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Recently, there have been plenty of rumors regarding a decentralized data storage project, Filecoin. The project launched its mainnet on October 15th, but even before that, it made the news due to its coin being listed on Gemini and Kraken. However, only one day after the mainnet launch, its 5 biggest miners went on strike, as they consider the token’s economic model to be unfair.
Now, the coin’s founder, Juan Benet, responded to such rumors, calling them ‘nonsense.’
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(7.0) I was asked about a supposed “Miner Strike” — This is nonsense. There is no strike. Miners are proving their storage just fine. There’s been no power loss out of the ordinary in the network. Miners are following the protocol, and making a TON of money doing so. pic.twitter.com/3U9MN0JGm9— Juan Benet (@juanbenet) October 19, 2020
Filecoin miners allegedly protesting against the project’s system
Recent reports have claimed that Filecoin’s five biggest miners are on strike due to the unfair economic model of the platform. The model in question needs them to lock up a certain amount of FIL coins as collateral. However, the miners argue that the amount needed to be locked away is too high.
In protest, they supposedly turned off thousands of mining machines, and are refusing to keep powering the project.
As for the strike allegations, they originally came from Twitter, with a user called Nico Deva being among the first to claim that miners are protesting against the Filecoin system.
@filecoin has transitioned from calibration net to mainnet at block 148,888 after a 200M ICO and 3 years of dev.
Within 24h of launch a majority of miners are already on strike and talk about a failed wedding and forks.
Why? (1/n)— Nico Deva (@NicoDeva_) October 18, 2020
With the system requiring too many coins as collateral, miners can either buy them in order to be able to mine, or wait for rewards that are coming too slow to matter.
Filecoin’s founder responds to the claims
However, Benet responded to the claims on Twitter by saying that this is simply not the case. He claims that miners are simply producing blocks at a slower rate, and that there is nothing more to it.
(7.3.) Fact: What is happening is that miners are growing slower than before launch.
This is in great part because the network is no longer subsidizing their pledge & fee costs — fees cost real money now, and miners need to match growth rate to token flow.— Juan Benet (@juanbenet) October 19, 2020
Not only that, but he also claims that the project itself recommended that miners slow down the growth rate in order to match token flows, or even pause completely, until they can afford a steady growth.
As evidence, he submitted data that claims that blocks are still being created. According to data, Filecoin’s top miner brought in $352,000 in only 24 hours. As for the top 50 miners, they allegedly earned $3.7 million in mining rewards.
(7.1.) Look at 24-hr reward column on miner table
Top miner: 11K FIL * $32 = $352,000 / day
Top 50 sum: 118K FIL * $32 = $3.7M / day
Disclaimer: at current mkt price, & haven’t checked this closely independently — relying on filfox counts https://t.co/gEgsttscwQ— Juan Benet (@juanbenet) October 19, 2020
Lastly, Benet said that there are undoubtedly miners who want to push the community into feeling guilty and giving them more money. However, he also said that this is to be expected, as there are always those who are attracted by money, and would do anything to get more of it.
(7.5.) Now, there are some miners that no doubt want to push things and try to get more, because, hey, why not? If they could guilt the community into giving them a lot more money, it may be worth a shot!— Juan Benet (@juanbenet) October 19, 2020