[roland-s]

Man, I typed a whole reply saying basically the same thing but you beat me to it! To expand a bit further, in this demo app, the "Save" button calls an API of a pinning service (Eternum), which pins the file on an external node so it will stay there as long as it's being paid for. Right now most pinning services require that you pay them to host your file, but the plan for IPFS is to use something like Filecoin to incentivize pinning. With Filecoin, instead of paying a single service to host your content, you would put out an order to the Filecoin network which says "anyone who hosts my file gets $x per GB per second", along with some settings (e.g. I want minimum 5x copies of my file on the network). Then, anyone hosting a Filecoin node will automatically fulfill requests by hosting content in exchange for a cryptocurrency payout. So, instead of a single hosting service, you are paying the entire network to automatically host your file in many places at once.

[bringtheaction]

Wait, I thought IPFS was P2P. What's this with the payment stuff?

[prophesi]

To compare it with torrenting: The only incentives to "seed" a torrent file is usually just good will, or to build a reputation to get into invite-only sites.

We lose the latter incentive with IPFS, and so Filecoin is replaced as the new incentive to give up storage space for the P2P network.

You can still put your content up on IPFS for free, it's just that only your IPFS node will be hosting the content, and thereby won't be truly decentralized. You're the only "seeder", so to speak.

[bringtheaction]

Thanks. I went to the Filecoin site to see more but it said the same has ended and to not fall for scam sites. How do I obtain filecoin? When will I be able to earn filecoin from hosting content for others?

Is hosting content the way that it is mined? Or is mining it something else?

[prophesi]

That, I'm not 100% sure about. Filecoin had their ICO, now it just needs to be implemented with IPFS.

Once implemented, you should be able to buy Filecoin from market exchanges. To earn it, Filecoin will use two "proofs-of-storage". One is "proof-of-replication" wherein your IPFS node proves to be replicating data, and "proof-of-spacetime" wherein your IPFS node proves to have stored said data for a certain amount of time.

You can read more about from their whitepaper: https://filecoin.io/filecoin.pdf

[alwillis]

Here’s the latest Filecoin update: https://filecoin.io/blog/update-2017-q4/