Filecoin

Holding FIL pays nothing; new FIL goes to storage providers as block rewards for proven storage work, backed by their own collateral.

Riba means interest or any guaranteed increase on a loan. Simply holding FIL earns nothing. New FIL is minted as block rewards that go to storage providers who win blocks in proportion to the storage they prove they hold; providers must lock their own FIL as pledge collateral, which is cut if they fail, and 75% of each reward vests over 180 days. This is a variable payment for real work with the risk of loss, not a return on a loan, and the protocol has no interest-bearing function. Islamic Finance Guru (IFG), the authoritative source for Filecoin, rates it permissible.

Filecoin is a working storage network and FIL has a clear role; IFG, the authoritative source for Filecoin, rates it permissible.

Mal is property that Islamic law recognises as having value and that can be owned and traded. Filecoin clearly works: its mainnet has run since 15 October 2020, providers held about 1.54 EiB of raw storage on 27 September 2026, and FIL is needed to pay for storage and fees and as provider collateral. Official bodies disagree about cryptocurrency in general: Malaysia's Securities Commission Shariah Advisory Council (2020) treats it as tradable goods on registered exchanges, while Egypt's Dar al-Ifta (2017), the UAE General Authority of Islamic Affairs (2018), Turkey's Diyanet (2017) and

FIL is not a gambling token, though perpetual futures trade about 6.7 times as much as spot at the venues we sampled.

Maysir is gambling: winning or losing by chance rather than through productive exchange. Ordinary price swings are not maysir, and FIL has no chance-based payout of its own; it pays for storage and backs provider collateral on a working network. The market around it is heavily speculative, though: on 27 September 2026 FIL perpetual futures on Binance, OKX and Bybit turned over about $475 million in 24 hours, against about $71 million of spot trading at five sampled spot exchanges, about 6.7 times more (a single-day snapshot). That weight of leveraged trading lowers the score within pass.

Clients pay storage providers for a lawful service and base fees are burned; no interest or prohibited income was found in the protocol.

This criterion asks how the issuer or protocol earns, and whether any of that income is impermissible. Filecoin's economy is a market for storage: clients pay providers for storing and retrieving data, block rewards pay providers for proven storage, and network fees partly burn FIL (about 43 million FIL by 27 September 2026) rather than going to a company. Protocol Labs (15%), the Filecoin Foundation (5%) and 2017 token-sale investors (7.5%) received allocations that vested over three to six years.

Supply rules are public and enforced by the network; changes go through public improvement proposals.

Gharar is excessive uncertainty or hidden information in a deal. Filecoin's supply rules are public in its specification: a cap of 2 billion FIL, simple minting of 330 million FIL on a six-year half-life, baseline minting of up to 770 million FIL tied to network storage, and a 300 million FIL mining reserve. Changes are made through public Filecoin Improvement Proposals; FIP-0118 (Solstice), accepted in September 2026 but not yet scheduled on mainnet, will change how rewards are shared, and insider vesting ends in mid-October 2026.

FIL is used to pay for data storage, fees and provider collateral; interest-based lending to providers exists but is not the network's purpose.

This criterion looks at what the network is actually used for. Filecoin's main use is storing data: providers held about 1.54 EiB of raw storage on 27 September 2026, and FIL pays for storage deals, fees and provider collateral. Paid demand is still small: FilecoinTLDR reports that Filecoin Pay reached an annualised run-rate of about $59,000 in August 2026. One impermissible activity is documented around the network: storage providers commonly finance their collateral by borrowing FIL from lending pools such as GLIF at a fixed 15% interest rate.

Fully paid spot FIL is widely available, including on Coinbase and Kraken, and can be held in one's own wallet.

This criterion asks whether the asset can be owned in a permissible way. FIL trades spot, with full payment and delivery, on Binance, OKX, Bybit, Coinbase and Kraken, and it can be withdrawn to a self-custody wallet where the owner holds the keys. It can also be earned directly by providing storage. Ownership therefore does not depend on derivatives or leveraged wrappers, so the criterion gets the full score; the weight of derivatives trading is counted under maysir.

Filecoin offers open, verifiable data storage, including of public datasets and archives; no dominant misuse was found.

Maslahah weighs public benefit against harm. The benefit is an open storage market in which anyone can store data or become a provider, with cryptographic proofs that data is still held, used among other things for public datasets and archives. Preparing and proving storage uses specialised hardware and energy, and the number of active providers is modest (496 on 27 September 2026), but no evidence was found that Filecoin is mainly used for fraud or sanctions evasion, so the criterion gets the full score. Speculative trading losses are counted under maysir, not again here.