FIL, GRT Rally Boosts CoinDesk Computing Index as Bitcoin Struggles

• The CoinDesk Computing Index (CPU), comprising projects focused on decentralized sharing, storage and data transfer, has gained 11% in seven days, outperforming bitcoin and the broader CoinDesk 20 index.
• CPU has been led higher by FIL and GRT, up over 40% in one week.
• Filecoin’s decision to integrate Solana and Ethereum’s impending Dencun upgrade looks to have driven FIL and other storage coins higher.

The ongoing rally in the decentralized storage network, Filecoin’s FIL token, indexing protocol, and the Graph’s GRT has boosted the CoinDesk Computing Index.

The index has gained over 11% in the past seven days, with FIL and GRT rallying over 40%, ignoring moderate weakness in the broader market. The index leader Chainlink’s LINK token has dropped 10%. The CoinDesk 20 index, a broad crypto market benchmark, has declined by 2% in seven days, with bitcoin {{BTC}}, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency by market value, trading back and forth between $50,500 and $52,500.

The CoinDesk Computing Index comprises 32 projects that aim to decentralize the sharing, storage, and transmission of data while bypassing intermediaries and ensuring privacy for users. FIL has a weight of 12.31% in the index, the second-largest behind LINK’s 37.36%. GRT has the fourth-largest weight of 7.66%.

FIL’s market-beating surge to a 12-month high of $8.5 comes on the heels of Filecoin’s Feb. 16 announcement that it would host programmable blockchain Solana’s block history. Solana is the world’s third-largest smart contract blockchain.

The integration signaled a move away from centralized data storage services, likely galvanizing investor interest in decentralized storage coins like FIL, Siacoin {{SC}} and Arweave {{AR}}. SC, which accounts for 2.49% of the Computing Index, has risen 44% in the past seven days, and AR has gained 17%.

Another reason for the rally in decentralized storage coins could be Ethereum’s impending Dencun upgrade, which will introduce “blog transactions” or temporary data storage mechanism, reducing transaction fees and improving transactions per second.

The temporary nature of blob storage could boost demand for decentralized storage services, according to AI-powered trading firm ZMQuant.

“The Dencun upgrade is expected to generate increased demand for decentralized storage solutions, benefiting established projects like Filecoin, Arweave, and Storj. A key upgrade feature is the introduction of blob storage for submitting L2 data to L1,” ZMQuant said in a LinkedIn post.

“However, as blob storage is not permanent and data is discarded after approximately a month, there’s potential for this data to be utilized and analyzed further, thereby driving the demand for decentralized storage services,” ZMQuant added.