Note: if you have any questions or want to join the convo, join #spade-help on Filecoin Slack.

What is Spade?

Spade is a two-sided marketplace that matches storage clients to storage providers and facilitates high-throughput low-friction data onboarding. Storage clients get to specify how they’d like their data to be onboarded, and compliant storage providers drive deal making processes to ensure the data is onboarded efficiently.

Who should use Spade for data onboarding to Filecoin?

Storage clients

Spade is most useful for storage clients that know what they want to store on Filecoin and can define how they want it stored (including terms for retrievals in the future), but may not know exactly what set of Storage Providers to work with to achieve this.

Spade is primarily targeted towards:

• Data owners interested in cheap archival solutions, efficient cold data management
• Large data owning entities looking for an easy way to onboard data to the decentralized web
• Web3 native data onramps: services that are already IPFS or Filecoin aware, and are looking at an efficient mechanism to store data on Filecoin

Storage Providers

Any storage provider in the Filecoin network looking to get more verified deals should use Spade. Spade is optimized for a low-friction experience for SPs. It is designed to be easy for building automation and should plug right into the rest of your SP operations.

Join #spade-sp to be aware of the latest news and updates. As of right now, all clients in the Pilot are bringing verified deals for SPs in a geo-distributed fashion.

Why should you onboard your data to Filecoin using Spade?

1. Spade gives storage clients highly tunable options for how their data is onboarded to Filecoin. SP partners are deemed eligible based on expressed client needs, including:
   1. SP location, size, reputation sore and historic quality of service.
   2. Geographic distribution of data or geofencing.
   3. Replication requirements (i.e., 10x copies per unique piece of data).
   4. Specification of each of the above at the level of groups of data from a single address on Filecoin. (Groups of piece CIDs with one deal proposing address.)
2. Spade collects basic info from SPs up front and builds an understanding of reliability with retrieval testing, etc.. More specific information is collected on a per client basis. Clients have their storage requirements met, and the storage market scales to matching storage demand with a wider range of SPs.