Filecoin Forks
Some popular projects, such as Bitcoin and Ether, encountered forks. Filecoin,as one of the hot projects of the year, cannot escape from forks too. Since Space Race started, many voices in the Filecoin community pointed out that some of the rules of the Filecoin team during the testnet and the space race has become centralized, which seems to forget why they started IPFS : to ensure data privacy and permanent storage. In addition, some miners are dissatisfied with the economic model released by the Filecoin team, as the existing model exploits the interests of them. Thus, they decided to use forks against the Filecoin economic model, trying to change the official decision and obtain more benefits.
On 18 September, two filecoin forks existed in China: Filecoin Vision and FilecoinCash. The former was announced by an anonymous team, and the latter was MIX Group. Both projects were born in response to the flaws of Filecoin. Before discussing the disadvantages of forks to Filecoin or the entire decentralized storage system, let’s first understand what forks are.
What is a fork
It is achieved by copying and modifying the software code. The two solutions have the same foundation and historical data. The original plan continues to exist, but a new plan wil be created. The new fork develops in different directions and release different content.
There are soft forks and hard forks.
Soft fork is a software upgrade method that supports backward compatibility. The upgraded node can still interact with the unupgraded node. The upgrade method of a soft fork is usually adding a new rule to the program, which does not contradict the old rule.
On the contrary, hard fork is a software upgrade method that does not support backward compatibility. The upgraded node can only interact with the upgraded node. At this time, the blockchain will produce two separate networks: one according to the old rules and another according to the new rules.
Filecoin Vision and FilecoinCash both claim to greatly increase the interests of miners, even better than the original Filecoin. However, Filecoin has established a good image in the community in the past three years. It is not easy for forks projects to surpass Filecoin. If the Filecoin team decides to listen to opinions, change the economic model and make a series of improvements, the miners will only return to Filecoin and make the forks projects more difficult to start or even terminate. All in all, if the entire ecosystem of Filecoin is not yet perfect, the risk is even greater to invest the copy.
Filecoin Space Race 2 has just begun. I believe there will be many major improvements in the future. Miners or other stakeholders can wait patiently for the team’s announcement before making decisions!
