What is Lotus used for?

Lotus is the reference implementation of the Filecoin network, written in Go, providing command-line tools to interact with the network. It is a good fit for storing data on the Filecoin network, becoming a Filecoin storage provider and tinkering with the Filecoin network.

Is Lotus open source?

Yes. Lotus is open source under a custom licence. Its source code is on GitHub at filecoin-project/lotus and is written mainly in Go.

Yes. Lotus is open source, so the software itself is free to use under the terms of its own licence.

Can I self-host Lotus?

Yes. Lotus can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is Lotus an alternative to?

Lotus is an open-source alternative to Cloudflare R2 and Amazon S3. Other open-source alternatives to Cloudflare R2 include Ceph, Arweave and SeaweedFS.

Is Lotus actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Lotus was on 13 October 2026, and the latest release is v1.38.1, published on 13 October 2026. The project has 3k stars on GitHub.

Lotus: open-source alternative to Cloudflare R2, Amazon S3

About Lotus

Lotus is the reference implementation for the Filecoin network, written in Go. It was originally developed at Protocol Labs and is now maintained by the FilOz team. The project provides a suite of command-line applications for interacting with the Filecoin network.

The Lotus project includes three main applications: the lotus daemon, lotus miner, and lotus worker. The daemon acts as a client for storing data, the miner daemon is for storage providers to rent storage, and the worker daemon allows storage providers to split tasks across multiple computers.

Key features

Upload and download files on the Filecoin network
Rent out storage to other users
Check that computers are storing data correctly
Create a wallet and send or receive FIL
Run a Lotus node
Become a Filecoin storage provider

Good fit for

Storing data on the Filecoin network
Becoming a Filecoin storage provider
Tinkering with the Filecoin network

Built with: Go tools
Tags: filecoin; go; blockchain; storage; command-line

Lotus: questions and answers

What is Lotus used for?: Lotus is the reference implementation of the Filecoin network, written in Go, providing command-line tools to interact with the network. It is a good fit for storing data on the Filecoin network, becoming a Filecoin storage provider and tinkering with the Filecoin network.
Is Lotus open source?: Yes. Lotus is open source under a custom licence. Its source code is on GitHub at filecoin-project/lotus and is written mainly in Go.
Is Lotus free?: Yes. Lotus is open source, so the software itself is free to use under the terms of its own licence.
Can I self-host Lotus?: Yes. Lotus can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is Lotus an alternative to?: Lotus is an open-source alternative to Cloudflare R2 and Amazon S3. Other open-source alternatives to Cloudflare R2 include Ceph, Arweave and SeaweedFS.
Is Lotus actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Lotus was on 13 October 2026, and the latest release is v1.38.1, published on 13 October 2026. The project has 3k stars on GitHub.