Filecoin’s Fast Finality is now available! F3 is revolutionizing the Filecoin network.
Fast Finality (F3) in Filecoin is coming to the network, increasing network finality by 450x. Finality is the amount of time that must elapse before a block is considered fully immutable. With F3, finality is reduced from 7.5 hours (900 epochs) to minutes, improving the user experience and opening the door to building applications, exchanges, and interoperability on the network.
Unlike other blockchains, Filecoin is essentially a set of blockchains called tipsets, rather than a single blockchain. Since all valid blocks submitted in a given round are included in consensus, the network benefits from increased efficiency and throughput by merging all valid blocks in each round. This ensures incentivized block production, reduced centralization, and increased collaboration. Additionally, EC allows for fast convergence during forks because all blocks in tipsets share the same height and parent.
F3 represents one of the biggest improvements to the storage-retrieval lifecycle, where new on-chain storage contracts from other networks can now interact with Filecoin. F3 is a game-changing improvement for Filecoin builders by increasing network efficiency by reducing confirmation periods for Filecoin storage service events.
This upgrade creates a more responsive environment for builders to develop more applications that require low latency, L2 subnets such as InterPlanetary Consensus (IPC), smart contracts, chain bridges, and more on the network. In addition to speed, F3 and its implementation GossiPBFT provide an additional layer of resilience to the network.
GossiPBFT is a Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus protocol that provides the typical properties of consistency, validity, and termination. It is simple, leaderless, and designed with the Filecoin network in mind, making it resilient to more powerful attacks and adversaries.
