Settlement and tokenomics

The protocol's economic loop is small enough to fit in your head:

  • Per check, agents pay $0.002 USDC to the on-chain Registry.
  • Per match, the matched antibody's publisher earns 80% of the fee. The treasury keeps 20%.
  • Per non-match (no antibody fired), the treasury keeps 100%.
  • Per publish, the publisher locks 1 USDC for 72 hours, refundable on expiry, slashable on lost challenge, rolled into rewards on a match.

That is the whole tokenomics. Everything else is mechanism.

The flow per check()

agent calls check(tx, ctx)
        │
        ▼
SDK walks tiers; tier hits or misses
        │
        ▼
Registry.check(antibodyId, txFacts) ─── 0.002 USDC fee debited from agent's prepaid balance
        │
        ├─ antibodyId == 0 (no match)
        │       │
        │       ▼
        │   treasury += 0.002 USDC
        │
        └─ antibodyId != 0 (match)
                │
                ▼
            publisher += 0.0016 USDC (80%)
            treasury  += 0.0004 USDC (20%)
            antibody.matchCount++
            antibody.valueProtectedUsd += txFacts.valueUsd

The tx itself is never broadcast by the SDK. check() only settles the intent. The agent decides whether to broadcast based on result.allowed.

The prepaid balance

Each agent maintains a prepaid USDC balance held by the Registry. check() debits the fee from it. Top up with deposit(amount), withdraw with withdraw(amount). Read with balance().

The prepaid model removes per-check approval friction. Without it, every check would require an ERC20 transferFrom allowance check, doubling gas. With it, the Registry holds funds for the agent and debits internally.

The publisher stake

publish() locks 1 USDC of stake on chain. The stake unlocks under three conditions, in order of likelihood:

  • 72 hours pass without a challenge, the stake unlocks for withdrawal.
  • The antibody matches a check first, the publisher earns 80% of the protocol fee per match. Match rewards accumulate; the stake itself unlocks on the same 72h schedule.
  • The antibody is challenged and the challenger wins, the stake is slashed (currently sent to the treasury; in v2 it splits between treasury and challenger).

A publisher who consistently mints accurate antibodies turns the 1 USDC stake into a perpetuity. A publisher minting spam loses 1 USDC per false-positive antibody to challengers and never gets stake back.

The challenge mechanism

Anyone can challenge a published antibody within its 72-hour stake-lock window. The challenge process today is governance-driven: a challenger files an on-chain claim, the protocol team or a designated reviewer adjudicates, the loser forfeits stake. The mechanism design will tighten in v2 with optimistic on-chain disputes.

Challenges exist to keep publishers honest. The economics work even if challenges are rare: the threat of being challenged disciplines publishers more than actual challenges do.

What the treasury actually pays for

The treasury is a multisig address controlled by the protocol team. As of writing, accumulated balance funds:

  • 0G Compute charges, every TEE inference paid in OG.
  • Hosting and indexing, Fly machines, Postgres for the public feed indexer, Moralis for token pricing.
  • Bounties, occasional rewards for high-value antibody publications and for the public feed dashboard.
  • Audit costs, contract audits, key rotation overhead.

You can read the live treasury balance from the Registry's treasuryBalance() view. It compounds with every settled non-match check.

What the protocol does not charge for

  • Cache hits. Tier 1 hits still settle on chain (and pay the fee), but the SDK does not double-bill for cache lookups.
  • Reads of the Registry. Anyone can call getAntibody, firstMatch, getAllServices from any RPC client, no balance required. This is how third-party wallet UIs and security researchers consume the public feed without an SDK install.
  • Gossip subscription. AXL is peer-to-peer; running a subscriber costs only your own bandwidth.

What the SDK does not do (yet)

  • Sponsored gas. Agents pay 0G gas in OG today. A v2 paymaster pattern that lets agents pay the protocol fee in USDC and the gas implicitly is on the roadmap. See the public RFC for the design.
  • Cross-chain settlement. The Registry is on 0G Chain. ADDRESS antibodies are mirrored to other chains for hook-based protection (see Cross-chain mirror), but settlement always happens on 0G.

See also