Filecoin creator denies strike allegations

Juan Benet, the creator of Blockchain-based data storage platform Filecoin, has called allegations that miners of its token have been on strike since Saturday “nonsense.”

According to a report by 8btc.com, five of the largest Filecoin miners turned off their machines to protest the project’s “unfair” economic model, which currently requires a significant amount of FIL tokens to begin mining. Crypto Twitter user Nico Deva was one of the first to claim that “a majority of miners” were on strike following allegations that they needed to buy Filecoin tokens (FIL) to take advantage of mining capacity.

“A napkin calculation shows you early on that your mining system that requires $20K hardware also forces you to buy more coins,” said Deva, referring to Filecoin’s 2017 initial coin offering, or ICO, which raised over $200 million in less than an hour. “In a country where ponzinomics is an art, the 2017 poster boy just [blew] it,” he continued.

Benet claimed on Twitter that this is not the case, however, stating that miners are simply producing blocks at a slower rate:

“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 and fee costs — fees cost real money now, and miners need to match growth rate to token flow.”

Filecoin’s founder showed data stating the 24-hour reward for the token’s top miner was $352,000, with the top 50 reportedly bringing in $3.7 million daily. He stated that the protocol was never intended to be a “get rich quick” scheme, and adding capacity to the network was “very hard right now.”

This story is developing and will be updated.