Filecoin

Mainnet began at epoch 148,888 on 15 October 2020. Its market does not automatically assign any provider to a client. The parties negotiate, then an on-chain proposal records the piece CID, provider and client addresses, start and end epochs, price and collateral. Publication expresses signed intent; the deal becomes active only when the data is sealed into a proven sector.

That distinction defines the client's right. A funded, activated deal pays for storage over its term and exposes provider failure to protocol penalties. It does not grant ownership of a provider's hardware or guarantee an unsealed hot copy. Fast retrieval depends on provider infrastructure; otherwise the sealed replica may need to be decoded before delivery.

PoRep is the entry proof: it binds a unique encoding of the data to a provider, sector and sealing event. WindowPoSt is the recurring test that those sectors remain provable. If a sector faults, its power falls and collateral can be slashed. A separate WinningPoSt is required when an elected provider produces a block.

Expected Consensus makes the probability of election proportional to quality-adjusted power. Filecoin therefore does not merely reward storage after the fact; it converts proven capacity into influence over block production. The mechanism resists costless identities with pledge and proofs, but it also favors operations able to finance FIL collateral, sealing hardware and continuous proof deadlines.

The launch economy set FIL_BASE at 2 billion. Seventy percent was assigned to mining rewards, 15% to Protocol Labs, including 4.5% of the total FIL ceiling for its team and contributors, 10% to fundraising and 5% to Filecoin Foundation. Within mining, 1.1 billion was reserved for storage mining and 300 million for future mining categories subject to later community decisions.

Even the 1.1 billion does not arrive on a simple clock. Simple minting covers 330 million; baseline minting links 770 million to growth in network storage. FIP-0004 makes one quarter of earned block rewards immediately available and vests three quarters over 180 days. Protocol Labs and Foundation genesis allocations vest over six years, while SAFT investor schedules ran up to three years.

Creation, circulation and provider liquidity are therefore different numbers. Pledge and deal balances lock FIL. Unvested rewards are unavailable. Base fees and storage or consensus penalties move FIL to the burn actor, while priority fees go to block producers. The 2 billion ceiling can never describe the amount freely tradable at one time.

At epoch 2,683,348 on 14 March 2023, FVM brought user programmability and an Ethereum-compatible runtime to mainnet. Contracts could coordinate provider financing, renew deals and condition payments on chain state. FVM did not move bulk data into smart contracts: providers still receive, seal, prove and retrieve the bytes, while contracts organize metadata and economic logic.

Protocol governance follows a different path. FIPs invite clients, providers, token holders and developers to propose and debate changes. Filecoin Foundation funds work and facilitates that process; its 2025 report explicitly says it does not dictate ecosystem direction. Core developers assess consensus, implementations package actor and client changes, and operators must upgrade.

Network version 28 made that chain visible in May 2026. Lotus v1.36.0 bundled four FIPs and builtin actors v18 for epoch 6,052,800, warning every node and storage provider to upgrade. FIL ownership did not activate the code. Coordination among authors, reviewers, client teams and operators did.