Introducing Filecoin Discover

We generate over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day. That data includes 294 billion emails, 500 million tweets, and 64 billion WhatsApp messages. But it’s also climate science reports, disease tracking maps, connected car coordinates and so much more. The Filecoin team considers these troves of information to be “valuable datasets.” We also believe this data will serve as the backbone of future research and discovery – data that we can’t afford to lose if we want to build a better tomorrow.

The Filecoin team is dedicated to storing and preserving these valuable datasets. We want researchers to work on solutions to climate change to be able to scour petabytes of data collected from cities around the world. We want scientists to develop vaccines for global illnesses to have at-their-fingertips access to each other’s datasets and studies. And we want automotive engineers to have access to all publicly available self-driving reports. Over the next year the Filecoin team will be sponsoring the storage of petabytes worth of open-source data to democratize access to these important datasets.

Decentralizing these massive troves of data is the best way to do that is to ensure their proper storage and preservation. No single hard drive can manage this much data alone. And relying on huge data centers controlled by giant tech platforms increases the risk of loss or damage.

Today, we are pleased to launch Filecoin Discover – a project to help seed Filecoin as the home for humanity’s most important datasets and make it accessible to others, to grow our knowledge base and forge new ideas.

The Filecoin Discover project incentivizes early miners of all sizes to store valuable data and in exchange earn additional Filecoin. For our launch, we’ve pulled together an initial set of open-source data - but over the coming months we’ll be continually adding more projects and datasets to our catalog.

How to Mine With Filecoin Discover

As Manoush Zomorodi, former host of the WNYC podcast Note to Self, says, “Blockchain requires a collective spirit. Think lots of people and computers working together.” The more nodes mining and storing data on the Filecoin network, the stronger it becomes. And so, Discover is our way to encourage more miners to join the network at this early stage. We built the Discover project as a way to quickly expand the Filecoin network.

The Filecoin Discover store is a catalog of petabytes of public data (and growing!), spanning literature, science, art, and history. Miners wishing to participate in the Filecoin network can visit the site, choose which datasets they want to store, and receive that data on a drive at cost. Please review the Lotus FAQs for mining rigs before placing an order! In exchange for storing this verified data, miners will earn additional Filecoin on top of the normal block rewards for storing data.

Datasets include:

Wait, it’s That Easy? What Else do I Need to Know?

Given the volume of the data in each contract and the scale of data we aim to store in total, the most cost-effective way to share this data with miners is on physical hard drives. Our intent is to bootstrap this initiative in a financially sustainable way - therefore we’ve priced these materials at cost (including adding discounts for bulk orders where we can optimize our shipping methods). Miners that choose to participate in this program, will receive a package that includes a hard drive preloaded with verified data, as well as instructions for setup and maintenance. We have limited supplies for these datasets, and will attempt to source and distribute to the best of our ability.

For more details, please see the FAQ section on the Filecoin Discover store. In addition, the Filecoin team will also host a Slack channel (#fil-discover-support) in which miners can ask questions prior to participating in this program.

What happens next?

As of now, the Filecoin Discover store is accepting pre-orders for the materials we have on hand. Shipments are scheduled to start at the end of May to early June, but are subject to change - for more details please join our Slack channel! Full refunds will be available for any order if the request is received before the order has shipped.

Post mainnet launch, we’ll release a web app for users to view all of the data stored through this project along with the details for requesting assets from miners.

We’re actively sourcing more data sources as part of this project. If you have suggestions for data sets to add to the network, let us know by filling out this form and nominating organizations you’d like us to help sponsor.

Thank you for being a part of our mission!