# For Verifiable Content

Leveraging the Filecoin network to store data stored using WebMingle ensures that the content is available for retrieval, ensuring that the content-based addressing provided by IPFS remains resilient over time. Filecoin uses a variety of approaches to accomplish this mission, including novel cryptography, consensus protocols, and game-theoretic incentives—but perhaps the most important of these is Filecoin’s unique approach to verification of storage.

**Filecoin's storage** verification system solves a previously intractable problem with decentralized storage: How do storage providers prove that they actually store data for what they say they are over a period of time? Filecoin's proof algorithm is responsible for this verification:

**Copy proof Prove** that a given storage provider is storing a unique copy of the customer's original data.

**Time and space proof Proof that customer data is stored continuously over time.**

In addition to this proof system, the Filecoin network relies on game-theoretic incentives to deter malicious or inadvertent activity. In order to become a Filecoin storage provider, all potential providers must provide collateral in the form of FIL when agreeing to a storage transaction. Additionally, any storage provider that fails the proof-of-space-time check will be penalized, lose a portion of the collateral, and ultimately be unable to offer storage to customers again.
