Recently, Filecoin officially released a blog, and will launch the Filecoin Virtual Machine (FVM), which will introduce the programmability of smart contracts to the Filecoin network. This is not the first time that Filecoin officials have talked about the Filecoin Virtual Machine (FVM), because Juan previously stated in Filecoin Orbit that more value and potential can be released by introducing the programmability of general smart contracts into the Filecoin network.
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Why use smart contracts in Filecoin
Smart contracts — or actors as we call them in Filecoin — can power smart and dynamic storage solutions that are difficult to create with web2 technologies. mainly include:
1. Decentralized calculations on data stored in Filecoin (run calculations where data is stored instead of moving it)
2. Dataset preservation for crowdfunding (for example, everyone can participate in storing socially important data such as crime statistics or environmental warming)
3. Smarter storage marketplaces (e.g., dynamically price storage by time of day, replication level, or availability within a region)
4. Multi-generational storage and permanent custody (e.g. storing data spanning multiple generations)
5. Data DAOs and tokenized datasets (e.g., modeling the value of data as tokens and forming DAOs to coordinate and broker computations performed on them)
6. Locally stored NFTs (i.e., collocating the contents of NFTs with the registries that track them)
7. Time-locked retrieval (e.g. unlock this dataset only when company public results are available)
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Layer 0 in Filecoin
Currently, the Filecoin platform centers on data storage and retrieval. We consider these two features to constitute Layer 0 of the protocol.
The system is concise, but not enough for developers looking to build more complex applications and solutions through user-programmable smart contracts.
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Compatible with Ethereum's Filecoin virtual machine
The latest technical discussions can be traced back to Filecoin Improvement Proposal 113 in June 2021. The Filecoin Virtual Machine (FVM) aims to be a polyglot VM, drawing inspiration from the concept of a hypervisor to build a multi-VM design. Many approaches were considered including adopting EVM as-is, LLVM-IR, eBPF, Secure EcmaScript, etc.
The core runtime of FVM is WASM. Filecoin Protocol Labs believes that WASM has a strong and promising future in the blockchain space. This choice makes it possible to write native actors in any programming language that compiles to WASM (although not all languages are suitable; the reference SDK is built with Rust). This allows us to engage with them where they are currently, and avoid language-specific learning curves, enabling web2 developers to get on board web3 more quickly.
Additionally, we are adding support for simulating external runtimes, the first being the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). The purpose of this choice is that the Filecoin developer community requires FVM to support EVM/Solidity with zero to minimal changes to the source code.
We have seen that the Ethereum community has built corresponding smart contracts over time, and most importantly, the smart contracts are audited and battle-tested, such as ERC-20 tokens, NFTs, DAOs, etc. Enabling these contracts to be reused as-is will start a Cambrian explosion of innovative, composable solutions in Filecoin. Furthermore, enabling Solidity developers to connect solutions across chains via bridges and oracles only increases their collective value and utility.
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Extending the Impact of the Filecoin Network
Through FVM, the Filecoin network gains computing power in addition to its existing storage capabilities. We envision two types of computation running on the Filecoin network: on-chain computation of state and off-chain computation of data. FVM is a key building block of both.
Some of the applications we are excited to see emerging on Filecoin include:
1. Data-centric Decentralized Autonomous Organization (Data DAO): By pooling resources from individuals and organizations, people will be able to incentivize the preservation, management, augmentation and processing of data sets for shared benefit and/or public good. Data DAO uses TOKEN and NFT as units to represent and compound value, and exchange these TOKEN to request services, grant access rights, etc.
2. Replication Clients: Based on user-defined policies, automated bots are incentivized to ensure a certain level of replication is maintained for data in the Filecoin network.
3. Alternative storage marketplaces: Based on auctions, bounties, or other tools, storage marketplaces may apply error-correcting codes to data to ensure its recoverability in the event of an outage; they may also enable automatic retrying of transactions to ensure data delivery .
4. Mortgage loans: Provide trustless and/or purpose-locked mortgage loans to suppliers, for example, loan funds can only be used to accept FIL+ transactions from specific customers.
5. Data computing: A huge problem in large-scale computing is the transmission of data, which increases the cost and delay of each operation. By pushing computing jobs to storage providers hosting data and rewarding coordinator nodes to formulate/plan the execution of the Filecoin network, execute tedious jobs in an efficient manner, store the results back to the Filecoin network, and enable further downstream on it calculate.
Additionally, FVM will for the first time enable Layer 2 (L2) solutions running on the Filecoin network to commit their state to Layer 1 (L1), leading to a more secure and traceable side and overlay network. Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), reputation systems, and payment channel networks are some of the L2 solutions we particularly want to run on Filecoin.
Filecoin Virtual Machine (FVM) Development Roadmap
The near-term development roadmap of the Filecoin Virtual Machine (FVM) includes four phases, as follows:
1. Phase 0: Canary of the non-programmable FVM launched on the mainnet, after the feature flag or fork of the reference implementation (Lotus), only running system participants. Compatible with existing chains, no protocol upgrade required. Delivery of this phase is planned for Q4 2021.
2. Phase 1: Protocol forks to introduce preparatory adjustments before user programming, including Gas mechanism and architecture adjustments. By the end of this phase, 100% of the network should be running FVM supported system participants. This phase is scheduled to go live in Q1 2022.
3. Phase 2: Introduce user programmability for local and foreign participants of the EVM. This phase is scheduled to go live in Q2 2022.
4. Phase 3: Redesign of system participants and deeper protocol adjustments for easier programming of system participants. This phase is scheduled to go live in Q2 2022.
interstellar observation
The goal of the Filecoin virtual machine FVM is to enable users to deploy their own smart contracts on the Filecoin blockchain. FVM brings general programmability and compatibility to Filecoin. We believe that Filecoin with FVM will continue to help the entire ecology.
If you are interested in helping with the development of FVM or want to learn more about the project, follow the filecoin-project/fvm-project GitHub repository and the #fvm channel on Filecoin Slack.
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Editor: Interstellar Vision IPFSNEWS Sue
Translation: Interstellar Vision IPFSNEWS Miss Xiang
The article is translated and organized by Interstellar Vision, which only represents the author's point of view and does not constitute any investment advice
