Gas can be thought of as the fuel of the Filecoin blockchain, just like fuel for cars. Before you embark on a road trip, you have to pay for the gasoline that will be consumed while driving the distance and powering the engine up and down hills. Similarly, message senders on Filecoin pay for the gas that ‘powers’ or ‘fuels’ the execution of messages on the Filecoin Blockchain.

LongHash Ventures has just announced the launch of the Filecoin Frontier Accelerator, a 12 week program to fuel the growth of major projects on the world’s largest decentralized storage network. Projects accepted to the Accelerator will receive an upfront grant of $20,000 USD and will also be considered for further funding opportunities of US $1 million investment or more.

We’re about a week into the Space Race 2 Slingshot competition, and it is off to an exciting start! So far, 370+ participants have made over 125,000 storage deals to store valuable data on the Filecoin network, competing for a potential 500,000 FIL prize pool. If you haven’t registered yet, it’s not too late! Sign up at slingshot.filecoin.io/register.

As a part of the Space Race events program, the Filecoin team are hosting weekly live AMA’s with the Filecoin community. On September 30th our team hosted our fifth AMA answering 20+ questions on Space Race 2, Filecoin mining and Mainnet Liftoff.

The following ‘syllabus’ of instructional videos and materials covers all aspects of the Filecoin network – from mining to storage to application development. This resource is designed for anyone interested in learning about the history and development of the network, as well as how to leverage the network at all levels: mining, building, and storing.

As a part of the Space Race events program, the Filecoin team are hosting weekly live AMA’s with the Filecoin community. On September 23rd our team hosted our fourth AMA answering 20+ questions on Space Race 2 and Filecoin mining.

Over the last few weeks, the Filecoin network has made immense progress. More than 500 miners have onboarded over 325 PiB of storage, 265 clients have made >40,000 storage and retrieval deals, and collectively we’ve thoroughly exercised and tested the network’s functionality, security, and resilience. Today, we’re excited to share an update on Filecoin’s launch phases & schedule as we enter Mainnet Ignition - our onboarding phase to bring miners, clients, custodians, applications, & ecosystem partners onto the network - and get ready for Filecoin Mainnet Liftoff the week of October 19-23.

It’s been an exciting week with the kickoff of Filecoin Slingshot, a two-part competition for storage clients and developers to deploy their products to the testnet. Phase One of this competition (“Onboard”), which started on September 23, 2020 and runs through October 14, aims to onboard 1PiB of real, useful data to the Filecoin network. Phase Two (“Scale”) aims to onboard 10PiB of data. Between the two phases, participants have a chance at getting a share of a prize pool of up to 500,000 FIL based on their network storage commitments!

As a part of the Space Race events program, on September 9th the Filecoin team hosted another live AMA with the Filecoin community, answering questions on Space Race, cryptoeconomics, Filecoin mining. Our engineering team also helped miners troubleshoot some common issues.

We are extremely excited to announce Space Race 2: Slingshot! While SR1 focused on miners, the Filecoin Network is a multi-dimensional network with many critical stakeholders and audiences. We’re ready and excited to bring in storage clients, app developers, tooling providers, and the many other community members contributing to the network!