Ease pledge collateral requirements in times when tokens are hard to lease, secured against future rewards.

Goals

There are two specific problems that we seek to mitigate:

1. There is a shortage of FIL tokens available for SPs to lease as pledge collateral relative to their capacity to onboard. These tokens exist, but for one reason or another are not available to SPs. This is artificially constraining network growth.
2. The circulating supply of Filecoin tokens is growing, as inflows outstrip outflows. This makes long-term SP returns less predictable.

These problems are mutually reinforcing: constrained network growth limits the flow of tokens from circulating into pledge, and inflation may be one reason token holders are unwilling to enter long-term locking agreements which could enable growth.

These problems aren’t forever. In time, increased scale and accessibility of token leasing programs and applications (especially on the FVM) will make leasing much more widespread. Decaying block reward emissions and the cessation of SAFT vesting will ease inflation pressure. But in the meantime, the network could benefit significantly from a mechanism made available now.

Challenges

Naive reductions in pledge requirements could compromise economic security and incentive alignment, or unduly impact storage provider returns.

The long term solution to leased token access is scalable matching platforms and markets. These platforms will increase pledge token availability and expand the set of mutually aligned participants. A “too good” network built-in solution could undercut these systems and hamper their development.

Solutions

Shortfall limited by repayment ability

One approach we are exploring in detail is support for onboarding with less than the required pledge collateral (a shortfall), limited by the storage provider’s expected ability to meet the full requirement from future earned rewards.

• FIP discussion #666
• 🏦Pledge Shortfall v2 – proposal