold, we’re determined to provide a holistically secure IT ecosystem with various secure and private solutions, such as our Quantum Safe File System (QSFS) and Planetary Network, to empower users by giving them control and ownership of their data.

Filecoin provides a persistent data storage system and has built an incentive structure on top of the IPFS protocol to reward the provisioning of storage for other people’s data. The project offers a peer-to-peer cloud storage network and marketplace, offering an open market and reducing entry barriers to becoming a storage provider.

We also offer a peer-to-peer network and cloud solution. Our ThreeFold Grid is the most advanced distributed peer-to-peer network there is, currently present in more than 50 countries. While Filecoin also has its own underlying blockchain, we’re the first full-stack blockchain-enabled cloud to be made open source. Moreover, we offer an energy-efficient full stack cloud infrastructure that unites compute, storage, and network, and integrates all leading industry-standard tools – allowing for a seamless migration of any digital workload, even from traditional cloud providers like Microsoft Azure or AWS.

With our cloud solution, developers are also enabled to deploy virtual machines or to discover the future of cloud computing with ZFlist, a game-changing Docker-compatible solution. As ZFlist is distributed across many mini virtual machines (VMs), it provides the ideal infrastructure for edge workloads on a highly secure level. On top of that, the data produced by these workloads can be stored in our Quantum Safe File System (QSFS) solution. Our QSFS is highly compatible with most storage tools (e.g. S3) and protocols (e.g. IPFS). In addition to that, developers using our tech are enabled to set the terms for storing their workloads based on their needs – they even have the opportunity to scale their applications to the edge with powerful compute and storage capabilities.

By contributing and lending storage capacity on Filecoin’s marketplace, providers receive rewards, executed by Filecoin’s blockchain. However, providers can only participate in Filecoin’s market if their nodes are “built specifically for Filecoin.” Actually, Filecoin nodes are IPFS nodes and their most advanced implementation is based on Lotus, the Filecoin Node Client. Our 3Nodes have easy plug-and-play functionalities, allowing even people without technical skills to participate by getting a 3Node from one of our certified hardware partners and downloading our stateless and lightweight operating system Zero-OS, the driving force behind our Grid. 3Nodes can even be plugged in at your home. Filecoin, however, doesn’t seem to offer any kind of certified hardware.

While we’ve built our own operating system from scratch, starting just with a Linux kernel, Filecoin doesn’t have its own OS. ThreeFold is not only more inclusive but also has a much higher scalability as anyone’s able to participate. In contrast, Filecoin even issues a warning in their documentation which states that in order to run a successful mining operation, one has to meet high hardware requirements and to be highly familiar with Filecoin. Thanks to our autonomous, self-healing technology, no maintenance is required. To ensure the security of our 3Nodes can’t be accessed physically once booted. Therefore, our ThreeFold Grid is much more inclusive, as the network capacity on it is provided by many people and organizations constituting what we like to call “People’s Internet.” Currently, we’re planning to extend our reach to enable even more people to join the ThreeFold Grid.

Filecoin’s native token FIL and the ThreeFold Token (TFT) are both utility tokens that fuel an open-source cloud. The earning model for FIL follows a simple logic for earning: the more storage a miner adds, the more FIL the respective miner will be rewarded with while also receiving FIL from users leasing their storage capacity. However, Filecoin miners must stake their FIL and can even lose their stake if their node does not perform, whereas our farming model doesn’t require staking, so farmers don’t risk losing their funds. In addition to that, our ThreeFold Tokens (TFT) can represent either a unit of compute, storage or network on the ThreeFold Grid and our farmers are rewarded for connecting one of these types of capacity to our Grid. Moreover, we’ll soon implement a new discount model, providing users with discounted capacity pricings based on the amount of ThreeFold Tokens stored in a user’s wallet.

In Filecoin’s model, mining means contributing storage capacity to be leased by users on the marketplace that are looking to store their data. Currently, Filecoin has two types of miners – storage miners, who are responsible for storing data, and retrieval miners, who are responsible for the fast retrieval of files. A retrieval miner’s “ability to close retrieval deals” are determined by the miner’s respective bandwidth and response time. ThreeFold’s farming is the concept of expanding the Internet with more network, compute, and storage capacity. Farmers are rewarded income in the form of TFTs for providing internet capacity. Moreover, anyone can become a farmer, as farmers are independent from ThreeFold. There’s no technical knowledge is required to connect to our global peer-to-peer Internet infrastructure and all it takes is network bandwidth and electricity, in addition to our 3Node – without the interference of any type of intermediary. Therefore, a ThreeFold Farmer is ThreeFold’s more sustainable equivalent of the miners of other cryptocurrencies, disrupting the centralized data center model.

🔗Conclusion

To conclude, the two projects share the same vision of bringing users’ data closer to their respective owners, establishing an open cloud market that is independent from the few big centralized cloud providers currently dominating the market. Like ThreeFold, Filecoin seeks to provide a network built as well as owned by the people, regardless of their location. Nevertheless, Filecoin is focused on storage and mainly based on the IPFS protocol, only providing an incentive layer on top. In contrast, ThreeFold provides all three major low-level components of the internet’s backbone: compute, storage and network. Additionally, ThreeFold’s P2P Cloud offers a holistic set of solutions – from our Planetary Network and our Quantum Safe File System to our eVDC and marketplace. All in all, the technology and infrastructure we’re providing is turning traditional IT upside down.

This is why ThreeFold is the ideal substrate for projects like Filecoin to run on, as we’re already IPFS-compatible and provide the low-level primitives for a fully decentralized cloud. So, we believe Filecoin and ThreeFold could team up to jointly drive the decentralization of cloud.

On their website, Filecoin states that they’re all about “coming together to collaborate and build something greater,” so they seem open to collaboration – which is very appealing to us, as we truly believe in collaboration to effect change at a large scale to fully decentralize the Internet and Cloud. Thanks for continuing this journey with me and don’t forget to stay tuned for the next stop: Storj!