Filecoin (FIL) has named a 14-member selection committee to oversee its $4 million ProPGF Batch 2 funding round, with over 100 applications now under review for milestone-based grants. The committee will finalize decisions by late January, targeting infrastructure, research, and tooling projects across the decentralized storage network.

FIL trades at $1.59 as of January 15, up 3.22% in 24 hours amid broader ecosystem momentum.

Who’s Deciding Where the Money Goes

The committee reads like a who’s-who of Filecoin’s operational backbone. FilOz brings two seats—CEO Molly Mackinlay and COO Jennifer Wang. The Filecoin Foundation contributes three members: Business Development Lead Paul Wagner, Senior Fellow Danny O’Brian, and Founding Officer Clara Tsao.

Regional representation comes through Irma Jiang, who leads Orbit Greater China and co-founded ND Labs. External perspective arrives via Mark Ery, Grant Operations Lead at Starknet, adding cross-ecosystem experience to the mix.

Rounding out the group: Jonathan Victor from Ansa Research, Sarah Thiam of FIL-B, Eva Shon from Fil-Ponto, ZX Zhang leading CryptoEconLab, FIDL Executive Director Marta Piekarska Geater, and the two ProPGF stewards—Sejal Rekhan and Josh Daniels.

What They’re Looking For

Applications opened in December 2025, generating what the Filecoin team called “a broad spectrum of work” spanning core infrastructure, economic research, sustainability initiatives, and developer tooling.

The committee’s evaluation criteria prioritize projects that move Filecoin’s core metrics—not a vague goal, but tied to the network’s published ecosystem metrics framework. They’re specifically hunting for:

• Infrastructure gap fixes
• Storage provider and developer enablement tools
• Research with “clear learning value”
• Teams showing verifiable progress plans

Reviewers began scoring applications in early January and may contact applicants directly through Karma for clarifying interviews before final decisions.

Timeline and Payouts

End of January brings final selections. February handles KYC and onboarding, with payouts following successful compliance checks. The milestone-based structure means teams won’t receive lump sums—funding releases as projects hit agreed benchmarks.

This comes as Filecoin pushes toward its Onchain Cloud Mainnet launch, with the network positioning itself as programmable data infrastructure rather than simple storage. The Atlas Eon 100 integration announced January 12 for blockchain data permanence reflects that broader compute-plus-storage direction.

For applicants still waiting: check Karma for committee comments. For everyone else watching FIL, late January decision announcements could signal which infrastructure bets the ecosystem is making for 2026.

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