Filecoin Background

Before we move on to introduce the products. Lets have some general ideas about Filecoin ecosystem that SPex is built on.

Storage providers

Storage providers, often called SPs, are responsible for storing files and data for clients on the network and providing cryptographic proofs to verify storage. The vast majority of providers on the Filecoin network are SPs. Storage providers are the heart of the Filecoin network. They earn FIL by storing data for clients and computing cryptographic proofs to verify storage across time, and they earn rewards for adding new blocks of data. The probability of earning transaction fees and block rewards is proportional to the amount of storage the storage provider contributes to the Filecoin network.

Vesting

Mining rewards undergo a vesting schedule to encourage long-term network alignment. For example, 75% of block rewards earned by miners vest linearly over 180 days, while 25% are made immediately available to improve miner cash flow and profitability. And the remaining FIL tokens are vested to Protocol Labs teams and Filecoin Foundation over 6 years and SAFT investors over 3 years, as shown in the vesting table here.

Collateral and slashing

To encourage good behavior from network participants, during block reward mining, storage providers must lock Filecoin tokens as pledge collateral for consensus security, storage reliability, and contract guarantees. Pledge collateral is determined by projected block rewards that a miner would earn. Collateral and all earned rewards by storage providers are subject to slashing throughout the lifetime of a sector if the storage does not pass a reliability check.

Owner

one owner can have multiple miners which displays as f0/t0 ID address

Beneficiary

A beneficiary address is a special purpose address which takes over the financial control from the owner address for a given quota and time but does not take over the owner addresses privileges. The separation of owner and beneficiary brings more flexibility in the Filecoin financing market. It’s the address you want to become a beneficiary for the given SP, including either of two parameters:

1. Quota is the amount of FIL this beneficiary is allowed to withdraw before it expires.

2. Expiration chain epoch at which the beneficiary address expires.

Economics barriers & opportunities

SPs needs to collateral their funds until the end of the sector. Moreover, SPs need to wait for 180 days to unlock linearly the 75% of their mining rewards. Therefore, there are opportunities for financial products, such as leasing beneficiaries with terms to unlock the rewards immediately with discount or as collateral to borrow, or turning into the bonds, and many other scenarios could happen and wait for discovering and developing.