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Overview

Notaries are selected to act as fiduciaries for the Filecoin network. Notaries are entrusted to uphold the Principles of the program - responsibly allocating DataCap to help foster legitimate use cases on Filecoin. This document aims to provide additional specificity to the role/responsibility of Notaries, define the application and selection process, and the process for making changes.

v5 Notary Allocator Election Cycle

Launching November 2023

Following the proposal made here for a new Notary Election Cycle focusing on "Meta-Pathways", we will solicit applications from the Filecoin community to become trusted fiduciaries in the Filecoin Plus program. The overall process will be similar to previous Notary Election cycles, with interested parties submiting details to the Governance team for review. We will update this ReadMe section with relevant deatils, checklists, and links to supporting documentation.

Organizations designing a pathway to DataCap will need to submit ONE application PER pathway.

Checklist:

  • Submit GitHub issue Application: LINK
  • Use Google Doc for drafting and async edits of full application: LINK
  • Submit all responses to Airtable Form: LINK
  • Monitor GitHub issue for feedback from Fil+ Governance Team

Broad Timeline:

  • Q4 '23: Solicit applications
  • Q4 '23: Initial review and feedback from Fil+ Governance Team
  • Q1 '24: Public scoring and selections
  • Q1 '24: Ratification and onboarding new notary allocators
  • Q2 '24: Transition to rolling applications
  • Q2 '24: Ongoing compliance checks of pathways, requests for more DataCap from Root Key Holders

Key Dates:

  • November 11 - January 20: Applications Open
  • January 20, 2024: Deadline for v5 Allocator Application

Links:

Updates to follow

Current active notaries

Organization Point of Contact Name Election Round Status Location Notary Application Link
Meibuy Cloud 4th Active Africa #681
12Ships Foundation Irene Young 2nd, 3rd, 4th Active Asia minus GCR #677
Antalpha Digital Pte. Ltd. Xin Jin 4th Active Asia minus GCR #683
Bewell Technology Limited Aaron Hu 4th Active Asia minus GCR #679
BigData Exchange CB Tan 4th Active Asia minus GCR #703
Bit Engine Pte Ltd Reeta 4th Active Asia minus GCR #692
Bitrise capital Kivi 3rd, 4th Active Asia minus GCR #716
BlockchainWorld Sounghwan Park 3rd, 4th Active Asia minus GCR #648
Blockmaker Rvo Nagaoka 3rd, 4th Active Asia minus GCR #695
CoinSummer Labs Max 4th Active Asia minus GCR #669
Define Platform Alex Kim 3rd, 4th Active Asia minus GCR #657
EMO capital Bruce 4th Active Asia minus GCR #707
FBG Capital Gary Gao 3rd, 4th Active Asia minus GCR #722
Force Community Tim Guo (柏礼) 3rd, 4th Active Asia minus GCR #668
Greaterheat Pte.Ltd. Yang Haibo 4th Active Asia minus GCR #659
IPFS Japan Consortium Masaaki Nawatani 2nd, 3rd, 4th Active Asia minus GCR #696
ND LABS Leo 3rd, 4th Active Asia minus GCR #697
Pluskit Wu Xiao 3rd, 4th Active Asia minus GCR #694
Protocan AnthonySmith 4th Active Asia minus GCR #682
Starboard Sylvan Zhang 4th Active Asia minus GCR #745
YuanHe Tech ( Firefly ) embedsky 4th Active Asia minus GCR #788
Direction Technology Co., LTD George Betts 4th Active Europe #717
Fungi Project Andress Sarria 4th Active Europe #600
N/A Bobby Choi 4th Active Europe #769
METAVERSE DATA MINING PTE.LTD. Oliver Lu 4th Active Asia minus GCR #709
N/A Carohere/Carolina 4th Active Europe #676
RawTech Ventures Dalen Johnson 4th Active Europe #661
Speedium / DCENT BV. Wijnand Schouten 4th Active Europe #678
Twinquasar Julien NOEL 2nd, 3rd, 4th Active Europe #739
ZhongYiGuoLian Patapon 4th Active Europe #638
1475 Simon 2nd, 3rd, 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #770
BigFrog Technology Eunice 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #690
BingHe Web3.0 Lab MRJAVAZHAO 2nd, 3rd, 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #699
ByteBase Eric 3rd, 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #689
CodoonHealth Holiday 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #752
DeFIL Eden 3rd, 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #720
Ewesion Peter Shao 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #740
Fenbushi Capital Zhehao Chen 3rd, 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #647
FileDrive Labs Laura Ren 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #684
FILWallet Peng Kai 3rd, 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #644
FogMeta Leo Zhang 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #772
Genesis Anne 3rd, 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #732
Guazi Dynamic @Fatman13 3rd, 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #670
Interstellar Storage(ShenZhen) Interstellar Storage(ShenZhen) 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #768
IPFS Force Steven Li 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #667
IPFS.CN Nic 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #734
IPFSMain Neo Ge 2nd, 3rd, 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #672
mkccstorage Hunter 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #665
MS Cloud(formerly MatrixStorage) Tracy 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #719
N/A Cabrina Huang 3rd, 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #763
New Web Group Yuan 3rd, 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #713
NewToken - Hangzhou Niutong Information Technology Co., Ltd. jomozz 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #674
NonEntropy Tech. Junyao Ren 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #700
Pangod Casey 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #775
POW POWER Jackson 3rd, 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #765
STCould LISA 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #764
StorSwift coder-lb 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #663
SXX Future Data Darleen 3rd, 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #680
TAKI Chain Smart Dong 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #736
Tianji Studio Bailey-li 3rd, 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #687
Tokencan Joy Lee 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #746
Venus Team Joss Hua 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #645
ZC LABS zhongchuang 4th Active Greater China Region (GCR) #643
Acrontech Inc. Gendin Han 4th Active North America #743
Aifabot Benny 4th Active North America #698
Banyan Claudia Richoux 3rd, 4th Active North America #742
Filecoin Foundation Danny O'Brien 2nd, 3rd, 4th Active North America #750
FilSwan Charles Cao 2nd, 3rd, 4th Active North America #778
Ghost Byte Inc Trevor K Smith 4th Active North America #760
Ipollo Mona 3rd, 4th Active North America #721
Kernelogic (sole corporation / self-employed) Fei Yan 3rd, 4th Active North America #658
Koda Inc. Emma Russell 4th Active North America #754
LendMi team Rongze92 3rd, 4th Active North America #730
N/A Nick Merrick 4th Active North America #779
Nebula Block Data Boqian Wang 4th Active North America #777
New Huo Pool Bella Huang 4th Active North America #708
NFTSTAR Vivian 3rd, 4th Active North America #693
ORIGIN Storage llifezou 3rd, 4th Active North America #710
PiKNiK James Hoang 3rd, 4th Active North America #776
Saukibit, Inc. (DBA Canza Finance) NatoSilue 4th Active North America #744
SECUREXPERTS Inc. Darnell Washington 4th Active North America #756
Tech Greedy Xinan Xu 3rd, 4th Active North America #664
Top Value Limited Luo Bin 4th Active North America #729
TopBlocks Harry Ma 4th Active North America #675
XnMatrix Steve Tsou 4th Active North America #747
Holon Global Investments PTY Ltd mjroddy 3rd, 4th Active Oceania #748
OPENGATE TECHNOLOGY INVESTMENT GROUP PTY LTD TAO YANG 4th Active Oceania #673
Tenet Data Systems 3rd Inactive Asia minus GCN
4Everland Deon Erda 3rd Inactive Europe
TechHedge (Reiers) Nicklas Reiersen 2nd, 3rd Inactive Europe
Coffee Cloud 3rd Inactive Greater China
IPFS Metaverse Community Nic 3rd Inactive Greater China
Union Labs (formally IPFSUnion) Jackie Mo 2nd, 3rd Inactive Greater China
Waterdrop Lab 3rd Inactive Greater China
Gate.io Fafa 3rd Inactive North America
Infinite Scroll // Glif 2nd, 3rd Inactive North America
Performive Tim Williams 2nd, 3rd Inactive North America
Textile Andrew Hill 2nd, 3rd Inactive North America
Tinfra 3rd Inactive North America
MetaWave Jazz Hsiao 3rd Inactive Oceania
West Labs 3rd Inactive Oceania

Regional Counts of active notaries

Region Number of notaries
Africa 1
Asia minus GCR 21
Europe 9
Greater China 33
North America 22
Oceania 2

Roles & Responsibilities

The base responsibilities of the Notaries are as follows:

  • Allocate DataCap to clients in order to subsidize reliable and useful storage on the network.
  • Verify that clients receive a DataCap commensurate with the level of trust that is warranted based on information provided.
  • Ensure that in the allocation of the DataCap no party is given excessive trust in any form that might jeopardize the network.
  • Follow operational guidelines, keep record of decision flow, and respond to any requests for audits of their allocation decisions.

Note: Notaries are given autonomy in their decision making process and encouraged to allocate DataCap based on their best judgement. However, Notaries should expect to answer any questions about previous allocation decisions before receiving future DataCap to distribute. Guidelines for reasonable allocation strategies are supplied in this repository (both a recommended scoring mechanism for prospective Clients, as well as a sample set of questions to ask of Clients). While not mandatory to use, these documents represent the expected baseline for well-behaved Notaries.

Operational Guidelines

As stated above, Notaries are given a high degree of autonomy in their decision making power. In order to build trust in the stability of this mechanism, below outlined are some basic criteria by which all Notaries are expected to adhere. In the future these restrictions may be reduced or removed, upon approval by the community (going through the standard PR process).

  • Upfront Disclosures: Prior to being confirmed as a Notary, Notaries are expected to disclose all relevant addresses which they control, have a financial stake in, or are strongly connected to by other means. For the disclosure, the Notary should state the relevant addresses and the nature of the relationship.

  • Promoting Client Best Practices: Notaries agree to educate approved clients about the best practices for using their DataCap (e.g. how to request additonal services from miners, storing data redundantly across many miners, etc). Some reference information can be found here.

  • Commitment to effeciently serving the Network: Notaries agree to serve as fiduciaries of the Network, striving to work towards bringing useful data onto Filecoin and improving the experience for clients to do so. Notaries should generally be able to respond to Client applications and updates within 3 days, and should be comfortable communicating with Clients and Notaries if an application needs to be redirected.

  • No Self Dealing: To prevent conflicts of interest, Notaries should not allocate DataCap to Clients over which they control the private keys, or to a Client who intends to specifically spend the allocated DataCap with an address affiliated with the Notary. When in doubt, Notaries should bias towards transparency (i.e. public disclosure) or to getting a different Notary to handle the individual request.

  • Operating in Good Faith: Notaries hold a position of trust in the network, and as such it is expected that they operate keeping the Principles of this mechanism in mind. While each form of abuse cannot be exhaustively defined, Notaries are expected to bias towards caution and act in a way that promotes transparency. Notaries should expect to potentially recieve requests or questions for allocation decisions (within reason) - and should make decisions with this in mind.

  • Community Governance Participation: It is expected that Notaries regularly attend the scheduled Governance calls. As these calls are a forum to shape this process, it is important to ensure Notaries are present to provide their context, learnings, and input.

Notary Sets Use Cases

Support (1) or more the following, which can be linked to in a separate doc:

  • Professional Services (Hosting Reseller, Long-term Backups, Data Warehousing)
  • Developer Tools (Package Managers, Automatic Notaries, Web2 to Web3 integrations)
  • Decentralized Applications
  • User Content (Personal Storage)
  • Public or Open Data (Scientific datasets, research data, government or historic
  • Media & Entertainment (Videos, photos, NFTs)

Removal Process

Notaries that have consistent and substantive issues raised against them and have been found to be legitimately abusing their power will be made ineligible for DataCap allocations. The process for raising and resolving disputes can be found here.