Usage Reporting

This document explains how FilBeam reports usage on-chain and what this means for transparency.

For the complete payment flow, see Payment Model.

Why On-Chain Reporting?

FilBeam records all egress usage on the Filecoin blockchain to ensure transparency and support for on-chain settlement.

This design also lets storage providers settle their payment rails at any time without relying on FilBeam to initiate or distribute payments.

What Gets Reported

FilBeam reports two metrics for each data set:

Metric	Description	Purpose
CDN bytes	Total egress (cache hits + cache misses)	Determines FilBeam’s CDN fees
Cache-miss bytes	Only traffic fetched from storage providers	Determines storage provider compensation

What’s Excluded

Not all traffic counts toward billing:

• Invalid responses - Cache misses where the response was invalid are not counted towards total bytes used
• Empty responses - Only responses with actual bytes delivered are counted towards total bytes used

Important Caveat

Only traffic proxied through FilBeam is reported on-chain.

If users retrieve content directly from storage providers (bypassing FilBeam):

• That traffic is NOT recorded in FilBeam’s systems
• It is NOT reported to the blockchain
• It is NOT subject to FilBeam billing
• The Storage Provider is NOT rewarded for the retrieval service

This is by design - FilBeam only bills for traffic it actually serves.

Reporting Schedule

Usage is aggregated and reported periodically:

Network	Frequency
Calibration	Every 30 minutes
Mainnet	Every 4 hours

Usage is reported up to the previous complete Filecoin epoch, ensuring only finalized data is recorded on-chain.

See Also

Explanations:

• Payment Model - Complete payment flow from top-up to settlement
• Quota System - Understanding the dual quota design

How-To Guides:

• Observe Reported Usage - Monitor on-chain usage data

Reference:

• FilBeamOperator Contract - Complete ABI documentation