Summary of How Filecoin Actors Work

00:00:00 - 00:40:00

The YouTube video discusses how filecoin actors work and how they can be used to improve the reliability of blockchain shards. It also talks about how the Filecoin network has a new functionality--verifiable storage--embedded into the model. This could lead to interesting things, such as a data dial which manages the preservation of data inside of Filecoin sectors. Additionally, the video mentions how user actors always kick off the interaction with system actors, because the system actor needs to not know or care about them. Finally, the video mentions how refactoring the system actors could make it easier for user actors to call into them and get the right functionalities.

• 00:00:00 Filecoin actors are hard-coded programs that run on the Filecoin blockchain. They are written ahead of time by protocol engineers in order to make the protocol work. The question for us is what exactly does this path mean and how to state and a path through a tree of blocks interact. Final coin actors are how we organize state transitions in the Filecoin protocol.
• 00:05:00 The state pointer in Filecoin points to a global map of all actors in the system, including the code that executes on the actor. The pointer also includes a cid pointer to the actor code, a civ pointer to the actor state, and a file coin inside of the actor. The code pointer was recently verified to be real, and this makes it easier to understand the state of an actor.
• 00:10:00 In actor code, messages are sent to methods that alter the state of the system. Actor code is modeled after Ethereum smart contracts, which allows for a high level understanding of the system. There is a gas model and a verification signature system.
• 00:15:00 Filecoin employs actors in order to facilitate payments and other state transitions. Each actor has a specific role, and each actor's balance is managed separately. This allows for complex state machine interactions and avoids the need for users to program these interactions.
• 00:20:00 Filecoin uses actors to protect data and payments between storage providers and users. The actors are complicated, and if an actor is attacked, the system can fail.
• 00:25:00 The Filecoin actors are on the critical path for blockchain security, and the protocol has been improved but there are still improvements to be made. The actors will look different in the future, and there are new actors that will be added to help motivate actors.
• 00:30:00 The "file coin improvement proposal" requires a lot of community buy-in before any changes can be made to the protocol, which slows down development. Additionally, any changes to the actors system require a network upgrade, which can be time-consuming and costly.
• 00:35:00 The video discusses how Filecoin actors work, and how they are deployable at any point. It also talks about how the Filecoin network has a new functionality--verifiable storage--embedded into the model. This could lead to interesting things, such as a data dial which manages the preservation of data inside of Filecoin sectors. Additionally, the video mentions how user actors always kick off the interaction with system actors, because the system actor needs to not know or care about them. Finally, the video mentions how refactoring the system actors could make it easier for user actors to call into them and get the right functionalities.
• 00:40:00 The YouTube video discusses how filecoin actors work and how they can be used to improve the reliability of blockchain shards.