The committee will evaluate more than 100 applications submitted through the Karma platform before a December 2025 deadline. That application volume is more than twice the 38 proposals reviewed in the program's first round last May, signaling growing awareness of the funding mechanism among Filecoin developers and infrastructure teams worldwide.

ProPGF, short for Proactive Public Goods Funding, is Filecoin's semi-annual grant program for teams building core network infrastructure, developer tools, research, and open-source software. Unlike retroactive grant models that reward completed work, ProPGF funds projects before they are finished. Capital is released in tranches as grantees hit verified milestones. Program stewards Sejal Rekhan and Josh Daniels, who also serve as full voting members of the review committee alongside the other 12 panelists, described the committee's role in a statement published to the Filecoin blog: "Our goal is to continue strengthening a credible, transparent, and community-aligned funding process. The committee plays a central role in ensuring that projects selected for milestone-based funding have the potential to make Filecoin more useful, resilient, and impactful."

The Committee

The 14-member panel draws from across the Filecoin ecosystem and includes one external voice. The full committee is: Jennifer Wang (COO, FilOz), Molly Mackinlay (CEO, FilOz), Jonathan Victor (co-founder, Ansa Research), Sarah Thiam (founder and CEO, FIL-B), Clara Tsao (Founding Officer, Filecoin Foundation), Danny O'Brian (Senior Fellow, Filecoin Foundation), Marta Piekarska Geater (Executive Director, FIDL, the Filecoin Incentive Design Labs), Eva Shon (founder, Fil-Ponto), ZX Zhang (Lead, CryptoEconLab), Paul Wagner (BD Lead, Filecoin Foundation), Irma Jiang, Mark Ery (Grant Operations Lead, Starknet), Sejal Rekhan, and Josh Daniels.

Irma Jiang, who leads Orbit Greater China and co-founded ND Labs and MSquare, brings an Asia-Pacific perspective to the panel, particularly relevant given the concentration of Filecoin storage providers operating in that region. The only panelist from outside the Filecoin ecosystem is Mark Ery, Grant Operations Lead at Starknet. Starknet runs one of the more operationally mature grant programs in crypto, and observers note that his inclusion reflects an interest in importing cross-ecosystem institutional knowledge into Filecoin's review function.

One aspect of the committee composition that Filecoin's announcement does not directly address is the participation of Eva Shon. Shon is the founder of Fil-Ponto, which received one of the five maximum-size awards ($500,000) in Batch 1. She now sits on the Batch 2 review committee. Filecoin's announcement does not detail any conflict-of-interest or recusal policy governing this or similar overlaps, and the program has not publicly addressed whether any recusal occurred.

What Batch 1 Revealed

The first ProPGF batch, which ran in May 2025, awarded $3,681,800 across 14 teams. Top recipients included IPNI ($480,000), FIL Ponto ($500,000), CIDgravity Gateway ($500,000), Curio Storage ($500,000), and FilCDN as FWS Services ($500,000). A post-batch review by the program team acknowledged several operational shortcomings: slow disbursements, redundant requirements around milestone documentation, and friction during identity verification steps. Batch 2 is designed to address these gaps through a shared metrics framework, dashboard-based progress tracking, and a clearer, more predictable disbursal cycle.

A notable finding from the review was that the milestone-based structure added rigor and built trust between teams and reviewers. Several teams reported it was "the first time they could see how and why funding decisions were made," according to the Batch 1 reflections post. For many applicants, visibility into that decision-making process appeared to carry real value alongside the funding itself.

Token Context

FIL, the native token of the Filecoin network, was trading near $0.98 to $1.00 as of March 2, 2026, giving the project a market cap of roughly $741.6 million (CoinGecko, rank 81). Circulating supply stands at approximately 760 million FIL against a total supply of about 1.96 billion. The token has seen significant price compression from its 2021 highs. In that context, a $4 million USD grant pool is a meaningful commitment, representing roughly 0.5% of current market cap. The program's USD framing suggests that recipient teams may be shielded from token volatility during the months-long milestone process, though Filecoin has not publicly specified whether grants are formally denominated in USD or FIL.

On the network side, EVM-compatible contract calls on Filecoin nearly tripled year-over-year in 2025 to approximately 4.1 million, and the developer community grew to more than 5,000 activations (an internal metric tracking new developer engagements on the network). Storage capacity exceeds 20 exbibytes across roughly 3,000 providers globally.

Regional Gaps Worth Watching

For builders outside North America and Western Europe, the committee composition tells a partial story. Irma Jiang provides meaningful APAC representation, particularly for Greater China where a large concentration of Filecoin storage providers operates. However, neither Batch 1 nor Batch 2 documentation publicly breaks down applications or awards by geography, and no committee member carries a dedicated Sub-Saharan African or South Asian focus. That absence matters given that Filecoin's cost profile, estimated at roughly 87% below AWS Glacier pricing for cold storage according to industry estimates, is most relevant precisely in regions where developer teams cannot afford hyperscaler rates. KYC and KYB compliance requirements (know-your-customer and know-your-business identity checks) were flagged as a friction point in Batch 1, and those processes tend to be more burdensome for teams in jurisdictions with less standardized documentation infrastructure, a dynamic the Batch 1 reflections post notes disproportionately affects builders in more complex compliance environments.

Teams in these regions looking to participate have options below the ProPGF threshold. FIL-B's Builder Next Step Grants offer $5,000 to $10,000 for early-stage projects, with applications submitted through FIL-B directly. ProPGF applications are handled separately via the Karma platform.

What Comes Next

Filecoin has outlined two additional ProPGF batches for 2026, one in Spring and one in Fall, each targeting approximately $4 million. Combined with the two completed batches, that puts the program on track to distribute roughly $16 million through the end of the year. For regional builders interested in the Spring 2026 round, the Karma platform is the expected application channel. The Filecoin Foundation's separate FIL-RetroPGF program, which awarded more than 500,000 FIL tokens to 91 projects in its third round, continues to run in parallel as a complementary retroactive funding track.