The Filecoin Space Race is a collaborative competition to stress-test the network, encourage participation all over the world, and help miners get ready to run the world's biggest decentralized network. The calibration period kicked off July 20. To date, 250+ miners have collectively onboarded 5TiB of storage. Major improvements have been made to miner configuration and network connectivity, storage and retrieval deal performance, and gas fees and message throughput -- yielding a stronger, more resilient network for all. The competition period will begin when 50% of miners have reached 75% deal success, tentatively the week of August 17.

A lot has changed since our last set of guidelines for Filecoin testnet storage miners was published! In this blog post, we offer an updated guide to Filecoin storage mining, and discuss some of the recently announced incentives and opportunities for members of the growing Filecoin community.

The team at Open Work Labs has curated a new decentralized application known as Filecoin Faucet. This app provides small amounts of testnet FIL to anyone who has a GitHub account to make testing and experimentation easy.  

We are excited to bring to you the

Filecoin Launchpad Accelerator

- a full-time, fully-remote program, built in collaboration with Tachyon. We're looking for startups building more open, interoperable, and programmable tools, infrastructure, and applications for the distributed web through

IPFS

and

Filecoin

. Applications will be closing at midnight on August 21st. The program runs for 12 weeks from September to December. See

here

for more details.

In collaboration with Gitcoin, we are excited to welcome builders everywhere to APOLLO, your mission control to engage with the builders and doers within the Filecoin community. APOLLO will run from August 19th - September 30th as a 6-week, invite-only program designed for entrepreneurs, builders, and makers interested in the Filecoin and Web3 ecosystem. Apply by August 18th.

Truffle has created a CLI that developers can use to start a Filecoin simulator. With one command, you get both a Filecoin (simulated Lotus) node and an IPFS server, automatically configured and ready to go. You can use this simulator in place of a real Lotus node or Powergate's localnet, for much faster development and unit tests. Check out the Github here.

We’re excited to announce ProtoSchool’s first-ever Filecoin tutorial, Verifying Storage on Filecoin. It offers a beginner-friendly, code-free look at Filecoin’s proof system, exploring how Proof of Replication (PoRep), Proof of Storage (PoSt), and zkSNARKs make it possible to trust peers in an incentivized, decentralized storage system. The new tutorial is the cornerstone of ProtoSchool’s Filecoin course, which also features related content on decentralized data structures and content addressing.

Protocol Labs is just one of many parties devoting their energy, talent, and resources to making Filecoin an important building block of the internet’s evolving infrastructure. We can't wait to see what the larger Filecoin community builds on the network. To help kick off your ideas and designs, our team is hosting a series of Master Classes for anyone interested in building on the filecoin network. Filecoin engineers will answer questions and walk you through code examples.  Join us and become a master building on the Filecoin network. Our first session will take place Monday August 17 at 1 PM PT and will cover how to use Filecoin/IPFS through Slate's developer API. Register here.

Earlier this summer, Filecoin launched our virtual community meetup program! Filecoin community meetups are a monthly opportunity to meet the people behind the many tools and projects being built in the Filecoin ecosystem. If you missed the June and July meetups, check out the recordings on the Filecoin Youtube Channel. Have a passion for Filecoin and enjoy hosting meetups? Apply here to be a host for a future meetup! 

Wondering where to start? Head over to the Filecoin project on GitHub and be sure to take a look at the community resources. Speaking of community, there are several ways to interact with other Filecoin enthusiasts. Ask questions in the Filecoin Slack, discuss issues or new ideas in the community forum, or send us your thoughts on Twitter by following @Filecoin. The Filecoin blog and our YouTube channel are good sources of information if you’re just getting started. If all else fails, send a reply to this email, and we’ll help you track down an answer.