Filecoin (FIL)
Unlock Schedule
Filecoin (FIL) Token Unlock & Vesting Schedule
The unlock chart above provides a clear visual overview of the Filecoin (FIL) token release schedule, showing when and how tokens enter circulation across investor, team, treasury, and community allocations. Understanding these tokenomics dynamics is critical for evaluating potential supply pressure, inflation impact, and market liquidity over time — key factors that can influence FIL price performance.
Each color segment in the chart corresponds to a specific allocation group described in the Allocations section below. Underlying assumptions and data models used to reconstruct this schedule are explained in detail under Assumptions, while broader utility insights and token use cases are covered in Tokenomics & Utility.
Tokenomics & Utility
Filecoin tokenomics at a glance
- Max supply: 2 billion FIL.
- 70% of supply is allocated to miners over time, with “simple minting” (time-based, six‑year half-life) and “baseline minting” (indexed to network growth).
- A 300M FIL mining reserve exists for future incentive models.
- Team and ecosystem allocations vest over six years from October 2020; SAFT investor allocations generally vested over up to three years.
- Gas fees and penalties are burned, permanently removing FIL from circulation. (docs.filecoin.io)
What FIL is used for
- Payments: Clients pay storage and retrieval fees in FIL.
- Collateral: Storage providers lock FIL as pledge collateral and may borrow or source FIL via DeFi on FVM.
- On-chain activity: FIL covers gas for publishing deals, contract calls, and network messages.
The result is an economy where real storage demand and ongoing proofs create recurring uses for the FIL token. (docs.filecoin.io)
Emissions and value drivers
Because large portions of FIL are minted in line with network growth and long-term schedules, supply dynamics evolve over time. Utilization, collateral requirements, gas burns, and staking/lending activity in Filecoin DeFi all influence circulating supply and—by extension—long-run market perceptions of the FIL token and the FIL price. (docs.filecoin.io)
Assumptions
- Baseline minting modeled as a linear 20-year release of 770M FIL from 2020-10-15 to 2040-10-15.
Official spec defines up to 770M FIL released as the network reaches a growing storage baseline; exact timing depends on network performance. A linear schedule provides a tractable approximation for charting.
- Simple minting modeled via five 6-year linear segments matching half-life amounts plus a long-tail segment.
Spec defines a 6-year half-life for the 330M simple-minting pool. Segmenting by half-lives yields correct total amounts per period while preserving monthly granularity.
- Miner reward vesting (75% over 180 days; 25% immediate) is not explicitly lag-modeled in the issuance schedules.
Release schedules reflect minting allocations. Actual circulating supply timing is slightly delayed due to vesting mechanics; chart users may apply a 6-month lag to 75% of mined rewards if needed.
- SAFT investor distribution percentages applied to the 7.5% sold in 2017 (150M FIL).
Official blog enumerates vesting splits for SAFT holders. The remaining 2.5% for ecosystem/future fundraising is not modeled due to lack of an official time-based vesting policy.
- Mining Reserve (300M FIL) excluded from unlock modeling.
Spec states it is held for future mining-related incentives to be determined by governance; no protocol-level emission schedule exists as of the accessed date.
- 1. https://spec.filecoin.io/systems/filecoin_token/token_allocation/
- 2. https://spec.filecoin.io/systems/filecoin_token/minting_model/
- 3. https://filecoin.io/blog/filecoin-circulating-supply/
- 4. https://docs.filecoin.io/basics/what-is-filecoin/crypto-economics
- 5. https://www.filecoin.io/blog/posts/filecoin-mainnet-is-live/
- 6. https://www.filecoin.io/saft-delivery-faqs/