Filecoin (FIL) is a decentralised storage network that creates an open marketplace for data storage and retrieval, enabling anyone with spare hard drive space to rent it out and earn FIL tokens in return. Built by Protocol Labs (the same team behind IPFS — the InterPlanetary File System), Filecoin launched in 2020 with the goal of making decentralised storage a practical alternative to centralised cloud providers like Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, and Microsoft Azure. Its mission: ensuring humanity’s data is stored in a resilient, censorship-resistant, and distributed way rather than controlled by a handful of corporations.
How Filecoin works: Storage providers pledge hard drive capacity to the network and earn FIL for storing client data reliably; Clients pay FIL to store data and retrieve it on demand; Proof of Storage mechanisms (Proof of Replication and Proof of Spacetime) cryptographically verify that providers are actually storing the data they claim to; and Retrieval miners earn FIL for quickly serving data to users. Filecoin is tightly integrated with IPFS and is a core component of the decentralised web (Web3) stack. Beyond pure storage, Filecoin has expanded into Filecoin Virtual Machine (FVM) — enabling smart contracts and DeFi on top of the storage layer — and is increasingly used for AI training dataset storage and preservation.
Example: An NFT project stores all its artwork on Filecoin instead of centralised servers. Even if the project’s website goes offline, the NFT images remain permanently accessible via their IPFS content addresses stored on Filecoin.
Learn more: Filecoin Docs — What is Filecoin?
