Filecoin Gets Ready To Launch Its Mainnet, The Hype Returns

Filecoin gets ready to launch its mainnet as the developers announced the possible date of the launch, reigniting the hype around the project as we are reading more in our altcoin news today.

After the 36 of dormancy passed, Filecoin gets ready to launch its mainnet, getting increased attention around the Filecoin IOUs. After the enormous fundraiser over the ICO in 2017, Filecoin went quite on the plans but in July 2020, the developers announced that the mainnet will launch before August 21 which only increased the hype around the project.

#Filecoin is expected to launch a new network Calibration

on July 21st during the two-week calibration period, miners

can perform debugging and calibration in a real

competition environment and see how their results affect

the competition ranking. pic.twitter.com/2bPxD7y3xc

— Huobi Research (@Huobi_Research) July 21, 2020

Filecoin was one of the biggest ICOs of 2017 as the project raised more than $250 million during the 2017 mania which made the platform the sixth-biggest ICO ever. The project was backed by venture funds such as Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz. The sudden surge in Filecoin social media activity seems to be driven by the Chinese miners and speculation as the recent excitement about the coin seems to mostly drive by China despite the coin being a US-based platform. The CEO of Ethereum Classic Labs James Wo said:

 “In China, Filecoin is so hot while DeFi is not. To make a hotspot, you have to let people participate. Purchasing mining machines is much easier than purchasing tokens in China.”

As with Bitcoin mining, most of the Filecoin mining happens in China as 8 out of 10 biggest miners are based in China. Experts however suggest that this could be less to do with Filecoin and more to do with the increase in popularity in China. Andy Tian, the co-founder of 1475 which is a Filecoin mining hardware manufacturer said:

 “Crypto mining has always been a popular thing in China.”

Apart from the mining, the investors are betting huge on Filecoin Futures which are dependent on the mainnet launch. The coin’s current 24-hour futures trading volume is more than $50 million as bigger exchanges that are based in china such as Huobi and Okex, began offering Filecoin Futures trading which are two exchanges that fueled even bigger speculation around the project’s launch. Retail participation is driving excitement around the platform, unlike other proof-of-work blockchains where the miners are rewarded for using computer hardware and solve complicated cryptographic puzzles. The coin miners also get rewards for adding more storage space to the network:

 “Even though Filecoin’s mining process is much more complex technologically, the idea of mining with hard drives instead of specialized machines like a Bitcoin ASIC miner may actually be much easier for retail people to understand.”