Surveying the Filecoin Community: Priorities and Opportunities for 2022

As a core building block of the Web3 world, the Filecoin network is both open-source and decentralized. This means that ecosystem coordinators — including Filecoin Foundation––are responsible for ensuring that the Filecoin ecosystem is a product of its community, building pathways for community members to define network-wide priorities, influencing the allocation of resources, and identifying other development opportunities.

The Filecoin Community Survey is one such pathway. Designed collaboratively by staff at Filecoin Foundation and Protocol Labs, the survey was an open-ended and anonymous feedback tool to help foster continued development and growth of the ecosystem. Everyone in the Filecoin community was welcome to participate. The survey was distributed via Filecoin Slack channels and Twitter and responses were collected for approximately four weeks.

Survey respondents were asked to give feedback in three key areas:

1. What motivates you to be a part of the Filecoin community?
2. What opportunities should the Filecoin community focus on in 2022?
3. What roadblocks do you see the Filecoin ecosystem facing, and how should we address them?

A summary of the survey results is as follows:

In general, community members were relatively consistent in their messaging: they believe the Filecoin project is a critical piece of infrastructure for the decentralized web, but that there are many opportunities that must be seized to advance the utility of the Filecoin network.

Most immediately, community members voiced support for four key enhancements: increased community support, clearer governance standards, broader network interoperability, and improved dealmaking process for both clients and storage providers.

Community members also noted the importance of diversifying and clarifying the Filecoin use-case with cool apps, improved UI/UX, and a strong community culture.

Excitingly, there are already many efforts underway that directly address these needs. They include new Filecoin substrate bridges; the introduction of the Filecoin Virtual Machine; Filecoin Improvement Proposal (FIP) drafts that seek to simplify dealmaking and improve communication between clients and storage providers; and under-the-hood technical enhancements that will prime the Filecoin network to onboard new dApps and integrate across blockchain ecosystems.

Filecoin Foundation and Protocol Labs are also working together to increase resources for direct community support. This already includes launching new community incubation programs; hiring community engineers and managers to provide 1:1 support to existing and new community members; and increased diligence around governance and the FIPs process.

Want to keep track of these updates and the ways Filecoin Foundation is holding itself accountable to community priorities? The Filecoin Community Roadmap is an open-source community tool that will track ecosystem goals and enhancements, updated on a quarterly basis.

For more information, check out the Filecoin Community Github repository. You can also join the conversation on Slack, Github, Reddit, and Twitter. We’d love to hear new ideas or talk about enhancements that are already in progress!