OKXOKX Research: Can FIL Continue to Rise in the Future?
Recently, FIL's sustained surge has drawn significant market attention. As the first digital assets platform to launch FIL perpetual contracts, OKX has been closely monitoring FIL's actual operations and future development. Additionally, in the blockchain space, the valuation and pricing of cryptocurrency has always been a focal point of market concern. Therefore, let us take this FIL price surge as an opportunity to explore how much upside potential FIL still has, using the industry's latest valuation methodologies.
1. Filecoin Overview
1. Filecoin and FIL
Filecoin is a distributed data storage and distribution network that relies on blockchain-based Proof of Storage (PoS) and features built-in economic incentives. It fully leverages the idle storage resources of vast numbers of users to build an ultra-low-cost, reliable storage system. Miners earn the native token ("FIL") by providing data storage and retrieval services, while users pay FIL to store and retrieve data.
2. FIL Distribution
The maximum supply of FIL is 2 billion tokens. In FIL's original block allocation, 10% was allocated for fundraising, with 7.5% sold in 2017 and the remaining 2.5% reserved for ecosystem development and future fundraising. 15% was allocated to Protocol Labs, with 4.5% going to the lab team and contributors. 5% was allocated to the Filecoin Foundation. The remaining 70% was distributed to miners as mining rewards for providing data storage services, maintaining the blockchain, distributing data, and executing contracts, with 55% allocated as storage mining rewards and 15% held as a mining reward reserve.
Figure 1: FIL Token Distribution
3. FIL Current Status
According to OKX Trading data, since February 8, 2021, FIL's price has shown significant growth, rising from $23 to $47 within 10 days, an increase of over 200%, and subsequently fluctuating around $40 for a month. FIL's price took off on March 12, surging to a high of $197, a gain of over 750% in just 2 months, reflecting strong market interest in FIL.
2. How Much Upside Potential Does FIL Have?
1. The Unique Aspects of FIL Valuation
Compared to other financial assets, the uniqueness of cryptocurrency lies in its inability to generate cash flows, which renders many traditional financial asset valuation tools inapplicable to the cryptocurrency space. Additionally, for traditional financial assets, their asset nature rarely changes. However, for cryptocurrency, its nature can change as the blockchain network goes live or other circumstances arise: FIL is a typical case in point.
In Filecoin, FIL is used by miners as collateral, and clients use FIL to pay storage and retrieval fees. At this point, FIL is essentially a utility token with functional utility. On the other hand, some users purchase FIL not to use as collateral or to buy storage/retrieval services, but to sell to others in the future for investment returns. At this point, FIL resembles a security token.
It is precisely due to these characteristics of cryptocurrency that FIL's valuation becomes exceptionally tricky. Fortunately, as the cryptocurrency market has gradually grown and matured, an increasing number of excellent valuation tools have emerged. Here, let us try applying several common relative valuation metrics to price FIL.
2. MVT Relative Valuation Method
The MVT (Market Cap to Transaction Value) metric was first proposed by Willy Woo in 2017. The core idea is that the market cap of a cryptocurrency is proportional to the transaction volume of its blockchain network. Regarding network transaction volume, different scholars employ different metrics: it can be transaction counts or transaction amounts. The issue with FIL is that its primary function is not to provide transfer payment services like BTC; its utility is mostly concentrated in collateral, storage, and retrieval fees, making it difficult to use transaction amounts as a measure like BTC.
To address this, we define blockchain network transaction volume as the daily number of messages packaged in blocks, with a 15-day smoothing applied, yielding the following table:
Token
FIL
Market Cap (100M USD)
63.43
10006.18
1952.12
On-chain Transaction Volume
252169.00
320199.00
1230339.00
NVT
4293.80
3124987.07
158665.05
FIL Valuation (100M USD)
—
7880.25
400.10
As can be seen above, using BTC as the comparable, FIL's future market cap could reach $788.025 billion; using ETH as the benchmark, FIL's market cap could reach $40 billion.
3. PMR Relative Valuation Method
Since the rise of the internet wave in the 1990s, Metcalfe's Law has been widely applied in valuing internet companies. Metcalfe's Law was proposed by George Gilder in 1993, stating that the value of a network equals the square of the number of nodes in that network, and that the network's value is proportional to the square of the number of connected users.
In the blockchain space, the PMR metric is also used to estimate a blockchain's network value—meaning a cryptocurrency's market cap is proportional to the square of the number of addresses on the blockchain. For FIL, its mainnet has been live for just over half a year and is still in its early stages, with not much FIL in circulation. To account for this, through time factor analysis, we adjusted the address counts for BTC and ETH, taking BTC wallet addresses with balances greater than 0.1 and ETH wallet addresses with balances greater than 1, with a 30-day smoothing applied. This yields the following table:
Token
FIL
Market Cap (100M USD)
63.43
10006.18
1952.12
Network Address Count (Adjusted)
PMR Metric
0.029
0.096
0.136
FIL Valuation (100M USD)
—
207.90
294.27
As can be seen above, using BTC as the comparable, FIL's future market cap could reach $20.79 billion; using ETH as the benchmark, FIL's market cap could reach $29.427 billion.
4. TVLR Relative Valuation Method
Currently, the similarity between Filecoin and DeFi lies in that both require substantial collateral lockups to ensure the smooth operation of the system. Therefore, we can use Total Value Locked (TVL) to estimate FIL's value. Here, we select Compound and SushiSwap, two leading DeFi projects, as references.
Considering that FIL and DeFi belong to two different blockchain networks, and one uses FIL as collateral while the other primarily uses ETH as collateral, we use the staking volume/circulating supply ratio to construct the TVLR metric as a standard for measuring the relative lockup value of different tokens, as shown in the table below:
Token
FIL
COMP
Market Cap (100M USD)
68.43
55.2
44.2
TVL Market Cap (100M USD)
127.11
17.69
20.17
TVLR
53.84%
1.24%
1.01%
FIL Valuation (100M USD)
—
768.02
1075.11
Therefore, if measured by TVLR, FIL's market cap could potentially reach $70–100 billion in the future.
3. Conclusion
FIL's rapid rise recently has attracted tremendous market attention. This article summarizes common cryptocurrency valuation methods and applies them to FIL, providing FIL valuation methodologies and references for FIL's value. The valuation results all indicate that, based on current market information, FIL's price has the potential for 2 to 10 times growth in the long term. Of course, FIL's price surge has been too rapid, and there remains downside risk in the short term. Therefore, we also hope that all investors will approach the cryptocurrency market rationally.
FIL Valuation
MVT Metric
PMR Metric
TVLR Metric
Future Upside Potential
Growth of 5x or more
Growth of 2x or more
Growth of 10x or more
Disclaimer: Digital assets trading involves significant risk. This material should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions, nor should it be construed as investment trading advice. Please ensure you fully understand the risks involved and invest cautiously. The OKX Academy provides information for reference only and does not constitute any investment advice. All investment behavior by users is unrelated to this site.
Disclaimer
This article may contain information about products not available in your region. This article is solely intended to provide general information and does not accept responsibility for any factual errors or omissions. This article represents the author's personal views only and does not represent OKX's views. This article is not intended to provide any advice, including but not limited to: (i) investment advice or investment recommendations; (ii) offers or solicitations to buy, sell, or hold digital assets; or (iii) financial, accounting, legal, or tax advice. Holdings in digital assets (including stablecoins) involve high risk and may fluctuate significantly or even become worthless. You should carefully consider whether trading or holding digital assets is appropriate for you based on your financial situation. For questions specific to your circumstances, please consult your legal/tax/investment professional. The information contained herein (including market data and statistics, where applicable) is provided for general reference purposes only. Although we have taken all reasonable precautions in preparing such data and charts, we do not accept any responsibility for any factual errors or omissions expressed herein. © 2025 OKX. This article may be reproduced or distributed in its entirety or used in excerpts of 100 words or less, provided that such use is non-commercial in nature. Any reproduction or distribution of the full article must prominently state: "This article is copyrighted © 2025 OKX, used with permission." Permitted excerpts must cite the article title and include attribution, for example: "Article Title, [Author Name (if applicable)], © 2025 OKX". Some content may have been generated or assisted by AI tools. Derivative works or other uses of this article are not permitted.
Show More
Recommended Reading
OKX Pay: Ushering in a New Era of Next-Gen Cryptocurrency Payments
The preferred choice of tens of millions of users. Register with OKX and enjoy an exceptional trading experience and diverse wealth management products. A letter from OKX CEO Star: Today, we officially launch the first version of OKX Pay for over 100 million global users. As the industry's first payment application to truly achieve the fusion of non-custodial and compliant solutions, OKX Pay will be embedded within the OKX App and is currently available in select markets, with full global rollout expected in the coming months.
March 22, 2026
A New Chapter: Building the Next Generation of Financial Infrastructure Together
The partnership between OKX and the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) marks a significant milestone for OKX and holds profound meaning for the evolution of the entire digital assets market. ICE builds and operates the world's most critical financial infrastructure, including the New York Stock Exchange and global derivatives and clearing platforms. This investment by ICE Select in OKX and its addition to our Board of Directors reflects our shared belief that digital assets technology will transform financial markets.
March 10, 2026
Honoring Another Year of Relentless Building
As CEO of OKX and a builder who stays true to original aspirations, I take great pride in reflecting on the extraordinary growth and progress OKX has achieved this year. Despite challenges, 2024 was a year marked by focus, innovation, and resilience. Not only did we expand and optimize our products, but we also made significant strides in launching transparent and regulation-compliant localized businesses, while further strengthening our global management team. It is worth noting that after experiencing.
January 29, 2026
2025: Steady Progress Toward Financial Freedom
— An End-of-Year Letter to Global Users from Star, Founder & CEO of OKX. "Financial freedom" is often misunderstood. It does not mean an absence of rules, but rather the right to remain in control despite them—and to trust that when systems are truly put to the test, they remain reliable and effective. This has been our unwavering focus throughout 2025. First and foremost, I want to extend my heartfelt gratitude to our global customers, partners, and regulators.
January 16, 2026
OKX Officially Launches in Germany and Poland
By Erald Ghoos, CEO of OKX Europe. Today is a significant day for OKX—and for crypto users across Europe. We have officially launched our fully compliant centralized cryptocurrency trading platform in Germany and Poland! For us, this is more than a geographic expansion; it is a commitment to building the future of cryptocurrency the right way: secure, transparent, and tailored to local needs. If you are in Germany.
October 21, 2025
Partnership Upgrade! OKX and Standard Chartered Join Forces to Expand into Europe
On October 15, Erald Ghoos, CEO of OKX Europe, stated that OKX is expanding its strategic partnership with Standard Chartered to the European Economic Area (EEA). Earlier this year, OKX first partnered with Standard Chartered in the UAE to launch the Collateral Mirroring program—a.
October 15, 2025
