Filecoin plans to shift block rewards toward paid storage

Filecoin is rewriting how it pays the people who keep its network running. Under FIP-0118, nicknamed “Solstice,” a growing slice of block rewards will depend on whether customers actually pay for storage.

How the new reward split works

The change divides each block reward into three streams. The first is the consensus share, which goes to storage providers that win blocks.

That consensus share currently sits at 95%. Under FIP-0118, it steps down toward a 50% floor over about nine quarters, or roughly 2.25 years.

The second stream is a service share, directed to Registered Service Orchestrators. These are the participants tasked with driving paid demand onto the network.

The service share starts at 5%. It can climb in 5% increments, but only when on-chain Filecoin Pay volume hits targets denominated in US dollars.

The third stream is the twist. Any portion of the service share that goes unearned is burned, meaning it is permanently removed from circulation rather than handed out to someone else.

Timing and the supply picture

The new structure is set to activate with the nv29 mainnet upgrade. That upgrade is scheduled for epoch 6470279 on October 19, 2026, at approximately 12:59 UTC.

It lands just days after another supply event. The six-year vesting schedule for Protocol Labs and Filecoin Foundation allocations is expected to wrap up around October 15, 2026.

The end of that genesis vesting removes roughly 66.7 million FIL per year from the supply schedule. Combined, these changes are expected to cut daily new FIL issuance by around 75%.

Why Filecoin is ditching Fil+

FIP-0118 replaces the Filecoin Plus (Fil+) DataCap system. Fil+ was meant to steer rewards toward useful data by granting extra reward weight to storage of verified client data.

In practice, the system proved prone to governance problems and exploitation. When the reward for looking like a real client is high enough, some participants will put real effort into looking like one.

The new design swaps human-administered verification for a simpler test: is there on-chain payment volume? Money changing hands through Filecoin Pay becomes the signal, rather than an allocator’s sign-off.

What this means for FIL holders and storage providers

For storage providers, the math changes gradually but meaningfully. As the consensus share slides from 95% toward 50%, providers who depend only on winning blocks will see that portion of rewards shrink over the transition window.

The burn mechanism creates an interesting dynamic. If paid usage underperforms, more tokens get destroyed, which tightens supply. If paid usage outperforms, more tokens go to service orchestrators, but that would reflect genuine revenue on the network.

The design also makes Filecoin’s health easier to read from the outside. Filecoin Pay volume against USD targets gives observers a public scorecard, and every 5% step in the service share becomes a visible milestone.

The dollar-denominated targets tie a crypto-native reward schedule to fiat-measured activity, so swings in FIL’s price could affect how quickly payment volume reaches the thresholds.

The key dates to watch are October 15, 2026, for the end of genesis vesting, and October 19, 2026, for the nv29 upgrade at epoch 6470279.