Originally published at mrnasdog.com/research/fil/inflation by MrNasdog.
Filecoin put about 38.9M FIL into the market over the last 90 days against a buy side of just 0.16M, and the MrNasdog Pressure Framework reads +4.73% net for that window against a supply monitor reading of +4.97% — a gap of 0.24 percentage points, inside tolerance. The structural point about Filecoin is that FIL supply has three taps, not one: a decaying block-reward mint, the six-year genesis vesting, and — the leg a mint-only reading misses entirely — 17.0M FIL of storage pledge collateral handed back to the float as network capacity shrank 21%. Filecoin's genesis cap of 2B FIL is real, but it constrains nothing on this timescale; the constraint that actually bites is the calendar, because the vesting tap closes for good on Oct 14 2026.
The verdict, in one paragraph
Over the last 90 days the MrNasdog Pressure Framework reads Filecoin at +4.73% net: about 38.9M FIL reaching the market against 0.16M removed by the protocol fee burn, on a circulating base of 819.23M FIL. Our supply monitor reads the same trailing window at +4.97% — a gap of 0.24 percentage points, comfortably inside the framework's half-point tolerance, so this build ships no monitor-gap chip and needs no reconciliation walk. Projected forward, the framework reads +3.51% for the next 90 days, lower because the genesis vesting has only 11.2M FIL left to give and the collateral release is running slower than it did in the spring. Filecoin is best labelled structurally inflationary on a shrinking network — an unusual case where the token's supply pressure rises precisely because the network it secures is getting smaller.
Sell pressure: where new FIL comes from
The largest line is not the mint. Sell #5, released storage collateral, contributed about 17.0M FIL over the last 90 days. Filecoin storage providers must post FIL as initial pledge behind every sector they seal; that collateral is returned when the sector is retired. Read on-chain, Filecoin's quality-adjusted storage power fell from 15.75 exabytes to 12.42 exabytes across the window — a drop of 21% — and total pledge collateral fell with it from roughly 82.4M FIL to 65.39M FIL. That released FIL was minted years ago; it does not increase total supply, but it lands in the tradable float, which is exactly what the framework measures. At the pace measured over the two weeks to Aug 14 2026, the next 90 days return about 12.5M FIL more.
Sell #2, vesting unlocks, contributed about 16.4M FIL. The genesis multisigs holding 400M FIL for Protocol Labs and the Filecoin Foundation release linearly across six years, which the chain shows as roughly 182,700 FIL a day, every day, with no cliff structure at all. This is the leg with a hard end date: the unlock schedule completes on Oct 14 2026, six years to the day from its start, leaving only 11.2M FIL to release inside the forward window and zero after it. Sell #1, protocol inflation, is the smallest of the three at about 5.5M FIL: the Filecoin block reward runs on two schedules — simple minting on a pure time decay and baseline minting tied to the storage baseline — that both halve every six years, so the measured mint of about 59,700 FIL a day is already falling roughly 6% per quarter and projects to 5.2M forward.
The other two sell rows are zero, and both are enumerated rather than ignored. Sell #3, foundation and unscheduled unlocks, is 0 because neither team-controlled balance moved: the Filecoin mining reserve sat unchanged at both on-chain reads this build, and the genesis multisig balances were identical at both ends of the window. Sell #4 is 0 because Filecoin is a live project with no bankruptcy estate, no trustee and no court-ordered distribution schedule.
Buy pressure: where new FIL goes
Filecoin's only working buy-side mechanism is the protocol fee burn, and it is small. Buy #2 reads about 0.16M FIL for the window. Filecoin destroys FIL in three ways — the gas base fee, the daily per-sector fee introduced by FIP-0100, and the penalties providers owe when they miss a proof — and all of it lands in a single account nobody can spend from, so the burn is directly readable as a balance that only rises. That balance took in about 1,740 FIL a day over the two weeks to Aug 14 2026. The burn is real and permanent, but at this level it offsets under half a percent of what the sell side adds.
The remaining three buy rows are zero. Buy #1, programmatic buyback, is 0 because Filecoin has never deployed one — there is no repurchase contract, no revenue-funded buy programme, and fee income is burned rather than recycled into FIL purchases. Buy #3, foundation buy, is 0 because neither Protocol Labs nor the Filecoin Foundation discloses open-market FIL accumulation. Buy #4, new long-term lock, is 0 for a subtler reason: new sectors genuinely do lock fresh pledge collateral, but across the whole Filecoin network less is being locked than is being handed back, so the net movement is the release already booked in Sell #5. Counting the gross lock here would count the same FIL twice.
Foundation and overhang
Two team-controlled overhangs are tracked on Filecoin, and the larger one is very large. The first is the Filecoin mining reserve, a protocol account holding about 282.93M FIL — roughly 35% of everything currently circulating — with no published release schedule whatsoever. Of the original 300M allocation only about 17.07M has ever been disbursed, and none since 2021. It is fully readable on-chain and refreshed every rebuild. The second is the set of genesis vesting multisigs, which still held about 27.75M FIL at this build, unchanged across the window; what those wallets release on schedule is already counted in Sell #2, so only an unscheduled move would be new.
Neither overhang carries a projected value. A balance that has not moved in five years gives no basis for forecasting a release; the ability to sell is not the same thing as a pattern of selling. If either overhang's balance falls between refreshes — the mining reserve through a governance decision to disburse or burn it, or a genesis multisig through a transfer beyond its schedule — that outflow enters Sell #3 at the next refresh, and until then both stay enumerated at 0.
How FIL compares to other collateral-backed storage and infrastructure networks
The mechanism that sets Filecoin apart from almost every other Layer 1 is that its float is elastic in both directions. A proof-of-stake chain like Cosmos Hub or Avalanche has one tap: the mint. Staking on those chains is a withdrawal delay, not a lock, and staked coins already sit inside the circulating figure, so a validator leaving changes nothing about supply. Filecoin's pledge collateral is a genuine lock — those FIL are subtracted from circulating supply by the protocol's own definition — which means Filecoin's float expands when the network contracts. Growth in stored capacity is deflationary for FIL and decline is inflationary, independent of the block reward entirely. That is why the collateral leg at 17.0M FIL outweighs the mint at 5.5M FIL by more than three to one.
Against hard-capped halving chains the comparison is more familiar but still unflattering. Bitcoin and its forks have a fixed cap and a fixed halving calendar, and by 2026 their issuance is the only supply line that exists. Filecoin also has a fixed cap — 2B FIL, set at genesis and never raised — and its block reward also decays, on a six-year half-life rather than a four-year step. But the cap is not the binding constraint here: circulating supply of 819.23M FIL is still less than half the cap, so the ceiling is decades away and the near-term ledger is dominated by unlocks and collateral rather than by issuance.
Against tokens with a working buy side, Filecoin is simply on the wrong side of the ledger. Chains that burn a base fee can turn net-negative under heavy usage, and exchange tokens with quarterly buybacks retire supply on a schedule. Filecoin burns too, but its burn is running at about 0.16M FIL a quarter — a rounding error next to a 38.9M sell side — and it has no buyback at all. For FIL's net reading to improve materially, the sell side has to shrink; there is no buy-side lever available to pull.
What to watch in the next 90 days
First and most important, Oct 14 2026: the six-year genesis vesting completes and the single largest scheduled tap turns off permanently, removing roughly 16.4M FIL per quarter of recurring supply from every window after it. Second, Filecoin's quality-adjusted storage power — if the decline from 15.75 to 12.42 exabytes flattens out, the collateral release flattens with it and the framework reading falls sharply; if the decline steepens, the release grows. Third, the Solstice proposal introduced on Jul 17 2026 (FIP-0118), which would reorient Filecoin block rewards toward paid storage deals rather than raw committed capacity; it is at governance stage with no activation date and no quantum, so it is not in this ledger. Fourth, any governance movement on the 282.93M FIL mining reserve, which is the only overhang large enough to reset the whole reading. Fifth, the fee burn: the nv28 Firehorse upgrade on May 27 2026 adjusted the base-fee target, and a sustained rise in Filecoin network activity is the only path to a burn that matters.
Summary
The MrNasdog Pressure Framework reads Filecoin at +4.73% net supply growth over the last 90 days and +3.51% projected forward, against a monitor reading of +4.97% that agrees within 0.24 percentage points. The structural mechanism is a three-tap float — a decaying block-reward mint, a six-year genesis vesting schedule, and pledge collateral returning as storage capacity leaves — set against a fee burn of about 0.16M FIL and no buyback of any kind. The key risk is that Filecoin's supply pressure is inversely tied to network health: every exabyte of capacity that switches off hands FIL back to the market, so a continued contraction keeps the reading elevated even as the mint decays. The genuine ceiling is the genesis cap of 2B FIL, still more than double today's 819.23M circulating and therefore not the binding constraint; the constraint that matters within the year is the calendar date of Oct 14 2026, when the vesting tap closes for good.
MrNasdog Pressure Framework analysis of FIL, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Updated Aug 14 2026.
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