Cell Tokenomics

Status: Ratified per the Major Update Phase 0 recommendation, awaiting counsel review before mainnet genesis. The values in this document are the authoritative in-repo numbers used by pkg/branding constants, pkg/chain/emission (Phase 3.3), and the tokenomics dashboard panel. They MUST NOT be changed in isolation; any change requires a corresponding update to QSDM/docs/docs/REBRAND_NOTES.md and a new entry in NEXT_STEPS.md.

This document is the normative reference for the Cell coin's supply, emission, and fee model. It is not a legal offering document, it is not an investment prospectus, and it is not a commitment until counsel has signed off. See §8 ("Legal posture") below.

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1. Coin identity

Field	Value	Defined in
Name	Cell	pkg/branding.CoinName
Symbol	CELL	pkg/branding.CoinSymbol
Decimals	8	pkg/branding.CoinDecimals
Smallest unit	dust (1 CELL = 10^8 dust)	pkg/branding.SmallestUnitName
Issued by	QSDM mainnet, PoW emission layer	see §3
Non-issuance paths	validator fees (never mint new supply)	see §5

The 8-decimal choice intentionally mirrors Bitcoin UX: wallet developers, block explorers, and exchanges already know how to display 8-decimal coins correctly, and the smallest-unit name dust is short and phonetic for CLI output (amount: 12345 dust).

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2. Supply model

Parameter	Value
Total cap	100,000,000 CELL (100 M)
Pre-mine	0%
Genesis treasury allocation	10% (10,000,000 CELL)
Treasury vesting	linear over 48 months, enforced on-chain, locked at genesis
Mining emission	90% (90,000,000 CELL) over ~20 years
Emission curve	halvings every 4 years (see §3)
Validator block subsidy	0 — validators earn only transaction fees
Base-fee burn	undecided — EIP-1559-style burn is optional; decision due before genesis (Phase 0 follow-up item)

2.1 Treasury address

The treasury address is committed in the genesis block. Its balance is public and its spend policy is enforced by a WASM contract (bound at genesis) that releases (total_alloc / 48) CELL per month to a multisig-controlled spend address. The contract address, the multisig membership, and the spend policy are published in QSDM/docs/docs/GENESIS.md (Phase 0 deliverable, pending counsel review).

2.2 Pre-mine: why zero

The project commits to a fair launch: no public sale, no private sale, no ICO, no presale, no founder allocation. All 90 M mining-emission CELL must be earned by a miner producing a valid PoW proof. This is the cleanest posture against US/UK/EU securities classification; it is the single most important decision on this page and it is not negotiable in the current design window without revisiting Phase 0.

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3. Emission schedule

Assumes a target block time of 10 seconds (matches the current pkg/chain default; see §3.2 for the sensitivity analysis if this changes). Blocks per 4-year epoch = 12,623,040 (= 4 × 365.25 × 86400 / 10, using the Julian year so leap years are absorbed uniformly).

The per-block reward is computed as floor(epoch_allocation_dust / blocks_per_epoch) using integer math — these are the EXACT values returned by pkg/chain.EmissionSchedule.BlockRewardDust at each epoch boundary, not rounded display values. See pkg/chain/emission.go and its unit tests for the canonical definition.

Epoch	Years	Epoch allocation (CELL)	Block reward (dust)	Block reward (CELL)	Cumulative (CELL, approx)	% of mining cap
0	0–4	45,000,000	356,490,987	3.56490987	44,999,999.88	50.00%
1	4–8	22,500,000	178,245,493	1.78245493	67,499,999.80	75.00%
2	8–12	11,250,000	89,122,746	0.89122746	78,749,999.74	87.50%
3	12–16	5,625,000	44,561,373	0.44561373	84,374,999.68	93.75%
4	16–20	2,812,500	22,280,686	0.22280686	87,187,499.62	96.875%
5	20–24	1,406,250	11,140,343	0.11140343	88,593,749.56	98.4375%
6	24–28	703,125	5,570,171	0.05570171	89,296,874.50	99.2188%
7+	28+	halves every 4y	halves	halves	→ 90,000,000 asymptotically	→ 100%

The small (~0.12 CELL per epoch) cumulative shortfall versus the nominal "50% / 75% / 87.5% / ..." percentages is the integer-division truncation residue described in §3.1. It is deterministic, unavoidable in exact integer arithmetic, and bounded — ConvergenceCheck verifies the total shortfall across all epochs stays under 0.00001 % of the 90 M CELL cap.

3.1 Invariants enforced by pkg/chain/emission (Phase 3.3)

The emission calculator in pkg/chain/emission.go is the single source of truth for runtime. It is pure Go (no CGO), deterministic, and exercised by the Phase 3.3 unit tests that verify:

1. The sum of per-block rewards over epochs 1..N, extended to N → ∞, converges to exactly 9,000,000,000,000,000 dust (= 90 M CELL).
2. The per-block reward is computed from integer math only (no floating point), so two validators on different architectures always agree.
3. The transition block between epochs is well-defined and matches the schedule above.
4. If the target block time is re-configured before genesis, the schedule re-derives but the total cap stays exactly 90 M CELL.

3.2 Sensitivity to block-time changes

If target block time changes, the per-block reward changes but the total cap does not: the calculator computes per-block reward as epoch_allocation_dust / blocks_per_epoch where blocks_per_epoch is derived from the target block time. Operators changing block time post-genesis are effectively changing inflation per unit time; the hard-cap invariant is preserved.

3.3 First-halving verification

The first halving is a one-way, non-reversible event. Before mainnet, the incentivized testnet (Major Update Phase 4, wall-clock bound) MUST run a compressed-time simulation of the first halving and verify:

• No validator disagreement on the exact halving block.
• No miner accepts a stale reward (old epoch reward) for the first block of the new epoch.
• The cumulative-emission invariant holds to the dust across the boundary.

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4. What Cell is used for

Use	Notes
Transaction fees	Paid to validators. Denominated in dust.
WASM contract gas	Gas price in dust/gas; already wired in pkg/wasm.
Validator bonds	Future: validators stake CELL to participate; slashable.
Bridge collateral	Future: denominate bond in CELL via pkg/bridge.
Governance weight	Future: one CELL = one vote, in proposal-weighted voting.

Cell is not used to pay mining rewards out of a pre-minted pool; mining rewards are newly minted at block-confirmation time (a mint transaction embedded in the block by the validator who proposes, crediting the winning miner). This is the only path that creates new supply.

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5. Fee model

Validators never dilute holders. All validator revenue comes from transaction fees on real user transactions. This split is enforced at the protocol level: a mining-reward transaction with role = miner is the only transaction allowed to mint new supply, and a block producer can include at most one such transaction. A validator that attempts to self-pay via a mining-reward transaction is producing an invalid block.

5.1 Optional EIP-1559-style base-fee burn

The project leans toward adopting an EIP-1559-style split (base fee burned, priority fee to the validator) because it adds a deflationary pressure component that offsets emission during epochs 1–4, and because it is the mechanism users and exchanges already understand. The decision is open and must be made before genesis. It is tracked in NEXT_STEPS.md as a Phase-0 follow-up.

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6. Comparison to Bitcoin

Dimension	Bitcoin	Cell
Total cap	21,000,000 BTC	100,000,000 CELL
Decimals	8	8
Halving period	every 210,000 blocks (~4 years at 10-min blocks)	every 12,614,400 blocks (~4 years at 10-sec blocks)
Block time	~10 min	10 sec (target)
Initial reward	50 BTC	1.4280 CELL
Pre-mine	0	0
Treasury	none	10% vested linearly over 48 months
Consensus	pure PoW	PoE + BFT for consensus, additive PoW for emission only

The structural difference from Bitcoin is that Cell's PoW layer is explicitly additive — it exists solely to meter coin emission. Consensus does not depend on PoW. If all miners went offline tomorrow, the validators would continue producing blocks; the only thing that would stop is new supply creation.

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7. Distribution philosophy

Fair launch, utility-first. There is no presale, no ICO, no public sale, no private sale, no airdrop of founder tokens. The treasury allocation is published on-chain at genesis, time-locked by a WASM contract, and spent only on development per a public policy document (QSDM/docs/docs/TREASURY_POLICY.md, Phase 0 deliverable).

Earning paths at launch are:

• Mining: buy a GPU, run qsdm-miner, earn Cell by producing valid proofs.
• Validating: operate a VPS validator node, earn transaction fees in Cell.
• Using: use Cell to pay transaction fees on a service you care about.

The project does not sell Cell. Exchanges that choose to list Cell after launch operate independently; the QSDM project does not negotiate listing allocations and does not provide market-making inventory.

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8. Legal posture

This document describes a fair-launch utility token. None of the parameters above are structured to accommodate a securities offering. The combination of (a) zero pre-mine, (b) zero founder allocation, (c) public on-chain treasury with published vesting, (d) coin is minted only in exchange for work (PoW) or consumed in exchange for network service (fees), and (e) no sale by the project at any time, is the strongest posture available to a non-custodial blockchain project against the US Howey test and the EU MiCA "asset-referenced token" / "e-money token" categories.

This is a posture, not a guarantee. Counsel review is required before mainnet genesis and before any promotional language is published on qsdm.tech or elsewhere. The phrases "investment", "returns", "profit", and "yield" are forbidden in all project communications (see QSDM/docs/docs/COPY_FILTERS.md, Phase 5.4 deliverable).

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9. Changelog

Date	Change
Major Update Phase 3.1	Document created; numbers adopted from Major Update §4.1–§4.4 with Phase 0 "ratified per recommendation, awaiting counsel review" status.