The Filecoin Fast Finality (F3) mainnet is about to launch.

Filecoin Fast Finality(F3) Mainnet Launching Soon

Filecoin Fast Finality (FIP0086: Fast Finality in Filecoin (F3)) is one of the most transformative upgrades to the Filecoin consensus layer since the mainnet launch. After nearly two years of intensive research and development, F3 is now ready for mainnet deployment, promising groundbreaking advancements for the entire ecosystem! By reducing the finality time from 900 block heights to just around 2, F3 brings substantial benefits across the board:

Faster Transaction Confirmation: Token holders and Dapp users will see transactions completed in minutes instead of hours.
Enhanced Cross-Chain Experience: Oracles and bridges will complete transactions and state changes more quickly. Imagine future Dapps seamlessly publishing storage transactions to Filecoin from other chains and receiving confirmations within minutes of successful data storage!
More Efficient Lightweight Clients: Node operators such as RPC providers and storage providers can utilize lightweight clients, improving accessibility.
Streamlined Data Storage Process for Storage Providers: F3 simplifies the data storage process for storage providers without requiring additional hardware or operational changes. SP clients like Lotus Miner, Venus, or Curio, or storage providers participating in the Ramo Network can significantly enhance data storage efficiency. F3 reduces the time to publish storage transactions by over 2 minutes, allowing storage providers to achieve faster data storage processes and provide optimized SLA performance to users.
And many more benefits!

Changing the consensus protocol of a live network is no easy task. To ensure a smooth and secure transition to the mainnet, this change has undergone rigorous audits and multiple rounds of testing in the calibration network. Although F3 was initially targeted for the nv24 upgrade, later experiments uncovered two key issues, which can be viewed in detail here. These issues have now been resolved, and the fixes are being validated in the calibration network.

Next Steps

The F3 team is now conducting final phase preparation tests on the mainnet. This includes deploying the updated protocol under production traffic and following the launch test plan. To provide more visibility, we have also released two F3 monitoring dashboards (Mainnet, Calibration Testnet) for the community to track progress, monitor block set finality, node performance, and more. If you want to receive the latest testing updates, please subscribe to this forum or join the #fil-fast-finality Slack channel.

Node Operator Considerations

As we enter the final passive testing phase on the mainnet, it is crucial to understand the bandwidth usage patterns of F3. These patterns are primarily driven by two key factors:

Message Volume: F3 needs to listen to the opinions of participants controlling at least 66% of the network power to make decisions.
Message Size: The more block sets that need to be processed, the larger the messages become.

👋🔔 Expected Bandwidth Usage During Bootstrap

During the bootstrap phase, F3 must complete all block heights since the last finality, approximately 900. This expansion chain finality will lead to temporary peaks in bandwidth usage, typically lasting 5-10 minutes before stabilizing to baseline levels.

Other Known High Bandwidth Scenarios

F3 achieves finality in what are called "instances": you can think of an instance as a meeting where everyone attends to make a decision on a matter. At least 66% of attendees must be present for the meeting to adjourn. After F3 bootstrap, each instance typically contains several block heights of block sets during normal operation. This is because F3, as the name suggests, is fast finality, and in the vast majority of cases, it can finalize block sets within 2 block heights.

However, in certain situations, F3's finality may lag behind the chain's progress. For example, due to a lack of participation or network connectivity issues, the "meeting" may take a long time to conclude. As the Filecoin chain continues to grow, instances that take longer to conclude now require longer chains to complete. Longer chains mean larger messages, as each message exchanged as part of the F3 instance contains information about the chain's final completion. Larger messages will lead to spikes in bandwidth usage, and once the F3 instance catches up with the chain's speed—finalizing the block set within the most recent few block heights—bandwidth usage will drop back to baseline.

If you notice unexpectedly high bandwidth usage related to F3 testing persisting for an extended period, please collect logs from your implementation, especially from the F3/gpbft and F3/certexchange log levels, and share them in the #fil-fast-finality Slack channel. The F3 team will actively monitor performance and work with you to investigate and resolve issues.

🏁 F3 Launch

In the next 2-4 weeks, we will continue to collect data on the reasonableness of F3 implementation through passive testing. Our current plan is to launch F3 with nv25.

While we are still waiting for final data to confirm whether F3 is ready, the F3 team plans to propose an off-cycle upgrade to nv25 for FIL implementers and core developers. If no critical issues arise during the final phase of testing, we will propose the following for the release of F3:

Early December 2024 - Release the calibration nv25 upgrade and deploy the final F3 code (F3 activated and running)
Mid-December 2024 - User client release for mainnet nv25/F3 activation block height set
January 2025 - Mainnet nv25/F3 activation

We will keep you updated on our progress and provide updates to the community if there are any changes to the plan. Thank you for your strong support of this exciting upgrade!

You can follow the FilOz Blog and Twitter for the latest updates on the Finality launch.

Special thanks to other core implementers of F3: Kubuxu, Masih, Stebalien, annorth, BigLep; other Lotus implementers rvagg and Forest implementer Hailong and ruseinov, thank you for your hard work in bringing F3 to life.

More Resources

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