This year’s blockchain industry’s hottest topic must be IPFS. Since its birth in 2015, Filecoin has been funded by leading institutions. It is known as the “next-generation Internet underlying protocol”, but it has skipped tickets several times in the development process. rife with controversy.
And this year, with the main network approaching and the industry’s expectation for new rich machines, IPFS has once again become the focus. Many mining companies have obtained financing, and many large companies are actively deploying distributed storage. Today, the application of ecological scenarios based on the IPFS technology protocol has begun to take shape, and Filecoin, the incentive layer of IPFS, is expected to open up the IPFS storage and retrieval market with a market value exceeding trillions.
On July 22, Odaily held the "Interstellar Rise - IPFS Technology and Distributed Storage Ecological Cloud Summit" (
On July 22, Odaily held the "Interstellar Rise - IPFS Technology and Distributed Storage Ecological Cloud Summit" (click to enterLook back), Du Jun, founding partner of Node Capital, Li Xiaocheng, CEO of ZT global, He Wei, co-founder and CEO of Lbank, Huang Lingbo, partner of Fenbushi Capital, Tyler, global business manager of HBTC, Cheng Youqing, CMO of Bgain Digital, and founder and CEO of Odaily Wang Mengdie participated in a roundtable discussion on the theme of "Betting on the Distributed Storage Track: Investment Opportunities and Layout Direction".
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Exchanges and capital boost Filecoin's ecological prosperity
Wang Mengdie: Distinguished guests, please briefly introduce yourself and your recent key businesses.
Tyler：Hi, I'm Tyler from Hobbit. Briefly introduce Hobbit as follows. We upgraded in April this year. The biggest focus is the upgrade of the platform currency and the upgrade of the ownership of the entire exchange. What do you mean? In the past, the platform currency of the exchange was basically a 20% repurchase model. After the upgrade, we will use all the income of the exchange and all the income of the B-end cloud exchange to repurchase the platform currency, and then 50% will be repurchased. The airdrop is given back to the holder of the platform currency, who is also our Hobbit captain. 30% is used for platform operations, and 20% is destroyed (that is, the deflation model is adopted). This is the first improvement.
The second is that we have the Hobbit captain mechanism. The logic of the Hobbit captain mechanism is also very simple, which is to let the currency holders truly become the masters of the platform and enjoy the dividends brought about by the development of the platform. This is the background of Hobbit .
Let’s talk about our current layout on Filecoin. In fact, it is relatively simple to do. We have done two businesses. The first one is to do cloud computing business, because ordinary users want to participate in Filecoin investment. There are relatively big challenges. In the early days, we could only buy some futures currencies, but now the futures currencies are speculated relatively high, and the price of mining machines is also very high. For them, the cost is not particularly flexible, and they have to manage and maintain it themselves, which is very costly. .
For the second product, we just launched a three-month futures rush-buying activity tonight. After all, there may be a month or two before the actual launch of digging coins. During this period, everyone may have some trading needs, so in order to After letting everyone participate, the risk is lower, and we have launched this snap-up activity.
Huang Lingbo: Hello everyone, I am Huang Lingbo, a partner of Fenbushi Capital. Founded in 2015, Fenbushi Capital is the first VC in China to invest in the blockchain. The founders include Shen Bo, the veteran of the investment industry, Xiao Feng from Wanxiang, and Vitalik, the founder of Ethereum.So far, Distributed has invested in more than 150 projects, of which 60%-70% are foreign projects. Overall, Distributed is committed to the long-term development and investment of blockchain.
I just asked about our layout in Filecoin. Distributed was actually a private equity investor in Filecoin very early on.Recently, we have also carried out some layout on the Filecoin mining farm and invested in the 1475 mining pool.Filecoin itself is the incentive layer of IPFS. As far as distributed storage is concerned, in addition to looking at Filecoin, we will also pay attention to other incentive layers, such as ARV, which has been relatively popular recently.
Du Jun:
Du Jun:Hello, everyone, I am Du Jun from Node Capital. Node Capital is an investment institution focusing on blockchain established in 2016. We have invested a lot now, maybe more than Fenbushi Capital, but our investment There may be a relatively large gap in the quality of projects, and about 50% of the projects we invested in may have been killed. But there are indeed some excellent targets, such as Jinse Finance, which we incubated in 2017, On-Chain Technology, which was incubated in 2018, and BiKi, which was incubated in 2019.
Regarding the layout of Filecoin, in fact, we are also an early investment institution of Filecoin and participated in its private placement on CoinList. As early as 2018, we have started to study Filecoin and IPFS,This year we set up a special fund of 20 million US dollars (if you have a more promising project about the IPFS ecology, you can find us, and we can make large-scale investments).
The second layout is that we have also established a computing power cloud platform, called Golden Computing Power Cloud, which is a SaaS platform. As long as you have traffic and users, you can set up a SaaS platform that sells cloud computing power. This is There is no cost at all, and 30,000 T of computing power has been sold through our platform.
He Wei:
He Wei:Lbank is actually a trading platform established in 2016. We had a very early layout for Filecoin. Around 2017, we should be regarded as the first batch of private equity investors.
As for the layout of Lbank in Filecoin, first of all, we opened the trading of Lbank futures, including three products of FIL6, FIL12, and FIL36. Secondly, we will launch Filecoin computing power cloud soon.
There is also a small question about Filecoin that I would like to discuss with you. As far as I know, many investors will wonder why the price of Filecoin futures on Lbank is much lower than that of other platforms. The price of other platforms is about 20 US dollars, while the price of FIL6 on Lbank At around $10, we felt amazing ourselves.
According to our own analysis and understanding, there are currently more than 2 million FIL futures on Lbank, which may be the largest number in the entire market. Filecoin, so in this case, I think that in terms of the current popularity of the entire Filecoin market, everyone gathers more in the spot of Filecoin. When the Filecoin mainnet was first launched, the spot volume was very small, and 70% of them passed In the future, only 30% of the spot produced by mining will be born from the launch of the mainnet, which may cause the futures price of FIL to be less crazy than we imagined, and everyone may be more cautious. This is also the futures price ratio on Lbank. The main reason why other platforms are lower.
Let’s talk about our activities in Filecoin. Lbank is now launching the Filecoin Carnival event. Recently, we have done a discount sale event for Filecoin. This discount is not fixed. We will add 10% every day. Today we offer 10% off. If you don’t sell it on the first day, the remaining part will be sold at 20% off on the second day, and then 30% off, 40% off, and 50% off will decrease in order until the tenth day is almost zero. All discounted prices are sold to users.
Li Xiaocheng:text
Cheng Youqing:secondary title
Why can Filecoin become one of the biggest hot spots in the currency circle this year?
Wang Mengdie: Filecoin is undoubtedly the most concerned target in the currency circle this year. Please comment on it from your own perspective. In your opinion, where is its greatest value and why has it become a hot topic this year?
Cheng Youqing:We think why the popularity is so high this time, from two aspects:
First, we feel that China’s P2P network developed earlier, and its popularity is relatively high. Like Xunlei, including the distributed technology derived from it, there have been some commercial implementations very early, so our Chinese people will have some decentralization. The understanding of decentralized storage will be deeper, and decentralized storage actually has its own practical significance.It breaks the status quo of digital islands in the traditional Internet. Compared with traditional centralized storage, it can better protect privacy and confirm data rights, which are actually nothing but solutions of traditional centralized storage solutions. question, and slowly with the arrival of 5G, we can see that the demand for the Internet of Things will further increase, so we feel that in the long run its sustainable development space is very large.
He Wei:
He Wei:First of all, I think that in terms of market enthusiasm, it is not that IPFS has become a market hotspot this year, but that we do not have a market hotspot this year that can carry the enthusiasm of the blockchain and currency circles. The explosion of the entire cryptocurrency market began in 2017. 2017 was the first year of ICO. In 2018, public chains and platform coins began to appear. In 2019, altcoins rose. However, in 2020, we do not see any particularly hot projects and The topic will detonate the enthusiasm of the entire cryptocurrency market. We can't find a point to form a consensus for everyone, so everyone will wait for IPFS to go online to gather everyone's consensus.
When it comes to consensus, I have an interesting thing to share with you. Once when I was having dinner, my friends and I discussed the existing consensus mechanism in the currency circle, discussing PoW, PoC, PoS... Discussing which consensus mechanism is better, someone I think PoW is fairer. Some people think that PoW has been occupied by miners. Some people think that PoS may be a better consensus mechanism. Some people think that PoC is more fair. Everyone has their own judgment.
However, there is a problem in the industry at present. Under the PoW consensus mechanism, a large number of bitcoins are not in the hands of users, and many bitcoins have been concentrated in the hands of vested interests.So everyone hopes for a new consensus, and hopes to participate in a new ecology to replicate the myth of Bitcoin. I think this is an important reason why IPFS has been repeatedly mentioned and become popular, because the market needs a new story.
Du Jun:
Du Jun:I very much agree with Mr. He's point of view, from ICO, public chain wave, IEO to the carnival of exchange platform currency last year. In the first half of 2020, the cryptocurrency market has not yet seen any "capable" hot spot - its story is big enough and its background is good enough until Filecoin appears. However, the main network of Filecoin has not yet been launched.Its true value has not yet been verified by the market and users. After verification, there may not be any stories to tell, so after the Filecoin mainnet is launched, there may be a lot of feathers.
Behind every wave of hot spots in the cryptocurrency market, there are respective "pushers".The "Shenzhen gang" has played a major role in hyping up Filecoin hotspots. I learned that the sales data of the IPFS mining machine market has exceeded 1 billion yuan (but I think the real data is much larger than this data), and the participating users exceed There are 300,000 people, but these IPFS mining machines may not be able to dig out Filecoin tokens. These people are the biggest contributors to the interests of the Filecoin mainnet when it is not online, so they have enough motivation to promote the hype of Filecoin.
Another point to mention is that the attitudes of domestic and foreign markets towards the decentralized market represented by Filecoin are polarized.The domestic market is showing a trend of capital and media collectively hyping Filecoin, but the perception of Filecoin in overseas markets is not very strong, and the number of people who pay attention to it is also very limited.
After the popularity of Filecoin, I personally felt quite frightened. Many participants in the Filecoin market tricked small retail investors into the market. Is this a responsible behavior? Just throw some cold water on it, I don't think it's much fun, even though we invested a lot of money. I personally think it’s okay to “fudge” some people who can afford to lose money into the market, but it’s still very irresponsible to fool some small retail investors into the market.So here I also want to remind small retail investors, don’t enter the market blindly, there are many participants who have made money, but these people make money from these small retail investors, and there is no need for participants to fool small retail investors into the market.
Li Xiaocheng:I very much agree with Mr. Du Jun’s views. In fact, during Hangzhou Blockchain Week, I also expressed my views at a meeting. I think so. Now everyone’s expectations for the decentralized storage market may be Like a bride with a red hijab, whether it is capital, manufacturers, exchanges, investors, or users, everyone has different expectations for the project, with highs and lows. I just took a look at it The price of FIL futures is reflected by the currency price to see that everyone's expectations are different. After the Filecoin mainnet is officially launched, all expectations will be announced to the world.
Regarding the layout of Filecoin, we still focus on learning and follow-up as a whole, because hot spots are very important to our exchange now, and we regard Filecoin more as a plate and hot spot. Since 2019, the traffic in the currency circle With fewer and fewer hotspots, the traffic in the currency circle has been showing a shrinking trend, especially after the "312" crash, so regardless of the overall situation after the Filecoin mainnet goes online, what we see is that the currency circle and The influx of traditional circle traffic is good for us from the market point of view.
Huang Lingbo:I agree with the views of the previous two guests. In fact, Filecoin is a bit overheated now. We think that the overheating of Filecoin now reflects more of its interest attributes, and has not yet reached the level of long-term value attributes. However, "heat dissipation" also requires a process, because In the past, every time a hot spot appeared, there was a process of "heat dissipation". We mainly looked at Filecoin and the distributed storage market from the perspective of long-term value, and distributed storage has always been an area that we pay close attention to.
Filecoin belongs to the incentive layer of distributed storage. We believe that it can better promote the development of the entire IPFS ecosystem, and use this community spirit and incentive mechanism to promote the development of the entire IPFS ecosystem.We believe that compared with other projects, Filecoin and IPFS ecology are more likely to take the lead in landing, and can combine with traditional markets to explore various landing applications, because distributed storage is originally just needed, the logic of this out-of-circle is more in line with the current investment logic of Distributed Capital - the logic of investment increment, including enterprise increment, personal increment or developer increment, Filecoin and IPFS can Getting out of the circle is also the logic for it to cooperate with traditional enterprises in the future.
Let's talk about the reasons why we think Filecoin can quickly get out of the circle:
Storage itself is a relatively common need, and we've seen Chrome and Netflix, the browsers you use, support IPFS.
The incentive mechanism of Filecoin itself, the official has also been adjusting the incentive mechanism. We found that the official is adjusting the incentive weight of effective storage, how to use incentives to maintain its stable operation, and use grants to encourage the community to develop more friendly clients and other tools. To achieve a more high-quality feasibility of the entire network, and they hope to expand the implementation of real business needs.
We feel that Filecoin miners are different from Bitcoin miners. Filecoin miners have strong industrial attributes, not only financial attributes, not just mining a coin, but they have many demand sides for data storage, which is The expansibility of their industrial attributes. This is also what we think the IPFS ecology is very different from other ecology. We think that the popularity of Filecoin in the near future reflects more interest attributes, but the window period of this interest attribute is not long, maybe only about half a year. After this interest attribute stabilizes, we are more optimistic about supporting Filecoin The emergence of industrial attributes of long-term value.
Tyler：I think the reason why the popularity of Filecoin is so high, the previous guests have also mentioned a lot, that is, some new hot spots will appear in the market every year, and "halving" may be one of the hot spots in the first half of this year, but in terms of scale It is said that everyone pays more attention to Filecoin, and the participation is also higher. From my personal experience, compared with other currency mining, Filecoin mining is more friendly to many retail investors. Indeed, driven by capital, it has naturally become a hot spot this year.
Next, I mainly want to compare the differences between Filecoin and Bitcoin. Bitcoin is different from other assets. It is relatively abstract and broad. What can be done with Bitcoin and what problems Bitcoin can solve are relatively broad.
Filecoin is more concrete, and it has been transferred to specific applications, especially in terms of decentralized storage services. IPFS restores the original appearance of the Internet, and every party participating in the Internet can become a part of it.
Whether it is Bitcoin in the past or Filecoin in the future, I think there must still be a large capital to control it, not that we ordinary people can control it with just a few hundred or thousands of dollars, but ordinary users can participate Among them, the threshold for participation has also been lowered.
Then let's talk about the practitioners in the Filecoin market. I divide these practitioners into three latitudes:
First of all, the upstream hardware manufacturers (probably mainly in Shenzhen), they provide the source of goods,
Secondly, some professional participants, such as capital parties, mining pools and mining machine manufacturers,
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Is the current futures price of FIL reasonable?
Wang Mengdie: The next question is for the bosses of the exchanges. Recently, several exchanges, including the bosses who participated in the roundtable today, have listed FIL futures. Do you think the current futures price is reasonable? What is the boss's judgment on FIL's economic model and future value expectations?
Tyler：As for the price, I think it is reasonable if it exists, because since someone has made a deal, it must be reasonable at this point in time. But in the long run, the price may be undervalued, or it may continue to rise, but in the short term, it is overvalued. As Boss Du Jun said, after the mainnet launch of Filecoin, we need to face a very real problem, that is, whether the current real usage scenarios are enough, that is to say, whether the decentralized storage service really surpasses the centralized service , Whether its technology is mature enough to support the decentralized service market is an unknown, and there are still many uncertainties.
As for the economic model of Filecoin, I still agree. First of all, the market demand is real. There are currently two roles: the retrieval party and the storage party. They are rewarded for providing services in the network.
But for now there is a small challenge:Filecoin's daily currency output is fixed, which may create a selling pressure on the market,If the price has been falling, the supply remains unchanged, and the funds entering the market are relatively small, the price will definitely form a death spiral. But this gives those who are willing to participate in it in the future a better opportunity to enter the market. On the whole, there are only two parties to consider regarding the price of Filecoin, that is, whether there will be enough new funds entering the market in the future to support the selling pressure of the secondary market price; the second is whether there will be enough applications in the future Fang came in and used it as a real storage service platform for payment. If this business model can be turned around, it will also absorb part of the selling pressure in the secondary market.
Li Xiaocheng:In fact, just like the data I just mentioned, I personally think that the price of FIL futures is in the range of 10-20U, which is quite reasonable. However, we have also observed that the price of some platforms is around 40-50U. It is not ruled out that there is some hype in it. Element. In fact, the data I have learned is that about 300,000 tokens will be released every day after the Filecoin mainnet goes live, including the tokens tested in the previous period. So from this point of view, the proportion of Filecoin tokens in the domestic Asia-Pacific region is not directly proportional to its market popularity. , about 30% to 40%. If we predict in this way, we can go back to the fundraising situation in 2018 based on the EOS public chain. Many of them were expected to be released in advance. From these dimensions, I think at this stage there are still some platforms whose FIL futures prices are inflated.
He Wei:
He Wei:Regarding whether the futures price is in line with everyone's expectations, I personally agree with Tyler's boss's point of view. The price of FIL futures is the price of subjective perception formed by everyone through continuous trading. Since this price is stable, it is a reasonable price. At present, what everyone is more concerned about is not whether the current price is reasonable, but how the currency price of Filecoin will go in the next period of time.
When Filecoin is approaching the mainnet launch, everyone’s expectations for purchasing computing power and mining machines have dropped, and you can buy spot goods at that time. At this time, the price has stabilized. This is not a good time to sell computing power or mining machines. Buying tends to Stablize,So in my personal judgment, before the mainnet goes live, its price will not change much for a long time in the future.
Let’s talk about how Filecoin’s economic model and future expectations will change after the mainnet goes live. Just now, boss Tyler compared Filecoin to Bitcoin. I personally think that the biggest difference between Filecoin and Bitcoin is: Satoshi Nakamoto will not come out. I often joke that if Satoshi Nakamoto really came out one day, Bitcoin must plummet, because Bitcoin is truly decentralized without Satoshi Nakamoto. Once a decentralized project is led by humans, it is inevitable that some mistakes may occur, which can be devastating to the value or price of the entire project. So as long as there is a centralized force, there may be problems in the project. There are teams behind Filecoin and IPFS. As long as there is a team, mistakes may be made, and there is a possibility of zeroing.
The second point is to look at the future value of Filecoin. We have been joking that except for Bitcoin, other currencies may return to zero. Among these mainstream currencies, which ones are most likely to stand out? Many people think that it is Ethereum. The core value of Ethereum lies in two points: DeFi and currency issuance. Everyone’s focus on DeFi is mainly on "asset management". Are people here to make loans and manage money? Maybe there are only two or three out of 10 people.
Looking at IPFS in turn, how many people use the Internet? How many people have downloaded the document? How many people listen to music? Maybe ten out of ten people, so from that perspective,secondary title
What industry opportunities and investment opportunities does Filecoin bring?
Wang Mengdie: We invite the bosses of the capital market to answer the following questions. What do you think about the market prospects of Filecoin and distributed storage? What industry opportunities and investment opportunities does it bring? In your expectation, what is the scale of Filecoin's ecology in the future? Who will be the main players?
Huang Lingbo:First of all, let’s talk about cloud storage. We can use FIL as a means of payment for cloud storage space. We have also done some research before. According to an industry report in 2019,Now the global cloud storage market space is about 50 billion US dollars,Moreover, the annual compound growth rate is 20%. However, how much share the distributed storage market can occupy in the cloud storage market?
Let's take a look at the market prospect and ecology of Filecoin itself. We mainly look at the ecology of Filecoin from the vertical and horizontal dimensions.
Horizontal refers to the layout of Filecoin in mining-related fields, because everyone is familiar with this field, so I just want to briefly say, what ideas can you add.
We think that the main participants of Filecoin now include mining machines, mine farms, mining pools, exchanges, and possibly asset managers in the future. This industry has gradually shifted from early technical barriers to capital barriers, thus becoming a capital-intensive industry. . And we think these participants also have their own characteristics:
As far as the mine is concerned, it is a relatively stable business in itself. After the main network is stable or the technical subject becomes stable, it will be a relatively price-competitive Red Sea market with fierce competition.
The second is the mining pool. We believe that the mining pool will be a traffic entrance and have diversion value for other businesses. As for who will be the mining pool, it may be the mining farm, or the exchange may do it in a cooperative manner.
As for the exchange, we think that the exchange itself is a place for realization in this ecology, so it is a very core and important link in the chain.
The last part is asset management. Asset management is a lagging service. It has not appeared much yet, but it is very likely that some top mining farms and some exchanges will get involved in this business in the future.
From a vertical perspective, we mainly look at storage services. The bottom layer of Filecoin must be the IPFS network itself, which we will not elaborate on. The second layer is Filecoin, which is the IPFS incentive layer. This is the second layer, and we have already made relevant layouts. The third layer is related to tools, which are some relatively friendly clients and storage markets. The fourth layer is the application of distributed storage itself, which may be combined with some traditional projects. Currently, distributed storage is generally used by some browsers or streaming media. Their storage requirements are relatively large, and they may compare Supports the field of distributed storage.
Cheng Youqing:What Mr. Huang said just now is quite comprehensive. In fact, from the current point of view, mining machines and cloud computing power are the main investment layout methods we think. Of course, if your funds are not very sufficient, you can also To buy cloud computing power, if you have a relatively large amount of funds, you can consider buying mining machines, so that you can also share the ecological dividends of early participants. Of course, this is the investment layout before the mainnet goes live. We feel that after the official launch of the Filecoin mainnet, the price may change with the violent fluctuations in the mining machine market, which may be an opportunity for traders in the secondary market. Of course, we will also participate in the ecological layout of Filecoin and IPFS at each node according to our own attributes.
Du Jun:
Du Jun:Everyone is talking about opportunities, so let me talk about a few areas where there are no opportunities. From a horizontal perspective, we can see that there is no difference between Filecoin and traditional digital currencies. As for choosing mining machines, mine farms, and mining pools, I personally think that mining machines are the least difficult at this stage. Although everyone is doing it, But I have seen dozens of reliable mining machine manufacturers, and there are several reliable Bitcoin companies, so I personally think that there is still a chance to do it in the field of mining machines, and the difficulty is relatively low. The mining pool difficulty is also relatively low, much better than Bitcoin.
The mine uses traditional IDC resources, which are more compliant, much stronger than the original Bitcoin, and more in line with the "new infrastructure" that has been mentioned more now.So I think there are actually quite a lot of investment opportunities in mining machines, mining farms and mining pools.
However, I think there are not many opportunities in the field of exchanges, because exchanges do not have "exclusiveness", all exchanges can launch FIL futures, and the final competition of exchanges is liquidity, depth and trading experience.So I think there are not many opportunities for trading, although many exchanges have entered this market today.
From another perspective, I have observed that there are still a few good opportunities, such as the commercialization of the IPFS ecosystem, but at present we have not figured out how to invest.
For mass investors, I think the easiest way is to quickly buy some cloud computing power or FIL currency. There is still a chance to fight, but the premise is to control your own risks.Because I also mentioned earlier that there is indeed a possibility of chicken feathers after the Filecoin mainnet goes live, and this possibility is greater than 70%.But life is about fighting, and there is still a 30% possibility, so let’s take the risk yourself, don’t go to defend your rights if you lose money, I think this is very low, if we make money, we should be happy ourselves.
