Applications are Open for Filecoin Plus Notary Elections

This month, the Filecoin Plus program will kick off its third round of elections. Applications will be solicited from hundreds of community members and organizations, inviting them to join the Filecoin Network as Notaries.

Filecoin Plus aims to enable the demand side of the Filecoin Network and maximize the amount of useful storage on Filecoin by adding a layer of social trust to the network and introducing a novel resource called DataCap. Clients looking to onboard storage onto the network apply to community-selected Notaries to receive DataCap, which can be used to incentivize storage providers to take storage deals.

Filecoin Notaries are selected to serve as fiduciaries for the Filecoin Network and are responsible for allocating DataCap to clients with valuable storage use cases. While the Filecoin Plus program is open to the broader community, our notaries play an important role in helping to shape the direction of the program through governance decisions. The base responsibilities of notaries include:

• Allocating DataCap responsibly to clients to subsidize reliable and valuable storage on the network.
• Ensuring that in the allocation of the DataCap, no party is given excessive trust in any form that might jeopardize the network.
• Following operational guidelines, keep a record of decision flow, and respond to any requests for audits of their allocation decisions.

From February 21 through March 4, applications can be submitted through the GitHub repository. Applications will be scored between March 7 and March 18, allowing time for feedback and revisions. Results will be announced and the next cohort of notaries will be ratified on March 22.

We invite individuals and organizations to submit an application, even if you are relatively new to the Filecoin Network! You can learn more in our Governance GitHub Repo, our public Slack channel, and our recorded governance calls.

About Filecoin Plus

Filecoin Plus is a pragmatic solution to the technically challenging problem of verifying that a particular set of data is useful in a permissionless, incentive-compatible, pseudonymous network, and presents a path for incentivizing using the network in productive ways.

Today, the program is supported by over 20 active notaries, with representatives mostly operating in Asia, Europe, and North America. In this election cycle, we hope to expand our pool of notaries to other regions and look forward to receiving applications from participants across North & South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa. We also hope to increase the number of organizations and diversity of subject-matter expertise among our notary community.

Other Ways to Get Involved

There are many ways to get involved with the Filecoin Plus program! You can Join the Filecoin Plus community by participating in issues and discussions on GitHub. There, you’ll find both client onboarding repos and Filecoin Plus project repos.

You can also join the biweekly Filecoin Plus Notary Governance calls — the next call is slated for February 22. On Filecoin Slack, check out the #fil-plus and #fil-deal-market channels. These channels are great resources for connecting with the community and learning more about the programs.