Filecoin (founded in May 2014) is an open-source, decentralized storage network and marketplace built on the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) that transforms unused global storage into an open, blockchain-powered marketplace. Its native token, FIL, facilitates transactions between users and storage providers, aiming to create a more distributed and permanent alternative to traditional cloud storage services. ^[2]

Company

Filecoin was developed by Protocol Labs, a U.S.-based open-source research and development organization founded in 2014 by computer scientist Juan Benet. The organization is also responsible for projects like IPFS and libp2p, aiming to create foundational data infrastructure usable by both blockchain systems and conventional providers such as AWS and Microsoft Azure. ^[3] [4]

Team

| Name | Designation || ---- | ----------- || Juan Benet^[18][19][20] | Founder and CEO || Friedel Ziegelmayer | Senior Software Engineer || Evan Miyazono | Research Scientist || Jeromy Johnson | Software Engineer || Karola Kirsanow | Research Program Manager || Jakub Sztandera | Distributed Software Engineer || David Dias | Research Engineer || Nicola Greco | Research Lead || Jesse Clayburgh | Operations Manager || Hector Sanjuan | Software Engineer || Chris Brocoum | Head of Finance || Colin Evran | Biz Dev & Operations |

Fundraising

Protocol Labs has raised 3.1 million USD in funding over three rounds from 2014 to 2017. The first seed round raised $120K from start-up accelerator, Y Combinator. The venture round was held in 2016 and raised 3 million USD from major investment firms and individual investors, including Techammer, Stanford StartX, Naval Ravikant, Haystack, FundersClub, Fred Ehrsam, Digital Currency Group, DHVC, Boost VC, and Ben Davenport. In 2017, they raised undisclosed funds in a venture round backed by BlueYard Capital. ^[7] [8]

Presale and Initial Coin Offering

In August 2017, Filecoin held its Initial Coin Offering (ICO) round on Coinlist, raising over $252 million by selling FIL tokens. Filecoin fully incentivized early participation during the ICO. Although most token offerings set a standard price/coin, Filecoin set the initial coins at $1, increasing with each subsequent investment, which drove investors to want to get in early. Within hours, the crowdsale raised $190 million, causing the price to reach $4.58. Filecoin also did a presale of its coins to Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Union Square Ventures. ^[9]

Overview

Filecoin is a decentralized, peer-to-peer network designed for reliable file storage using economic incentives and cryptographic verification. Users, known as clients, pay independent storage providers to store their data. These providers must submit daily cryptographic proofs to confirm that the data is still in their possession. To maintain trust, storage providers must lock collateral in Filecoin, which is forfeited if they fail to meet proof requirements. This system creates a deterrent against data loss and supports a decentralized storage marketplace where a central authority does not control availability and pricing. Clients can assess provider performance based on public records before selecting where to store their data.

Filecoin operates alongside the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), a decentralized protocol for content addressing and data retrieval. Most Filecoin nodes are also IPFS nodes, enabling efficient file access via content identifiers (CIDs). While IPFS historically relied on unpaid volunteers to host data, Filecoin adds a financial layer to support long-term storage through paid agreements. This combination enables use cases ranging from Web3-native NFT and media storage to archival services for traditional organizations. Platforms like NFT.Storage, Audius, Huddle01, the Shoah Foundation, and the Internet Archive use Filecoin to store diverse content types, including audio, video, and metadata. ^[21]

Technology

Filecoin Network

The Filecoin network utilizes InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) technology. It is a distributed peer-to-peer network formed by Filecoin peers who participate differently. These peers communicate over secure channels to distribute information to the network, transfer data among themselves, and discover others. They maintain a well-connected cluster in which information like blocks and messages flows swiftly, even when many thousands of peers participate. The network represents all full nodes that validate the actions of clients and miners. These nodes count the available storage, check the storage proofs, and repair data faults. ^[21]

Storage Model

Filecoin’s storage model is based on three key components: providers, deals, and sectors. Providers are either storage providers, storing data and submitting cryptographic proofs, or retrieval providers, focusing on fast data access. Deals are agreements between clients and providers that define storage or retrieval terms, including price and duration, and are recorded on-chain after negotiation. Sectors are fixed-size storage units (e.g., 32 or 64 GiB) used by storage providers to hold data and generate Proof of Spacetime to verify ongoing storage. ^[26]

Filecoin Nodes

Filecoin Nodes (Clients) are peers that sync the Filecoin blockchain and validate the messages in every block, which, once applied, provide a global state. Nodes manage Filecoin wallets and receive FIL on them. These nodes can broadcast different types of messages to the network. For example, a client can publish a message to send FIL from one address to another. Nodes can propose storage and retrieval deals to Filecoin miners and pay for them as the deals are executed correctly. Clients pay to store and retrieve data. They can choose from the available service providers. If they want to store private data, they must encrypt it before submitting it to the providers. ^[24]

Lotus

Lotus is the reference implementation of the Filecoin protocol, providing full support for storage, retrieval, and mining operations on the network. It offers developers various tools—including APIs, a command-line interface, and support for custom plugins—to build, extend, or interact with the Filecoin network. It is maintained as an open-source project. ^[22] 

Venus

Venus is an open-source implementation of the Filecoin network developed by IPFSForce, written in Go, to provide a fast, efficient, and scalable solution. It supports core Filecoin functionalities such as storage, retrieval, and mining, and is compatible with Lotus and other Filecoin nodes for interoperability.

Venus offers a Chinese language interface and documentation, catering to the Chinese market. It includes automatic fault tolerance, intelligent storage allocation, and decentralized data distribution to enhance network reliability and efficiency. Developers can interact with Venus via its comprehensive API and command-line interface for data storage, retrieval, mining, and FIL transactions. Contributions to Venus’s open-source codebase are welcome through GitHub. ^[23]

Interplanetary Consensus

Interplanetary Consensus (IPC) is a framework that enables horizontal scalability for decentralized applications by allowing permissionless creation of blockchain subnets with customizable consensus algorithms. These subnets form a hierarchical structure where child subnets communicate seamlessly with parent subnets, improving performance while inheriting security features and eliminating the need for bridges.

IPC supports multi-chain interoperability using the Filecoin Virtual Machine (FVM) as its execution layer. It is currently compatible with Filecoin and Ethereum and is designed to integrate tightly with Filecoin’s data storage primitives. This approach balances performance, decentralization, and security, addressing common challenges in scaling blockchain networks for dApps. ^[25]

FIL ProPGF

The Filecoin ProPGF (Proactive Public Goods Funding) program is an on-chain funding initiative to support public goods projects in the Filecoin ecosystem. Designed to complement the existing RetroPGF program, ProPGF focuses on proactively identifying and funding new and ongoing initiatives aligning with the ecosystem’s technical and community needs. The program is being developed in phases: first, by building the technical structure, then by incorporating community voting, and eventually, by establishing a sustainable funding mechanism through the network.

ProPGF emphasizes transparency, community participation, and long-term sustainability. It uses tools like Snapshot for decentralized voting and Questbook for grant tracking, allowing public visibility into applications and funding decisions. A committee of ecosystem experts leads project selection, while broader community members can also participate in the review and voting process. ProPGF offers non-dilutive funding to incentivize the creation of useful tools, infrastructure, and resources that benefit the entire Filecoin network. ^[32]

Public Goods

FilOZ

FilOz is a public goods design and development team within the Filecoin ecosystem. Its core focus is improving the Filecoin protocol through secure upgrades, protocol research and development, and open-source software maintenance, particularly the Lotus client and Filecoin Improvement Proposals (FIPs). The team contributes to regular network upgrades, ensures protocol security, and facilitates broader participation in the ecosystem by making core development more accessible.

Composed of researchers, engineers, technical program managers, and community contributors, FilOz collaborates closely with other Filecoin-aligned teams such as Curio Storage, Web3mine, Fil-Ponto, and Lighthouse. The team supports ecosystem growth by organizing technical events like FIL Dev Summits, promoting open-source contributions, and sharing knowledge to encourage new protocol developers. Their work centers on strengthening the technical foundation of Filecoin and enabling collaborative progress across the network. ^[33]

FIL-B

FIL-B (Filecoin Builders) is an independent public goods team focused on improving the developer experience (DX) within the Filecoin ecosystem. The team supports builders by offering technical resources, guidance, and community engagement to help them develop on-chain applications using Filecoin’s decentralized storage infrastructure.

Their work includes maintaining developer documentation, building user-friendly starter kits, delivering workshops, stewarding the Filecoin Ethereum Virtual Machine (FEVM) for EVM compatibility, and organizing developer-focused events. FIL-B collaborates with other ecosystem teams like FilOz and FilPonto, and operates as part of the broader Protocol Labs Network to ensure accessible, scalable, and effective tools and support for the growing Filecoin developer community. ^[34]

Security

The Filecoin protocol uses cryptographic proofs to secure the network by validating every block and verifying miners' data storage work. It uses two consensus mechanisms: Proof of Replication (PoRep) and Proof of Spacetime (PoSt). PoSt and PoRep use Non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs (zk-SNARKS), making proofs very short and easy to verify. ^[9]

Proof of Replication

Proof Of Replication (PoRep) is a new type of Proof Of Storage in which a server (i.e., the prover P) tries to convince a user (i.e., the verifier V) that some data D has been replicated to its own uniquely dedicated physical storage. It also ensures that P dedicates unique physical storage to storing D. P cannot pretend to store D twice and deduplicate the storage. This construction is useful in cloud storage and a decentralized storage network. Regarding Filecoin, a storage miner proves they are storing a physically unique copy, or replica, of the data. Proof of Replication happens once, when the miner first stores the data. PoRep improves on proof of storage variants such as Proof of Retrievability (PoR) and Provable Data Possession (PDP), preventing Sybil attacks, Outsourcing Attacks, and Generation Attacks. ^[9]

Proof of Data Possession (PDP)

Proof of Data Possession (PDP) is a cryptographic verification mechanism on the Filecoin network. It enables storage providers to prove they have an immediately accessible copy of stored data without retrieving or unsealing it. Unlike Filecoin’s existing Proof of Replication (PoRep), which is designed for long-term, cold storage with sealed replicas, PDP supports hot storage by allowing data to remain in a raw, ready-to-use format. This makes it suitable for use cases that require fast access, such as retrieval services, dApp interfaces, AI datasets, or digital media.

PDP enables lightweight, efficient verification with features like random sampling, low CPU usage, and support for mutable data collections. It also integrates with existing Filecoin identifiers, ensuring compatibility with sector-based data proofs. The introduction of PDP expands Filecoin's functionality, bridging the gap between secure decentralized storage and the performance expectations of traditional cloud systems. It allows for new applications in areas like AI training, web content delivery, developer tools, and automated data retention policies. It also lowers technical barriers for new storage providers and supports composable, verifiable data services. ^[27]

FIL

The FIL token is the native cryptocurrency that facilitates transactions and incentivizes participation within the Filecoin network. It is used to pay storage providers for data storage, reward them for validating blocks and processing transactions, and enable token holders to participate in network governance. FIL has a total supply of 2B tokens. ^[35]

Tokenomics

| Beneficiary | % FIL of maximum supply || ----------- | ----------------------- || Storage Miners Allocation | 55% || Mining reserve | 15% || Protocol Labs | 10.5.% || PL Team and Contributors | 4.5% || Filecoin Foundation | 5% || Fundraising - SAFT 2017 | 7.5% || Fundraising - Remainder | 2.5% |

FVM

The Filecoin Virtual Machine (FVM) is a runtime environment on the Filecoin network that enables the deployment and execution of smart contracts, called actors. It supports programmable storage and retrieval operations, allowing developers to build custom contracts using Solidity and other languages compiled to WebAssembly (WASM).

FVM extends Filecoin’s base storage layer by enabling on-chain programmability and Layer 2 features such as computation over data and content delivery. It is compatible with Ethereum’s Solidity language and tools, supports multiple virtual machines, and provides access to IPFS/IPLD data primitives. Use cases include automated storage deal renewals, decentralized data governance, data replication across providers, collateralized leasing, and more complex applications like tokenized data sets and Layer 2 bridges. ^[12][13]

Filecoin Softwares

Filecoins (FIL) can be stored in exchanges or official wallets such as Lotus and Glif. Lotus can be used to run a node and a Miner. Slate is a fully open-source file-sharing network powered by Textile, IPFS, and Filecoin, designed for research and collaboration. Powergate provides a multi-tier storage solution that stores data with IPFS ("Hot" storage layer) and Filecoin ("Cold" storage layer). Fleek space daemon is a wrapper around IPFS tools to start coding a decentralized desktop app as fast as possible. It is built on top of Textile threads, Buckets, and Powergate. Starling is a command-line interface for simplified, coordinated, decentralized storage on the Filecoin network. ^[31]

Filecoin Ignite

Filecoin Ignite is a series of events for the Web3 community that was launched before the mainnet launch. The hackathons, conferences, workshops, interview schedules, and details are provided on this portal. Many groups in the community put these events on, and it is an opportunity to dive in and learn about Web3 projects. ^[30]

Partnerships

Filecoin x Zondax

Filecoin has collaborated with Zondax to be made available on Ledger Live. Clients, Storage Providers, and other network participants can send and receive FIL directly from Ledger devices while their private keys remain secure and are never exposed to third parties. ^[29]

Filecoin x Polygon Studios

On February 16, 2022, Filecoin and Polygon Studios announced a partnership to promote development in the NFT, games, and metaverse industries. The collaboration began with creating educational resources, financial incentives, and hackathon events to support developers and NFT projects on the Polygon network in integrating with IPFS and Filecoin. ^[16][17]

Filecoin x Avalanche

On May 27th, 2025, Filecoin and Avalanche introduced a native cross-chain data bridge between Avalanche’s C-Chain and Filecoin’s network via the Filecoin Virtual Machine (FEVM). This integration enables data generated on Avalanche to be securely stored on Filecoin, with continuous on-chain verification of storage proofs, allowing payment and data integrity to be managed across both networks.

The bridge offers verifiable, decentralized archival storage that meets enterprise needs for compliance and auditability, while reducing storage costs for Avalanche projects by offloading archival data to Filecoin. Its modular design supports cross-chain interoperability, enabling developers to build scalable multi-chain applications that combine Avalanche’s fast execution with Filecoin’s decentralized storage capabilities. ^[28]