Since December 2021, Filecoin protocol designers have been pursuing a vision for a platform that offers basic, composable primitives for smart contracts to interact with sector storage.
The final essential step is to eliminate constraints on the data stored in sectors: to free CommD. This will pave the way for unrestricted innovation in data & storage contracts. However, motivation for this has waned, partly due to concerns about losing control over deal-making and transparency. This post outlines the costs and limitations of the built-in market actor’s privileged position, and shows how the same goals (or even stronger ones) can be achieved without constraining sector content or deal terms. This would provide a strong and simple foundation for many and varied storage & data applications.
Filecoin is a storage network. Success and impact mean abundant storage capacity and strong utilisation (these are the first two steps of Juan’s Filecoin Master Plan). Maintaining that impact requires a long-term economically sustainable protocol.
High storage utilisation needs simplicity, flexibility, and low costs. There are many different potential uses, with different needs and constraints: data DAOs, perpetual storage, automated replication/repair, novel markets, capacity deals, insurance, futures… no-one can know the full potential today. Protocol designers could attempt to build all desirable features into the network core, but that would be very expensive and extremely slow, being subject to prudent conservatism and network governance processes. Development will be much faster if the Filecoin protocol provides core storage and data commitment functionality, and then gets out of the way. (This doesn’t preclude convenient higher-level wrappers, but avoids mandating them where they aren’t fit for purpose).
Developers want a better platform on which to build storage-related applications, but the built-in storage market is inflexible, expensive, and hard to change. Its privileged control over sector data commitments stands in the way of innovation. Its friction limits onboarding. Filecoin either needs to build all features into the built-in market, or needs to move it out of the way. Removing the built-in market from critical network code will lead to a simpler and more efficient core and greater innovation potential sooner. This need not compromise any economic sustainability mechanism. Indeed, the greater flexibility and lower costs provide a foundation for far greater utility, and in turn far greater economic value.
The built-in storage market actor acts as the gatekeeper for what data an SP can seal into a sector. Sector content is constrained to match a set of deals from the built-in market, or be zero.
A deal is conceptually similar to a contract in the traditional sense: agreement between parties to a clear set of terms. The built-in market implements exactly one set of terms, which specifies:
Just as important is what it doesn’t specify: