Two Days before Filecoin Mainnet Launch
Pledge Collateral still the Major Headache for Miners
Filecoin's main net is estimated to launch at Block 148,888, currently expected on October 15. As of today(10/13/2020 EST), we are 2 days before the main net launch of Filecoin.
At the time of writing this article, the current Filecoin network(Space Race Network) is at the block height of 143,541, with a total storage power of 531.89 PiB, 403 active miners, and Total Pledge Collateral of 11,694,077 FIL.
While we cheer for the long-awaited mainnet launch and the fast growing storage power, high Pledge Collateral is still a major headache for miners.
01 Sectors, Pledge Collateral, and Block Reward
During an official AMA hosted by the Filecoin team on October 1st, it mentions that Filecoin plans to “transfer all sectors from Space Race 1 and 2 to main net. The pledge Collateral for these sectors and earned block rewards will also to transferred to reward dedicated miners who helped stress-test and improve the protocol and set them up for a Strong Mainnet Liftoff”.
As of yesterday, 6Block’s three main mining clustered have contributed more than 75 PiB of computing power to the network. After the mainnet is launched, 6Block’s storage power, pledge collateral, and the block rewards obtained will be (proportionately) migrated to the mainnet, competing with other miners to mine the first block after mainnet launch.
02 Miners be aware: Mining rewards will not meet the pledge collateral needs of new sectors.
Once the Filecoin mainnet goes live, miners must pay real FIL tokens as pledge collateral to ensure a normal storage power growth.
The Filecoin collateral has two parts: the Initial Pledge Collateral and Block Reward Collateral. The Block Reward Collateral refers to the 180-day linear vesting after the miners mine the block reward. The Initial Pledge Collateral refers to the FIL tokens the miner needs to commit and lock before sealing of one sector. It is designed to “adequately incentivize the fulfillment of a sectorʼs promised lifetime and provide sufficient consensus security.” [1] As shown below, the current Initial Pledge is around 0.25 FIL per sector.
In the early stage after the main net launch, there are several sources for miners to obtain FIL tokens for Pledge Collateral:
- Block rewards generated by existing computing power on the main network;
- Reward tokens generated by the space race;
- The unlocking of official and early investor shares.
However, since all the above FIL tokens have a linear release period of at least 6 months, in the first 6 months, the circulation amount of FIL will be very low. And Mining rewards will not meet the pledge collateral needs of new sectors, which becomes the number one headache for miners.
Using the Space Race network as a benchmark, the average storage power growth is 10 PiB/day. After the mainnet launch, if it continues to grow at this rate, the entire network will seal 327,680 sectors every day. If the Initial Pledge Collateral is still 0.25 FIL per sector, the daily demand for Pledge Collateral of the entire network will be 82,000 FIL.
However, the current daily mining rewards generated by the network are only 124,000 FIL under 180-day linear vesting. The mining output in the initial few months of the main network will not be able to meet the network’s daily Pledge collateral demand of 82,000 FILs.
Based on the current economic model, it seems certain that the early mining output of the main network will be less than the Pledge Collateral. Miners need to be prepared, otherwise, they may not be able to participate in the mining after investing heavily in the hardware.
Happy mining!
You can follow the 6Block Twitter Account here. And also don’t forget to check Filfox.info, the best Filecoin chain explorer. You can also follow Filfxo.info’s twitter account here.
[1] https://spec.filecoin.io/systems/filecoin_mining/miner_collaterals/
