The 2 phase of incubation center was closed|Interviews with participant representatives

The second phase of the “Filecoin Storage Provider Incubation Center,” jointly operated by the Filecoin Foundation and the Venus team, was successfully closed in February 2022 as scheduled. During the three-month phase of the second phase, participating nodes from North America, Asia, and Europe also made more in-depth improvements and contributions to the storage capacity, technological maturity, and community participation of the Filecoin network.

The incubation center hopes to lower the barrier to entry through the project, making it easier for more dedicated small storage providers to join the network. Recently We have interviewed two representatives of Asian participants to present the real incubation center and Venus and share their real feelings and experiences with the community.

Q1: Please introduce your team and yourself.

Allyn: We are a team from China, currently composed of 3 core members, belonging to a small but fine team. My two partners are engineers who are deeply involved in technology, I am mainly responsible for products, and I have more than 10 years of product experience in the Internet industry.

I began to understand the BTC chain in 2012, but only in 2013 did I really understand the charm and trend of blockchain, and as early as 2017 began to pay attention to IPFS, Filecoin, although I have rubbed shoulders with Filecoin many times during the period, finally entered the Filecoin ecosystem in 2021 and became a distributed storage service provider of Filecoin.

Seantw: We are a team from Taiwan, engaged in blockchain-related business since 2018, independently developing software and providing on-chain core services, including automation tools, node operation, maintenance operations, etc.

Q2: What is your main business on Filecoin?

Allyn: At present, we are initially providing distributed storage services in the Filecoin network, and we will build more Dapps in Filecoin in the future and actively embrace FVM. The current data storage and distribution platform are already under development, and it is believed that it will be released soon.

Seantw: We currently provide hardware construction solutions for our customers, scheduling optimization management (source code optimization), and daily escrow services to help solve various Filecoin node operation and maintenance problems.

At the same time, on the one hand, the node is built based on Lotus. On the other hand, joining the Venus community, using and familiarizing with Venus, seeking to differentiate from Lotus and provide more customer service options.

Q3: When and how did you learn about Filecoin, Venus, and storage provider incubation centers?

Allyn: We learned about Filecoin earlier because of IPFS. As early as 2017, we learned about IPFS and continued to pay attention to it. We highly recognized the technology and Prospect of IPFS, that is, accessing files through the hash. We are convinced that IPFS would have a place in the future Internet, even if it were insufficient to subvert and update the current technology implementation.

We know Venus because, in the early days, the Chinese version of Venus documents was closer to the user needs of domestic users. Later, we found that the concept and vision of Venus were closer to the concept of the distributed storage pool. At that time, we had just entered Filecoin. It was very helpful for us to have such an opportunity to participate in the incubator project launched by Venus.

Seantw: I learned about Venus’s distributed storage pool planning about a year ago. To test the difference between Venus and Lotus, we also want to participate in developing the storage pool and the function of the reward pool mentioned earlier in the community, so we moved some resources and used Venus to build nodes.

Q4: How does the incubation center phase 2 feel?

Allyn: The participation experience during this time is very good, which depends on the support of the entire Venus team and Venus Master, such as Joss, Ops, Fatman, Jello Huang’ strong support, during the period when encountering problems to give answers and quickly assist in solving, although there are many problems in the process, the Venus team and the community of friends are patient in solving and helping, thank you again.

Seantw: The technical ability of the technicians is very professional, and there are effective channels for timely feedback to the engineering team when encountering problems. However, the community level does not seem particularly active at present, probably because the user group Venus is targeting is a bit special. After we understand it, we believe that Venus’s current audience is mainly storage service providers rather than Solo-type storage providers, so the audience’s participation will be relatively limited.

Q5: What do you think is the value of incubation centers for network-wide storage providers?

Allyn: For small storage providers to provide a better way to implement Filecoin, reduce not only the cost but also reduce the difficulty, the barrier to entry later is lower, the maintenance cost is lower, and these highly complex components are handed over to more professional people or teams so that the probability of risk is lower.

Seantw: The technical support of the core development team is no problem, but the service that the chain service can provide can be large or small. Suppose there is a clear business model that is explored and successfully proposed. In that case, more interested people will be invested, and the value of the running chain service can be improved more, just like many business incubation centers in Taiwan (there are also many in the mainland), providing a comprehensive service from technology to market.

Q6: Share some suggestions or experiences for more participants or applicants to jointly run a distributed storage pool and provide more and better support for the development of Filecoin and Venus.

Allyn: At present, Venus is mainly running in the Asian region. It is recommended that all domestic storage providers actively participate in and have the courage to discuss to improve the energetic atmosphere and heat of the community, and future development can be expected.

Seantw: Before joining an incubation center, do you need to figure out what you want? What services can the Incubation Centre provide? Joining Venus may not immediately achieve your business goals. Still, the technical support you get can meet the initial investors, of course, Venus’s future development route, but also as a consideration for your company’s future business development, Venus will be more flexible than Lotus in the choice of technology.

Q7: What do you think Venus’s current shortcomings are, which parts do you want us to prioritize next, and how do you suggest a solution?

Allyn: The documentation needs to be strengthened. Compared to Lotus, there are still many details to be improved in the documentation, and the community can continue to be active, such as through activities for community members.

Seantw: There is still room for improvement in the accuracy and timeliness of some key deployment documents; The future scalability of Venus makes the storage providers who join Venus understand their future development direction; Provide simple API / sample code so that technology companies interested in expanding Venus can develop their business model to increase the flexibility of Venus.

The Filecoin storage provider incubation center brings together the resources of the Filecoin Foundation and Venus team to provide financial and technical support for small and medium-sized storage providers. Through non-profit ecological projects, more small and medium-sized storage providers are encouraged to join, establish a more solid and flexible Internet infrastructure, and protect humanity’s most important information.