Protocol Labs drives breakthroughs in computing to push humanity forward
Purpose and Vision
Protocol Labs is an open-source research, development, and deployment laboratory. Our projects include IPFS, Filecoin, libp2p, and many more. We aim to make human existence orders of magnitude better through technology.
We are a fully distributed company. Our team of more than 100 members works remotely and in the open to improve the internet — humanity’s most important technology — as we explore new advances in computing and related fields.
Timeline of Work
Big things have small beginnings. Here is a slice of our story.
2013
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IPFS and Filecoin — new protocols to decentralize the web and cloud storage — start to develop as ideas and prototypes.
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2014
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Protocol Labs (PL) founded by Juan Benet to improve the internet and computing. PL is part of the YCombinator S14 program.
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PL raises funding from prominent technology investors.
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2015
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go-ipfs alpha is released, and development and growth in the open begins.
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IPFS gains usage in the Ethereum community, and among other blockchain networks.
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2016
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go-ipfs 0.4.0 is released, with a large set of improvements.
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libp2p, Multiformats, and IPLD are split out from IPFS, ahead of the first Decentralized Web Summit with internet pioneers.
2017
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PL redesigns the Filecoin protocol, culminating in the invention of Proofs-of-Replication and other cryptography results.
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PL Filecoin v2 paper is released.
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PL raises funding through the Filecoin Token Sale, raising $205.8M total.
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CoinList launches as an independent company, spun out from Protocol Labs and AngelList.
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The SAFT Project launches as a collaboration between Protocol Labs, Cooley, and other token creators, legal experts, and investors.
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2018
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SourceCred project starts.
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Protocol Labs Research and RFP Grant Program debut.
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PL hosts LabDay 2018, a day-long event dedicated to contributors and collaborators in the Protocol Labs ecosystem.
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2019
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First ProtoSchool workshop held in Denver, CO.
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PL introduces the Permissive License Stack, an open-source approach to intellectual property.
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Filecoin code is opened to the community and first devnets launched.
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Filecoin Testnet launches, and grows to 5 PB of proved storage in the following months.
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2020
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IPFS 0.5.0 is released.
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Testground, a platform for testing, benchmarking, and simulating distributed and p2p systems at scale, launches.
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The League of Entropy, a partnership between Protocol Labs, Cloudflare, the Ethereum Foundation, and others, launches drand, the Internet’s first production-grade, publicly verifiable randomness beacon.
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Filecoin mainnet launches, surpassing 1 EiB of storage capacity within its first month.
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2021
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nft.storage launches, providing off-chain storage of NFT metadata and assets in a free, simple service. More than 40M NFTs stored on IPFS & Filecoin within the first year!
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Filecoin and IPFS builders funnel continues to grow, with over 10,000+ developers engaged YTD through hackathons and grants.
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The Filecoin network continues to grow, with over 3,300 storage providers and over 12EB of capacity, making Filecoin the largest aggregation of data storage in the history of the world.
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The inaugural Funding The Commons was held, creating a forum for people making shared goods faster and more robustly via user-friendly mechanisms and robust experiments.
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2022
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PLN Launchpad, a full-time onboarding program for new network members, kicks off its first cohort. It ends 2022 with the successful completion of eight cohorts.
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LabWeek22, our first-ever decentralized conference, brought together over 150 PLN teams, with 1,000+ attendees and 100+ speakers at 38 events in Lisbon.
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Protocol Labs and Filecoin Foundation announce an alliance (Decentralized Storage Alliance) with AMD, Seagate and EY, to help more companies make the transition from Web2 to Web3.
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Saturn, a Web3 CDN in Filecoin’s retrieval market, launches version 1.
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2023
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Bacalhau Python SDK ships, offering client-side logic, enabling builders to fully interact with Bacalhau with a user-friendly, Pythonic interface.
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Filecoin Virtual Machine (FVM) is live on mainnet! The Filecoin blockchain now supports smart contracts and user programmability via the FVM, unlocking the enormous potential of an open data economy.
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Collaborations
We work with a community of people and organizations building a better future through technology.
Get Involved
Protocol Labs is an Open Source R&D company, distributed around Earth. Our mission is to drive breakthroughs in computing to push humanity forward.
Protocol Labs is a constantly evolving network made up of 450+ projects, companies, and organizations.
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