Having a decentralized identity, decentralized finance, and working in a transparent, open, secure space is the merit of the Web3 world. But where will you store your favorite photos, reels, and songs? Come over to Filecoin!
Data. The new world of the 21st century revolves and moves around data. Numbers, Information, Videos, Audio, Music, Notes, Messages, Documents, and whatnot!
Through the passage of time, science and technology became better and brought in advancements that eased our lives. In computer sciences, that was a RAM & ROM back in the 1990s.
Yet again, in almost 30 years, we’ve had many storage devices such as floppy disks, Compact Disks, Blue-ray disks, Cassette tapes for audio, and VCR tapes for video.
We’ve finally come to an era of information where crucial data gets carried in a small stick, the USB. And alternatively, store everything on the Web, the Cloud Storing services.
Data Storing is the main idea behind the Filecoin Foundation. Reserving information that may be crucial and viable to anyone – in the Web3 decentral space.
Thus, Filecoin started as a service to provide file/ data storage and retrieval. This was a massive move as it enabled developers to store the datasets within the DApps through the implementation of the protocol.
But, Filecoin wants to do more. They’ve now released their virtual machine known as the FVM.
Aim and Goal of the FVM
The Web3 space is booming and will inevitably become a way of life we may choose. Facing that reality, data scientists are aware of the dire need to store and preserve data in a safe/ secure platform – especially in Web3.
Filecoin takes it upon itself to engineer a solution to the prophecy of the globe going virtual. Thus, the release of the FVM: The Filecoin Virtual Machine.
The Filecoin foundation has one goal while delivering the FVM to the world of Web3.
The Goal: To enable the on-chain programmability of the Filecoin network.
Is it a big deal? Yes!
Why? Because it enables users and developers to customize apps through the FVM.
Furthermore, the FVM also vows many creative options for developers:
- Creating L2 networks
- Become a data layer that Web3 can rely on
- Provides long-term data collection, organization, and preservation.
- Verifies the preservation of data by providers
- Novel incentives for providers and users
The Meritous Use Cases Of The Filecoin Virtual Machine
The FVM opens up a world of possibilities for developers and web3 users in general on the blockchain to input, store, access, and use data.
In short, some of the prominent use cases can leverage the presence of a data layer:
- Storing and Lending
- Improvements in Data Storage
- Programmable storage tools
- Data Access Controls
- Data DAOs’
Storing and Lending
Filecoin can be a great platform for DeFi services such as Lending and Borrowing.
A Filecoin user can store their tokens through the Filecoin storage service that’s present for all. Storage providers can access accounts for their fill and offer interest upon those tokens in exchange.
Based on the borrower or the lender history present within the program, the tokens stored can also be used as collateral against a service or another token (stable coins).
Further, you can assess the lenders and service providers while borrowers receive reputation points.
Another great feature is the auto-paying loans. During the lending/borrowing process, a Smart Contract deploys on the blockchain network. The contract gets signed by the lender, the borrower, and the third party in the agreement.
This feature of having Smart Contracts for decentralized finance purposes is multisig,
Note: multisig is an automated smart contract already present within the FVM. Also, Smart Contracts in the FVM are known as Actors.
There are many built-in smart contracts within the FVM ecosystem to aid the developer. On top of that, most of them are similar to Ethereum, the most popular general-purpose blockchain.
So, these smart contracts not only aid the developer by providing opportunities but support the Filecoin economy too!
Improvements in Data Storage
The occurrence of data is a perpetual event, and there’s no deceleration to it in the modern world of Web3. Hurrah for FVM! Because it makes storing easier by the day!
With the FVM, one can implement a long-term plan of storing data and lays off the responsibility of preserving long-term data to smart contracts that deploy on the blockchain network.
Moreover, the FVM gives you a long-term storing benefit of security through filecoins verifiable storage proofs.
The FVM will also be responsible for copying the information required by anyone. It ensures that copying, usage, and storage occur effectively within the network.
Programmable Storage Tools
The FVM comes with tons of tools for developers to work with. There are tools to ensure a multi-protocol-based app/ token/ information gets easily stored within the VM ecosystem.
In addition, the storage tools ease the process of retrieving data across multiple networks and provide data bounties too!
The FVM also introduces two ways to monitor, monetize, and coordinate throughout the blockchain network:
One is by employing Data Access Controls, while the other is by having Data DAOs.
Data Access Controls
Filecoin adopts Medusa, an encryption network that can either individually or collectively record and monitor the access of the data present. The data availed by the encryption network might be confidential information that some validators are unaware of.
Thus, you can formulate a contract with Medusa encryption for a specific party. It could be one other person or a group of people.
Data DAOs
Data DAOs are important organizations that take up the responsibility of managing data storage. They are essential to govern data collection, curation, and preservation.
Consequently, they also govern data access within the filecoin blockchain network. The Data DAOs maintain the DAO treasury by monetizing and returning to the treasury pool. It also aids in funding long-term storage and preservation of collections, apart from continuous data growth.
Other Features Of The Filecoin Virtual Machine
The FVM reaches its epitome of data storage function while securing the data in the web3 universe.
Meanwhile, FVM reaches the peak of file storing, accessing, and monitoring data. It also looks forward to bringing the VM to a state where web-scale applications are possible.
Filecoin is known to have almost 250 petabytes of data on its servers. All these data are present on a web3 platform, i.e., in an open-source format.
Filecoin is home to information such as the collection of all NFTs, the million song dataset, flicker commons, internet archives, and more!
But these data are in an open-source space! Open data sets provide a great opportunity to compute networks and avoid data duplication and wasting computing resources.
So, the Filecoin protocol is bringing the FVM to Web3. In essence, everyone gets data storing options in an easy, smoother way apart from on-chain data computation.
With the Filecoin Virtual Machine, Web3 can have its data layer. The Filecoin protocol can aid as a data layer and anyone can access the information for use.
In addition, it would provide long-term storage and decrease the need for validators (or fully validating nodes) across the globe to monitor data continuously.
Moreover, the FVM supports many layer 2 computational networks. But mostly, was built to optimize for Juan’s Triangle. Such as verifiability through ZK Proofs and privacy through homomorphic encryption.
Further, it caters to specific use cases like image processing and machine learning pipelines.
Together with FVM, one can achieve functionality in massive-scale data science. Scientists can collaborate on shared data sets, publish, and earn rewards from valuable data. This accelerates the global data industry to produce, store, access, and store data.
Thus increasing Filecoins’ needs big time. And there’s nothing to worry about, Filecoin is getting prepared for the scalability of the data that may flow as massive waves.
Filecoin plans to achieve interchain operation through an IPFD consensus that can store child chains within the main blockchain and facilitate a smooth transfer of state between chains.
Finally, the FVM computes over data and interplanetary data combine to form a programmable, scalable application for web3 that can grow and thrive on FC.
Summary
Filecoin is a protocol that is widely implemented for storing files of all types and data on the decentral web. However, understanding the dire importance of data and data management systems in Web3, the filecoin foundation is now releasing the Filecoin Virtual Machine.
The FVM, Filecoin Virtual Machine, is a VM similar to the EVM. It also supports Solidity and has an Ethereum-compatible version known as FEVM.
The existence of the FVM has a lot of benefits and can exploit filecoin functionality for the better. In addition to more secure data access and management, the FVM can also be a data layer for every blockchain – which in turn would decrease the need for Validators or Nodes by large!
How does the Filecoin blockchain work? Stay tuned to find out! And since all blockchains need nodes and validators, know how they help sustain the blockchain tech!
