‘Miner Strike is Nonsense, Miners Are Making a Ton’ – Filecoin Founder

Juan Benet, the founder of decentralized, blockchain-based storage network Filecoin (FIL), denied recent reports that miners are protesting the platform.

“I was asked about a supposed ‘Miner Strike’ — This is nonsense,” tweeted Benet several hours ago. “There is no strike. Miners are proving their storage just fine. There’s been no power loss out of the ordinary in the network. Miners are following the protocol, and making a TON of money doing so.”

He argued that, if it were possible to “‘strike’ on a mindless blokchain,” it would mean not producing blocks or halting the storage proving process, and he showed data that suggests blocks being produced, top miner earning USD 352,000 in a day, and the top 50 earning USD 3.7m in a day. He claimed that the truth is much different than a strike, and that there are some miners who want to use the situation to get more money, trying “all kinds of manipulative tactics.”

As reported, the news started circulating through the Cryptoverse that a mere day after Filecoin’s mainnet launch on October 15, miners started a strike against network’s economic model which allegedly would force them to buy FIL tokens in order to even start mining, and after they already invested thousands of dollars in equipment.

Soon after, the Filecoin team decided to release 25% token rewards immediately, with no vesting, while the rest will be released within 180 days as originally stated, but Benet said that this was not in response to any miner protest, but something the team was discussing for weeks.

In another section of the thread, Benet gave a response to an earlier tweet by Tron (TRX)‘s founder Justin Sun, seemingly accusing Filecoin and Benet himself of fraud and/or exit scam, “dumping” FIL on exchanges without community consent, etc. And though Sun got his fair share of criticism for the post, Benet was also criticised for the way he responded, with entrepreneur and Cake co-founder Julian Hosp stating that Benet attacked the man (Sun), instead of providing arguments against his position.

Finally, Benet said that the team behind Filecoin, Protocol Lab, is working with a yet-to-be-announced partner to “provide small loans to miners from now until broader loan markets take off,” promising more information during the week.

While reactions to Benet’s long twitter thread ranged from supportive to accusatory, others are still questioning the effect the situation will have on Chinese miners in particular.

At pixel time (09:40 UTC), FIL, ranked 36th by market capitalization, trades at USD 32 and is up by 3% in a day and 32% in a week.

FIL price chart:

Filecoin has not responded to our request for comment.