FIL

Filecoin

Storage

The largest decentralized storage network, now trying to turn subsidised capacity into paid cloud storage.

Turnaround, unproven v1.1 · as of 2026-10-20 · framework v1.13 Coinsight · all analyses
Bottom line

Filecoin has a big, working storage network (about 1.1 EiB of data in deals and 3.0 EiB of capacity at the last Messari count), but almost none of it is paid for by customers: Filecoin Onchain Cloud payments ran at about $59k a year in August 2026. The supply side just improved sharply: Protocol Labs and Filecoin Foundation vesting ended on 15 Oct 2026, cutting gross new FIL by about 75%, and the Solstice upgrade (19 Oct) ties part of the block reward to paid volume and burns the rest. The token is −35% over a year, −82% from its Nov 2025 spike and −99.6% from its 2021 high, so this is a turnaround bet that needs paid demand to show up in the data.

Scorecard (1–5)
Project
Token performance
Tokenomics
Price
$1.03
+1.3% 24h · +9% 30d · CoinGecko 20 Oct
Market cap
$861.6M
rank #84 · FDV $2.02B, no max supply
24h volume
$115.6M
13.4% of market cap
From ATH
−100%
ATH $236.84, Apr 2021
2026 YTD
−20%
$1.30 → $1.03
Filecoin Pay
~$59k / yr
annualised run-rate, end Aug 2026 · 119 payers

The last 12 months

$1$2$3$4Oct 25NovDecJan 26FebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDecJan 272025-11-08: $3.4385$3.44 peak2026-01-15: $1.6187$1.622026-08-19: $0.6315$0.63 low2026-10-20: $1.0309$1.031DePIN spike to $3.442Onchain Cloud goes live3nv28 Fire Horse upgrade4Solstice FIP-0118 proposed5Year low at $0.636Filecoin Pay at $59k a year7PL and FF vesting ends8Fil One and agent tools9Solstice (nv29) activates10First Solstice ramp check
MarketProductTechGovernanceAdoptionTokenomicsUpcoming

Daily closes from CoinGecko, 21 Oct 2025 to 20 Oct 2026.

Key events
  1. 1
    08 Nov 25 DePIN spike to $3.44. FIL more than doubles in days on a DePIN and AI-storage rally, then gives it all back by year-end.
  2. 2
    26 Mar 26 Onchain Cloud goes live. Filecoin Onchain Cloud launches on mainnet: PDP proofs, Filecoin Pay rails and warm storage for developers.
  3. 3
    27 May 26 nv28 Fire Horse upgrade. Scheduled mainnet hard fork, the last network upgrade before Solstice.
  4. 4
    14 Jul 26 Solstice FIP-0118 proposed. Proposal to retire Fil+ and split block rewards toward paid services; accepted in September.
  5. 5
    19 Aug 26 Year low at $0.63. Lowest daily close of the 12 months, then a +63% rebound into October.
  6. 6
    31 Aug 26 Filecoin Pay at $59k a year. Run-rate up from $663 in January, with 119 active payers.
  7. 7
    15 Oct 26 PL and FF vesting ends. Six-year vesting finishes, removing ~66.7M FIL a year of new supply.
  8. 8
    16 Oct 26 Fil One and agent tools. Fil One S3-compatible storage, Integral Spacetime and AI-agent storage tools announced.
  9. 9
    19 Oct 26 Solstice (nv29) activates. Scheduled at epoch 6470279: Fil+ datacap retired, 5% service stream starts, unearned share burned.
  10. 10
    Q1 27 First Solstice ramp check. After the bootstrap quarter the service weight can rise to 10% only if Filecoin Pay volume meets its USD target.

How a paid storage deal flows through Filecoin Onchain Cloud

Developer
Uploads a file

Uses the Synapse SDK or an S3-style API such as Fil One.

Filecoin Pay
Locks payment

Smart-contract rail holds the client's deposit and streams it to the provider over time.

Storage provider
Stores the data

Keeps hot copies on disk, backed by FIL it has pledged as collateral.

PDP proofs
Proves possession

Provider posts regular on-chain proofs; missed proofs stop payment and trigger penalties.

Filecoin chain
Settles and rewards

Gas base fee is burned; block rewards go to miners and, since Solstice, a service stream by Pay volume.

User
Retrieves the file

Fetches it by a public link or CDN, like any cloud object.

Where FIL comes in: providers lock FIL as collateral (the biggest demand), every message burns a FIL base fee, and new FIL is minted as block rewards. Storage itself can be paid in FIL or other tokens through Filecoin Pay, so paid usage does not automatically mean FIL demand.

Usage and adoption

FIL per year, annualised run-rates (mid-to-late 2026)
Filecoin Pay volume
~0.06M
Fee and penalty burn
~1.6M
Solstice service stream (5%)
~1.1M
Block rewards
~22M
PL + FF vesting (ended 15 Oct)
~66.7M

Burn is ~0.4M FIL per 90 days (Jul 2026 analysis) × 4. Filecoin Pay is the $59,327 run-rate at end Aug 2026 converted at today's $1.03, so it is approximate. Block rewards ~22M a year and vesting ~66.7M a year come from FilecoinTLDR and news coverage of the vesting end. The grey bar is the Solstice service stream at its 5% starting weight. Even with vesting gone, burn plus paid usage cover under a tenth of new supply.

  • strong signal
    Filecoin Pay run-rate
    ~$59k / yr

    End Aug 2026, up from $663 in Jan; 119 active payers. Real paid storage, but tiny.

  • medium signal
    Fee and penalty burn
    ~0.4M FIL / 90 d

    Jul 2026, one analyst's estimate. Mostly gas and sector fees, not customer payments.

  • medium signal
    Data in active deals
    ~1,110 PiB

    Messari, Q3 2025. Mostly Fil+ subsidised deals rather than paid storage.

  • weak signal
    Committed capacity
    3.0 EiB

    Messari, Q3 2025, −10% in the quarter; 36% utilised. Shows supply, not demand.

  • weak signal
    Grayscale FILG
    ~2.2M FIL

    Record holdings, Nov 2025. OTC trust, not an ETF; small next to supply.

Filecoin's headline numbers (exabytes of capacity, a petabyte-scale data set) were built on block-reward subsidies. The adoption scoreboard to watch now is Filecoin Pay volume, because Solstice pays the service stream only when that volume hits targets and burns the rest.

Project

What it is
A layer-1 storage network (mainnet since Oct 2020) where storage providers pledge FIL as collateral, store data in sectors and prove it on-chain to earn block rewards. The FVM adds EVM-compatible smart contracts on top.
Team
Created by Protocol Labs (founder Juan Benet), which also built IPFS. The Filecoin Foundation funds the ecosystem; FilOz, a core team spun out of Protocol Labs, maintains the Lotus node and builds Filecoin Onchain Cloud.
Technology
Proof-of-Replication and Proof-of-Spacetime for cold storage; PDP (Proof of Data Possession) for hot storage; FVM smart contracts; Filecoin Pay payment rails. Fast finality (F3) is live.
Traction
~1,110 PiB of data in active deals and 3.0 EiB of committed capacity (36% used) in Q3 2025, both shrinking from 2024. Most deals were Fil+ subsidised rather than paid. Filecoin Onchain Cloud went live in Mar 2026; Filecoin Pay run-rate grew from $663 (Jan) to $59,327 a year (Aug).
Competitors
AWS S3, Cloudflare R2 and Backblaze on price and reliability; Arweave, Storj and Walrus in decentralized storage.
Key risks
Paid demand is tiny next to block rewards, so providers sell rewards; capacity has been falling; Solstice is new and its service-reward targets are untested; the 300M FIL mining reserve is a long-term supply overhang.
Roadmap
Solstice (FIP-0118, nv29) activated 19 Oct 2026: Fil+ datacap retired, a service stream starts at 5% of block rewards and can rise 5 points a quarter only if Filecoin Pay volume meets USD targets. Also announced: Fil One (S3-compatible storage), Integral Spacetime and AI-agent storage tools. Drafts include shorter deal durations (FIP-0110).

Token performance

1-year return (21 Oct 2025 → 20 Oct 2026, CoinGecko)
FIL
-35%
BTC
-25%
ETH
-39%

FIL lagged BTC and ETH over 12 months, despite a brief DePIN spike in Nov 2025. Over 3 years it is down roughly −69% (from ~$3.3 in Oct 2023, approximate) vs BTC ~+179% (from ~$29.7k) and ETH ~+53% (from ~$1.6k); 3-year figures are researched by hand because the free CoinGecko API covers 365 days.

Range 2026
$0.63 low (19 Aug) to $1.62 high (15 Jan), daily closes; now $1.03
12-month drawdown
−82%, from $3.44 (8 Nov 2025, DePIN spike) to $0.63 (19 Aug 2026)
Liquidity
$116M traded in 24h, 13.4% of market cap; rank #84
Relative strength
−35% in 1 year vs BTC −25% and ETH −39%; +63% off the August low and +9% in 30 days around the vesting end
ATH check ATH check passed. The $236.84 high (1 Apr 2021) came about five and a half months after the Oct 2020 mainnet launch, in the 2021 bull market, so it is not a launch spike. FIL is 99.6% below it.

Tokenomics

Supply
2B FIL cap by design (CoinGecko lists no max). ~836M circulating and 1.96B total, so circulating is ~43% of total; most of the rest is future mining rewards and the 300M FIL mining reserve.
Emissions
Block rewards to storage providers, ~22M FIL a year (~2.6% of circulating), decaying over time. Before 15 Oct, vesting added another ~66.7M a year.
Unlocks/vesting
Six-year linear vesting of Protocol Labs (300M) and Filecoin Foundation (100M) ended 15 Oct 2026. No large scheduled unlocks remain; the mining reserve is unallocated.
Utility
Collateral that storage providers lock to add capacity (the main demand), gas on the chain and FVM, and payment for storage via Filecoin Pay.
Distribution
Of the 2B cap: 70% for storage mining (incl. the 15% reserve), 15% Protocol Labs, 10% investors, 5% Filecoin Foundation. Grayscale's FILG trust holds ~2.2M FIL.
Sinks
Base-fee burn, fault penalties and the per-sector daily fee: ~0.4M FIL per 90 days (Jul 2026, one analyst). Collateral locks FIL. Under Solstice, any unearned service reward is burned.

Bull case

With vesting gone, new supply drops to ~22M FIL a year, and Solstice redirects rewards toward services that bring paying customers while burning what they do not earn. If Filecoin Pay volume grows by orders of magnitude from ~$59k a year, the service stream ramps past 5% and net supply growth flattens; price reclaims the $1.62 January high and then the $3.44 Nov 2025 spike level.

Bear case

Paid storage stays a rounding error, the service stream never ramps and storage providers keep selling block rewards while capacity shrinks. FIL loses the ~$1.00 area and retests the $0.63 August low.

Watch before the next re-run

  • Filecoin Pay monthly volume and active payers (the Solstice target metric)
  • Whether the Solstice service weight rises above 5% after the first quarter (~Jan 2027)
  • Net circulating supply change after the vesting end (Starboard dashboard)
  • $0.63 August low and the $1.62 January high

Where to trade

Krakenlisted

FIL against EUR · USD · BTC · ETH · GBP

24h $1.57M · ±2% depth $490.0k

OKXlisted

FIL against EUR · USDT · USDC · TRY

24h $11.2M · ±2% depth $609.2k

Largest exchanges

Exchange24h vol±2% depth
BinanceFIL/USDT$12.2M$674.6k
OKXFIL/USDT$11.1M$441.9k
CoinbaseFIL/USD$4.83M$534.5k
GateFIL/USDT$4.81M$583.7k
HTXFIL/USDT$4.05M$88.4k

Deepest DEX pools

No on-chain pool with real trading found.

On-chain share of all FIL volume: 0.0%.

As of 21 Oct 2026 · CoinGecko tickers (24h volume, ±2% depth). ±2% depth is the money it takes to move the price 2% either way: the real size of a market. Exchanges ranked by volume among well-known venues; pools by depth. Not investment advice.

Where to follow

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