Takeaways from the Filecoin Community at Consensus 2024

Last week, the Filecoin community convened in Austin against the backdrop of Consensus to hear from some of the ecosystem's leading voices and check out the latest projects building on the network. Filecoin Foundation team members took the stage at events across the conference to highlight what the ecosystem is working on and to underscore the innovation happening throughout the network.

The Filecoin network is critical infrastructure for enabling decentralized compute and DePIN

FF Founding Officer Megan Klimen joined Akash Accelerate and the R3al World DePIN House, where she spoke on how protocols like Filecoin are redefining conventional infrastructure frameworks and how Filecoin provides the infrastructure for a decentralized web that is completely distributed, with data stored on a network on computers around the world.

In today's digital age, data is the lifeblood of nearly every industry, and the demand for computing resources is skyrocketing. As AI continues to generate data and consume compute resources at an increasingly frenzied pace, Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN) like Filecoin will become an even more important layer of the Internet. Recently, IoTeX and WeatherXM completed a proof of concept with Basin, a high-throughput data layer powered by Filecoin for long-term data availability. This spotlights the growing demand for scalability, security, and resilience that DePINs offer over centralized solutions and Filecoin’s unique position to empower other DePIN networks.

The Filecoin network can broker computational resources, incentivize compute execution, distribute workloads across available storage providers, and prove the validity of the computation's results. By harnessing the power of global networks, we can foster a more open, resilient, and democratized computing ecosystem.

Filecoin and AI 

No tool is better positioned to support the data economy than Filecoin: the key to data provenance, authenticity, and verifiability in the high-frequency information age. FF Head of Community Porter Stowell demoed AI agents built for Filecoin at Theoriq’s AI Odyssey event. He highlighted four reasons why Filecoin will power the data economy.

• Transparency, Provenance, and Authentication: An open and robust record of AI data provenance and lineage, and assurance that data has not been tampered with, combats bias and promotes auditability and trust.
• Immutability and Proof of Storage: Filecoin’s Proof-of-Spacetime mechanism constantly verifies that data is stored correctly and securely, providing proof that it has not been tampered with, and helping those building AI models remain compliant and users feel confident in how AI models operate.
• Scale: The exponential growth of AI data requires a solution that can scale. Filecoin is built to accommodate storage in the petabyte and even exbibyte level. ChatGPT3.5 was trained on 570 GB of text datasets, and the data needs of AI grow exponentially as images, videos, and other media are introduced into training sets. Right now, Filecoin’s storage capacity is enough to train ChatGPT3.5 12 million times.
• Resilience: Decentralized storage technologies like Filecoin rely on a robust network of storage providers around the globe to store multiple copies of data, rather than large corporations susceptible to single points of failure.

These points combined with the proliferation and capabilities of AI agents will dramatically increase the usability and trust of data globally to unlock a new era of analytics and insights.

Storage is Just the Start

The Filecoin Booth at Consensus was a hub for attendees to learn more about the Filecoin network – from developers to potential storage clients and providers. The booth highlighted talks from FF and the ecosystem, providing valuable insights into the network’s capabilities and real-world applications of decentralized storage.

Nodle Co-Founder Garret Kinsman discussed the democratization of media and the importance of proving reality with the Click app, a camera app that uses Filecoin to decentralize data storage and improve reliability. In today's world, distinguishing between what’s real and what’s fake is crucial. The Click app offers a simple solution that anyone can use to take a picture and prove its authenticity by leveraging C2PA technology. This app ensures that an image is genuine by digitally signing it and uploading it to IPFS. Nodle recently announced the integration with Filecoin for archival records of data, ensuring that the information can be preserved for the long-term.

EQTY Lab Head of Research Ariana Fowler and Head of Finance Andrew Stanco spoke about bringing trust to AI with the help of decentralized technology. EQTY’s AI Integrity suite helps make AI models more safe and collaborative using attestations for each step of the AI lifecycle. ClimateGPT employs these tools, incorporating Web3 registrations like IPFS and attestations stored on Filecoin.

Lindsey Walker, product lead at Starling Lab, spoke about authenticity by design– emphasizing Starling Lab’s work to ensure data provenance is created and preserved through the entire lifecycle of a digital media asset. The Lab uses a Capture, Store, Verify framework with fellows and collaborators in journalism, law, history, and technology, leveraging IPFS and Filecoin to preserve records and assets.

FF Founding Officer Clara Tsao spotlighted Filecoin's value proposition in her presentation Charting the 2024 Filecoin Road Map, highlighting how the network serves as the foundational storage layer for a wide range of applications across Web2, Web3, and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and decentralized computing.

By focusing on three community growth areas, including more deals, more onchain activity, and more concrete examples of value-add over other storage alternatives, the network is primed to thrive in 2024 and beyond. Filecoin complements emerging compute protocols, where companies like Lighthouse and Akave are making it the go-to solution for secure and decentralized data storage and archiving. As new blockchain networks and layer-2s gain traction, Filecoin can be deeply embedded within their architectures, serving as a reliable and trustless storage layer. With the emergence of more AI tools, every AI marketplace could offer Filecoin as the default storage option for this data verifiability and traceability, creating a great opportunity for DePIN and compute networks to build on and build with Filecoin.

With a thriving ecosystem of developers, storage providers, and partners, the Filecoin network is positioned to drive widespread adoption and become the foremost decentralized storage infrastructure for the data economy. It’s an indispensable tool for all companies that rely on big data –– across Web2, Web2.5, and Web3.

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Interested in connecting with the community and learning more? Don’t miss the upcoming FIL Brussels during EthCC!