Filecoin Plans to Shift Block Rewards Toward Paid Storage

Filecoin Foundation said on Oct. 15 that a change to the network's reward mechanics will direct a growing share of block rewards to services that bring paying customers onto the network, in what its post calls one of the most significant changes to Filecoin's reward system since launch.

The design ties $FIL issuance to paid storage demand. Rewards for consensus-only mining shrink, and any part of the services share that goes unearned is burned instead of redistributed.

Under FIP-0118, the consensus stream starts at 95% of each block reward and steps down toward a 50% floor over roughly nine quarters. The service stream starts at 5% and reaches 10% by the end of the first quarter, then rises in five-percentage-point increments only when quarterly onchain Filecoin Pay volume clears a dollar target. It is capped at 50%. The remainder is burned.

“The Filecoin flywheel is connected end to end now, and it's starting to build momentum,” said Molly Mackinlay, CEO of FilOz.

The Upgrade Comes Next

FIP-0118, which the project calls Solstice, is listed as a draft created July 14, and the proposal post describes it as open for community feedback. Mainnet runs network version 28, “Firehorse.” A tracking issue in the Solstice repository gives Oct. 19 at 13:00 UTC, epoch 6470280, as the working candidate for mainnet activation and records the final date as still being decided. Calibration testnet was scheduled to take the nv29 upgrade on Sept. 28.

The FIP text lists open items to resolve before the proposal can enter Last Call, among them the activation parameters, the deployed actor addresses and the initial service orchestrator.

Fil+ Goes Away

The proposal removes the Fil+ verified-deal system, ending datacap applications and allocator reviews. New sectors would onboard on equal terms and earn consensus rewards in proportion to the storage they commit. Existing sectors keep their current power and terms.

Weight changes outside the automatic step-ups require a published FIP, sign-off from two multisig signer sets and a seven-day hold enforced at the base layer, according to the proposal. Step-ups triggered by hitting the volume target execute automatically and cannot be cancelled.

Products For Agents

Filecoin also pointed to Fil One, an S3-compatible object storage service that it says carries no egress fees on paid plans and targets AI infrastructure, automotive, banking and government buyers. A second set of tools covers AI agents, including a Filecoin MCP server and a command-line client that lets agents buy storage programmatically, with providers proving data possession and payments settling onchain. A third set moves content pinned on IPFS onto Filecoin while preserving content addressing.

Separately, Integral Spacetime launched on Oct. 14 with a plan to buy businesses that carry large storage workloads and move that data onto Filecoin, then reinvest recurring revenue into new capacity. Its launch post names no founders, investors or funding amount.

Supply Side Tightens

The reward change follows the end of the six-year vesting schedules for Protocol Labs and Filecoin Foundation allocations set at the 2020 genesis. The Defiant reported on Oct. 11 that the wind-down removes about 68 million $FIL in annual releases. Filecoin's post cites FilecoinTLDR modeling that daily new $FIL entering circulation falls by roughly 75%.

$FIL traded at $1.15 on Oct. 16, up 12.1% over 24 hours, with a market value of about $961 million, according to CoinGecko.