Filecoin Looks to Mid-2019 for Blockchain Storage Network Launch

Filecoin is planning to officially launch its blockchain-based data storage network sometime near the middle of next year.

In a first-and-second quarter update posted on Tuesday, the Filecoin team unveiled an in-progress roadmap stretching into 2019 and beyond, with milestones including this week's release of demos for the go-filecoin protocol implementation, a plan to make the GitHub repositories for the implementation public, and, most notably, the launch of the Filecoin mainnet after an initial test phase.

On the plan to open up the repositories, the Filecoin team encouraged developers to take part in the process once it begins.

"This will be a major point of involvement for the community at large, and we strongly encourage the participation of developers interested in developing Filecoin or in building applications on it," the blog post stated.

The test network launch is planned for between the last quarter of this year and the first quarter of 2019, though an exact date has yet to be published. The mainnet launch is expected sometime in the second or third quarter of next year, according to the post.

That being said, the team noted that any dates may be subject to change and referred to the roadmap as an "optimistic timeline," explaining that while they "hate giving dates that may ... slip," the developers hated "keeping [the] community in the dark even more."

The post added:

"The pros: a much clearer and transparent planning approach, easier coordination across the community, and excitement as milestones get closer. The cons: timelines will certainly have to change – some things may come sooner or later than initially anticipated."

Filecoin raised more than $200 million from investors in one of 2017's more notable initial coin offerings (ICOs). The initiative is also backed by venture capital heavyweights like Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures, as previously reported.

Storage boxes image via Shutterstock