Unhappy miners threaten to fork Filecoin ahead of mainnet launch

MIX Group, a Filecoin mining company is threatening to fork the blockchain digital storage ahead of its mainnet launch.

MIX Group chairman, Weiping Han, said at a press conference that he has the support of many Filecoin miners and influential VCs such as Jun Du, co-founder of Huobi and founder of Node Capital for the planned fork.

However, it has not been determined if the group’s threat are real or just a way to get favorable mining terms for themselves.

Why unhappy miners resolve to fork threat

Several unhappy miners based in China are complaining that Filecoin’s mainnet launch has been delayed for too long. 

Previously, Filecoin’s mainnet launch was to hold in January but delayed because of coronavirus in China until February. The launch in February was again postponed with the company sighting development challenges and the impact of coronavirus.

Up till this moment, Filecoin’s mainnet launch is yet to hold which is one of the reasons miners have threatened a fork.

The group of unhappy miners also complain that Filecoin has not been responsive to community concerns and is centralized in its governance.

Apart from all these, Han listed other technical grievances unhappy miners are angry at like hardware restrictions, cryptography, and transactional bandwidth. The most important was Han branding Filecoin reward system to miners “harsh.”

Fork test begins Saturday – Han

Han said that the fork test would begin on Saturday as he aims for a mainnet launch in October.

However, the group chairman is not the first to propose a Filecoin fork. Previously, a Filecoin fork project entitled Filecoin Vision was released on Github earlier in China.

The project proposed reversing Protocol Labs’ research paper. This threat, however, is different from mustering the hash power and the expertise, to fork a technically challenging project.

Filecoin mainnet launch delay is another evidence the protocol requires careful design and development.