Filecoin’s Testnet Reaches 12 Pebibytes of Data Capacity

The capacity of blockchain-based file storage network Filecoin’s “incentivized testnet” has exceeded 12 pebibytes (roughly 12.9 petabytes) in less than two days since its launch, according to the project’s website.

The company launched its “Filecoin Space Race” on August 24 as a “collaborative competition” intended to stress test the network. Miners from around the world are being incentivized to participate as Filecoin (FIL) promised to hand out up to 4 million FIL tokens as rewards.

“Compete and collaborate at the same time. The top 50 miners in each region and top 100 globally are eligible for rewards. The greater the total storage power, the bigger the total prize pool,” Filecoin explained.

Currently, the capacity of Filecoin’s testnet hovers just over 12 pebibytes that are split between 280 miners, with an average size of 46 tebibytes each. That's the same amount of data as 12,500 films that are two hours long. Pebibytes and tebibytes are part of a binary system for measuring computing and storage capacity created by the International Electrotechnical Commission back in 1998.

As Decrypt reported, FIL tokens haven’t been launched yet, but IOU tokens that bet on the future price of FIL are currently worth around $16.5, according to crypto analytics platform CoinGecko. At this price point, Filecoin’s total prize pool for stress-testing would be around $66 million.

Filecoin’s “Space Race” is scheduled to run for three weeks and will conclude in mid-September.