Here's what you need to know about the new Filecoin mining plan
What you need to know about the new Filecoin mining scheme
Original author: fan xuxin
On November 27, a message of "mining" using GPU on Protocol Labs' official Slack was reported, which was interpreted by many "title parties" as "total annihilation" of CPU mining machines.
When I first saw this news, I didn't pay much attention to it, because I had heard about the official discussion on adding the GPU about half a month before. However, it should be emphasized here that the GPU is just an add-on, not a replacement for the CPU. As shown in the figure below, there is also an official explanation that only one GPU is needed for each machine, and more gpus will not bring actual revenue increase.
I did not expect that this news would be over-interpreted by some unidentified media, so I think it is necessary to explain the principle of Filecoin mining, to set the facts straight.
1. Filecoin storage type is directed storage
The first thing to note is that Filecoin is different from other decentralized storage projects, where users interact directly with the platform and do not know which miner is storing the data. However, Filecoin provides a platform similar to taobao. Users can choose miners for data storage, which means Filecoin adopts directional storage. As shown in the figure below, the user can choose the miner responsible for storing the files.
2. Structure and operation process of Filecoin
As shown in the figure above, the structure of Filecoin consists of three parts, namely storage market, Filecoin block chain and retrieval market. The corresponding types of miners include storage miners and retrieval miners, and there may be repair miners in the future. As the name implies, the storage miner is mainly responsible for storing files while maintaining Filecoin's block chain. Accordingly, the earnings of the storage miner also include storage fee, block reward and transaction fee. The main task of retrieving miners is to retrieve data. In the early stage of the main network of Filecoin, due to the limited storage capacity, the retrieval demand is not much, but with the increase of data volume, the retrieval revenue may be higher than the storage revenue. The specific income sources of various miners are shown in the figure below:
3. The consensus mechanism of Filecoin
Filecoin adopts EC (Expected Consensus) Consensus, which can be simply understood as a modification of PoS Consensus. In PoS Consensus, the rights and interests represented by mortgage tokens determine the probability of miners getting the right to pack, while in EC Consensus, such rights and interests become effective storage, that is, the amount of effective storage determines the probability of miners getting the right to pack.
What is efficient storage? In a nutshell, efficient storage is the storage data that is ultimately generated by running PoRep (Proof of Replication) and PoSt (Proof of Spacetime). PoRep and PoSt are features of Filecoin, and their main purpose is to prevent miners from cheating or launching some kind of malicious attack. A PoRep, also known as a copy proof, is a node's main function to prove to another node that it has stored a copy of the corresponding file. PoSt is also called space-time proof. Its main function is to prove that a node has stored corresponding files in a certain period of time. PoSt is performed in a certain period of time.
As shown in the figure below, according to the above analysis, effective storage is the core factor that determines miners' income in the Filecoin storage process. The proportion of effective storage in the whole network determines the probability of miners' obtaining the packaging right, thus determining their "mining" income. As the figure below shows, CPU performance is just one of many factors that determine effective storage.
4. GPU solution is really used forAlternative to CPU?
In fact, in the early days of Filecoin, most miners earned money not from storing orders, but from block rewards. As a result, most men will choose to fill their own disk space with garbage data as soon as possible, as much as possible in order to obtain more effective storage, the ideal situation would be to store all has its own storage space becomes effective as soon as possible, and when you have real store orders to produce, and delete the original garbage data, gradually in the corresponding order data.
The main reason why there are so many misinterpretations is that many people don't know much about the process of Filecoin mining, which is automatically equated with bitcoin mining. Bitcoin mining has gone through several stages of CPU, GPU, FPGA and ASIC, so many people think that after Filecoin adopts the GPU scheme, the previous CPU scheme can not be used, what's more, they think Filecoin will give ASIC mining machine.
What does the official GPU scheme mean? In fact, the main reason is that Protocol Labs has modified the PoSt algorithm, and the PoSt calculation must be completed within a block cycle when the packaging right is obtained. At this time, the performance of general CPU cannot meet this condition, so GPU is needed to accelerate the computation within a cycle. Unlike bitcoin mining, which evolved from CPU to GPU, the main reason why bitcoin evolved from CPU to GPU is that GPU runs faster than CPU, has better parallelism, and can perform more Hash calculations at the same time. However, Filecoin currently adopts GPU only because the computing speed of PoSt on GPU is faster than that of CPU, and PoSt only needs to be calculated once within a block cycle to obtain the packaging right, so there is no saying that GPU replaces CPU. Protocol Labs also states that adding more gpus does not increase revenue, but rather reduces costs if you can use one GPU on multiple machines.
5. To summarize
Generally speaking, Filecoin mining is not simply by improving CPU performance can get higher mining income. Filecoin has a set of very complex computing processes, and the GPU can't significantly improve other aspects of the process, and the cost of GPU is higher than that of CPU, so it is not cost-effective to adopt a pure GPU scheme. The current GPU is more of a complement to the existing scheme than a replacement. Filecoin block reward mainly depends on effective storage, so the early participation will have certain advantages, there are certain Matthew effect, but when Filecoin miners will own storage space all become valid after storage, the probability of the get the package and will rise as tech-oriented effective storage and continuously diluted, the performance also won't have higher request at this time. As a result, the demand for performance declines further after the storage space is saturated. In the long run, in the mining process of Filecoin, the demand for hardware performance optimization is not strong.
Fundamental Labs, the world's leading investment research organization in the blockchain field, is committed to investing in and incubating Fundamental blockchain innovation projects that can reshape societies and economies across the globe. Up to now, the total management scale has exceeded us $500 million, with over 60 investment projects, including Coinbase, kanan yunzhi, Conflux, Vechain and other star projects.
Silver block rhythm BlockBeats reminded, according to the circ and other five departments issued in August 2018 on the guard against in the name of the "virtual currency" "block chain" illegal fund-raising risk warning "file, please the public rationality block chain, don't blindly believe in reduction commitment, set up correct concept of money and investment philosophy, effectively raise the risk consciousness; To the illegal crime clue that discovers, can report to concerned branch actively reflect.
Welcome to join the official BlockBeats community:
Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats
Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App
Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia
Related Articles
