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Piggy-backing off of our presentation on Filecoin, the Tellor devs have put together an mvp smart contract for the users of Filecoin.

With the filecoinInsurance smart contract, users can leverage Ethereum’s robust network to add an insurance layer to their agreements (aka ‘deals’); providing coverage in the case that the data storage provider or ‘prover’ fails one of the checks that verifies if the data is actually being stored.

For those unfamiliar, Filecoin is a non-EVM network where users can engage in agreements with data-storage providers via IPFS. Using the Filecoin network, provers stake their FIL tokens, and under-go periodic checks or ‘proofs’ to prove that they are indeed still storing the data they were originally asked to store per the agreement with the customer. If any of these proofs fails, the prover’s tokens can then be slashed.

Leveraging the on-chain security and transparency that Ethereum provides, as well as an added layer of recourse for the customers, the Talented Mr. Tally Wiesenberg has put together a basic concept where the customers can deposit a newly created ERC-20 token, the Filecoin Insurance token ($FCI), as a proof of insurance, which can then be returned to them in the case where the deal fails.

But if they’re on separate networks, how will it know if the deal fails?
Enter: Tellor

Using the Tellor reporter network, the deal can now leverage a decentralized and permissionless oracle to verify if a Filecoin deal went bad, and automatically send back the staked IFC tokens to the customers.

A rudimentary insurance concept, but a great way to showcase Tellor’s flexibility in the type of data it can provide, and ability to act as a bridge.

Builders welcome!
You can check out and contribute to the open-sourced codebase here.