Detailed Explanation of the Filecoin Plus Proposal: Data Storage Verified by Notaries Will Gain 10x Computing Power

Filecoin Plus Proposal

Filecoin Plus is a significant proposal for an effective data-verified storage mechanism, under which data storage verified by notaries will receive 10x computational power. According to the proposal, the Filecoin Foundation will be nominated as the first notary to help establish reasonable operational guidelines that future notaries can follow. The detailed content of this proposal has already been uploaded to GitHub.

About the Filecoin Plus Proposal

1. Motivation

Filecoin Plus is essentially a program designed to increase the amount of useful data stored on the Filecoin network by allowing the network to trust certain clients who bring real demand. This solution provides leverage for storage clients, accelerates the development of a high-quality network, and directs additional rewards to where they are needed most.

2. Principles

Participants in Filecoin Plus (root key holders, notaries, and clients) should act in simple and transparent ways. Any decisions related to Filecoin Plus—from approving root key holders and notaries, to DataCap allocation, to governance changes—should be easily auditable by individuals within the network who have no special privileges, and should occur within a community-driven governance framework.

All participants in Filecoin Plus begin with limited trust and authority. Over time, they must earn additional trust through honest performance and transparent actions. Participants found violating governance principles or performing below expectations will be replaced.

3. Roles and Responsibilities

Key roles outlined in the proposal include root key holders, notaries, and storage clients.

• Root Key Holders: Root key holders are signers of an on-chain multi-signature wallet and have the authority to grant or revoke notary status. Any action requires a majority signature from the selected root key holders to execute. Their responsibility is to carry out decisions made through community governance on-chain and take timely action upon final decisions.
  The role of root key holders is not to make subjective judgments but to serve as executors of decisions made by the community on-chain. Their operational scope and functions are also strictly limited by design. Any behavior violating these authorizations will result in immediate removal of the responsible root key holder.

• Notaries: Notaries act as stewards of the Filecoin network, entrusted with allocating DataCap in accordance with these Principles.
  Their responsibilities include: allocating DataCap to clients to subsidize reliable and useful storage on the network, and verifying that clients receive DataCap commensurate with the level of trust warranted based on provided information.

• Clients: Clients are active participants in the network who are allocated DataCap for their use cases. Clients can use their DataCap to incentivize miners to provide features and services that meet their specific requirements. Notaries will review clients to ensure they receive DataCap proportional to their reputation and needs, and that they responsibly allocate such DataCap.
  Their responsibilities include: fairly distributing the DataCap received from notaries and deploying it responsibly in line with the Principles. They must follow operational guidelines, document decision-making processes, and respond to any audit requests regarding their allocation decisions.

4. Interaction Workflow

Notary Application (notaries must submit an application and answer qualification questions) → Scoring & Review (the governance community scores potential notaries based on predefined criteria; qualified candidates are approved to allocate DataCap) → Notaries collect requests and allocate DataCap (respond to client allocation requests, review clients, and allocate DataCap according to principles) → Clients issue deals and allocate DataCap (after receiving DataCap from a notary, clients select suitable miner nodes for storage) → Miners accept and store (when miners accept "verified" data storage deals from clients, upon completing the deal they receive 10x the normal baseline power) → Reapplication (when clients need more DataCap, they may reapply to notaries for additional allocations)

After the implementation of the Filecoin Plus proposal, miners and ecosystem participants will first run a trial phase, followed by a full official launch when conditions are mature.

On Storing Real Data

There are actually two types of benefits from participating in IPFS:

The first and most direct benefit is mining—receiving block rewards during the early stages, and later earning FIL rewards by storing real data and providing retrieval services. The simplest way to achieve this return is by purchasing computing power or mining hardware.

The second is building on the ecosystem side, including developing various applications. This requires substantial upfront investment and delivers returns more slowly. However, as the ecosystem expands, many decentralized applications—including game platforms—will be developed at scale. It is foreseeable that businesses focused on ecosystem development will continue to emerge, and even high-tech dark horses may appear—this is an inevitable outcome driven by massive market demand once the entire IPFS industry matures.

• Storing real data on the Filecoin network. Seeing products or applications live on the Filecoin network in real time.

• Transferring real data onto the Filecoin network and ensuring it is discoverable, retrievable, and usable—not just loading large volumes of data onto Filecoin, but also ensuring applications and other systems can find, retrieve, and use the data.

Through its data verification design, Filecoin Plus encourages miners to store useful data. The more effective the data miners store, the greater their rewards and the higher their trust value.