TNZO Tokenomics

TNZO covers four protocol-layer functions in one asset:

• Gas. Every transaction on the Tenzro Ledger pays gas in TNZO under EIP-1559. No separate fee token.
• Resource access. Resources include agents, skills, data, workflows, models, compute, apps, tools, TEE attestation, storage, distributed training participation, micropayment channels, cross-chain messages, marketplace templates. Every paid resource pays its protocol-layer commission in TNZO. Counterparties can still settle the underlying payment in any asset they agree on.
• Bonds and security. Validators, providers, RPC providers, trainers, bridge nodes, and marketplace agents bond TNZO. Misbehavior is slashed.
• Governance. Stake-weighted voting on parameters, treasury, and upgrades.

Stablecoins and external-chain assets remain supported on user-facing payments (AP2 cart settlements, x402 USDC flows, Tempo stablecoin transfers, Stripe Payment Intents, Canton CIP-56 holdings). TNZO is the protocol's denominator — what the protocol layer charges, bonds, and votes in.

There is no team allocation and no investor allocation. The entire genesis distribution funds the participants that produce value on the network and the long-term incentive pools that pay future participants for future contributions. There are no unlock cliffs, no quarterly vesting events, no early-backer carry.

The way to earn TNZO is to do something the network values:

• Run a validator. Two tiers — resource-only validators meet hardware and stability profile with no stake required; staked validators bond TNZO on top and unlock higher reward multipliers, governance weight, and high-trust roles.
• Serve compute or hardware. Model providers, TEE providers, storage providers, distributed-training participants — earn per-call, per-token, per-service, or per-byte plus the provider class reward multiplier.
• Operate an RPC provider. Run a public or gated RPC endpoint brokering access to Canton, regulated bridge routes, KYC-tier-gated services. Mint scoped API keys for tenants, manage party allocation and identity-provider provisioning, earn from tenant fees and underlying flow commission.
• Build and run apps on Tenzro. Ship applications that drive transactions through the network — settlements, payments, inference billing, marketplace flows; earn from the underlying activity.
• Run agents that do useful work. Deploy autonomous or delegated agents that fulfill paid services; earn per fulfilled task plus reputation-driven routing share.
• Ship tools, skills, integrations. MCP tools, A2A skills, agent templates, SDKs, bridges, oracle integrations, payment-rail adapters — earn invocation commissions, usage fees, and ecosystem grants.
• Contribute to the protocol and infrastructure.Build the protocol itself, audit code, ship core integrations, write documentation, run security research — receive grants from the public treasury through the Tenzro Foundation's governance-approved allocation process.
• Community participation. Governance votes, learning resources, useful bug reports, refer new participants — receive community incentive allocations.

The list is examples, not a closed set. Anyone finding a new way to create value for the network can earn from that activity.

Gas (EIP-1559). 30M max gas per block, 15M target, ±12.5% per-block base-fee adjustment, 0.1–1000 Gwei clamp. The base fee is burned; the priority fee goes to validators and stakers. The fee market self-regulates to network congestion: empty blocks converge to the floor in ~17 blocks; sustained full-block demand converges to the ceiling in ~58 blocks.

Network commission (0.5%).0.5% on every settlement, split 40% treasury / 30% burn / 30% stakers. Governance-tunable upward over time. Comparable take rates: traditional cloud 5–30%, centralized payment processors 2–4%. Tenzro's 0.5% is set low for adoption.

Five independent burn channels track real usage rather than emission schedules:

• Base-fee burn. 100% of every EIP-1559 base fee. Scales with on-chain activity.
• Commission burn. 30% of every 0.5% commission. Scales with settlement throughput.
• Paymaster burn. 100% of paymaster fees, locked at 100% so sponsored gas does not become an inflation back-door.
• Slashing burn. 10% of slashed validator stake on equivocation. Burned, not redistributed, so slashing is purely punitive.
• SeedAgent surplus burn. Unused bootstrap-phase earmark at sunset.

Net supply equation:

ΔS = R_stake − B_basefee − B_commission − B_paymaster − B_slash − B_seed_surplus

The model is mildly inflationary at bootstrap activity, reaches breakeven well below steady-state activity, and becomes meaningfully deflationary at full agentic-economy use. A governance-controlled adaptive burn dial lets the protocol adjust burn fractions in response to circulating-supply targets — increase burn when supply trends above target, decrease when below — under bounded magnitude caps and a fast-track timelock for alarm-triggered adjustments.

Validator entry is open to anyone meeting the resource profile (hardware, bandwidth, uptime, optional TEE attestation). Bonded TNZO stake is optional and unlocks additional benefits.

Tier 1 — resource-only validators. Hardware profile check, stability profile (uptime history, no equivocations), optional TEE attestation, geographic and network diversity bonus. No stake required. Earn priority fees and a reputation-weighted base reward share. Excluded from leader election on high-value blocks. No slashing exposure.

Tier 2 — staked validators. Resource-only eligibility plus bonded TNZO. Get full leader-election eligibility across every block class, higher reward multipliers, governance vote weight, and eligibility for high-trust roles — training round witness committee, high-value bridge nodes, AP2 high-value mandate validation, institutional Canton route operation. Slashing exposure as the cost of higher trust: 10% of bond burns on equivocation.

The TEE attestation multiplier (1.5×) is multiplicative and applies to both tiers. The model lowers the barrier to participation while preserving the economic security budget where it matters most.

Real yield comparison against 2026 baselines:

• Ethereum staking: 2.8–3.8% nominal, ~0.2% inflation drag, ~2.6–3.6% real.
• Solana native: 6–8% nominal, ~5–6% inflation drag, 0–3% real.
• Cosmos (ATOM): 10–20% nominal, ~10% inflation drag, 0–8% real.
• Polkadot (DOT): 7–12% nominal, 4–8% real.
• 2026 T-bills: ~4–5% nominal.
• Tenzro validator: 5.0–5.5% nominal, net deflationary at moderate-to-high activity, 5.0–7.0% real.

Provider multipliers stack on top: TEE providers 1.2×, model providers 1.1×. Liquid staking (stTNZO) passes through 90% of accrued rewards after the 10% protocol fee. The structural advantage is the absence of an emission schedule — staking rewards come from a finite genesis-allocated pool and burn channels track real usage, so real yield rises rather than falls as the network grows.

TNZO has a single canonical native balance across the multi-VM ledger. The wTNZO ERC-20 pointer on the EVM surface and the wTNZO SPL adapter on the SVM surface share the same underlying balance — no wrapped/unwrapped distinction, no bridge between VMs, no liquidity fragmentation. Canton CIP-56 holdings round-trip through the Canton bridge adapter.

Cross-chain to external destinations flows through ten production bridge adapters (LayerZero V2, Chainlink CCIP and CCT, deBridge DLN, LI.FI, Wormhole and NTT, Hyperlane V3, Axelar GMP, Babylon Bitcoin, Canton 3.5+) plus ERC-7683 cross-chain intents and ERC-7802 native cross-chain mint/burn. Wallet holders see one TNZO balance regardless of which VM or chain they last touched.

Every agentic protocol faces a bootstrap problem — no organic agents exist yet, so the protocol seeds activity to demonstrate the rails work. SeedAgents are protocol-funded autonomous agents that exercise inference, settlement, marketplace, bridge, capital intent, and dispute surfaces during the first year.

The earmark is governance-controlled with a monthly decay schedule (100% in months 0–2, 75% in months 3–5, 50% in months 6–8, 25% in months 9–11, 0% from month 12). Total bounded draw is 62.5% of the annual entitlement; unused balance at sunset is burned. Every SeedAgent identity carries the is_seed_agent flag so analytics surfaces can cleanly separate protocol-owned bootstrap activity from organic.

Stake-weighted on-chain voting with quadratic dampening on the upper end so any single very large staker cannot dominate. KYC-tier bonus weights apply to treasury and constitutional proposals. Delegate voting is supported.

Proposal classes: parameter changes, treasury disbursements, code upgrades, adaptive burn (normal and alarm-track), SeedAgent charters, bridge authorization, network commission rate, constitutional changes. Each has its own quorum, voting window, and timelock matched to its risk profile.

The treasury accumulates 40% of all network commission plus liquid-staking protocol fees, marketplace commissions, bridge protocol fees, and other governance-directed transfers. Outflows fund grants, ecosystem incentives, infrastructure, insurance, SeedAgent earmark, sponsorship pool contributions, and operational costs. Treasury balance is on-chain and queryable; multisig signers and thresholds are public.

The model is parameterized conservatively and verified against the failure modes that have broken comparable systems:

• Runaway emission. No emission schedule. Rewards come from a finite genesis pool. Bounded.
• Insufficient burn. Two demand-driven channels plus the adaptive dial. Bounded.
• Staking yield collapse. Adaptive reward rate plus governance lever. Bounded.
• Slashing cascade. Slashed stake is burned, not redistributed. No positive feedback loop.
• Fee market lock-up. Symmetric ±12.5% per-block adjustment with hard ceiling. Bounded recovery time.
• Adversarial gas spamming. Attacker pays the same elevated base fee they are driving. Self-defeating economically.
• Treasury depletion. Diversified inflows. Governance throttles outflows when needed.
• Bootstrap funding cliff. SeedAgent earmark plus adaptive disbursement.
• Sponsorship pool drain. Governance-set commission share cap.
• Investor / team unlock cliffs. No team or investor allocation. No cliffs exist.

The default parameters survive every simulation; the governance dials are available to retune any of them if real-world activity diverges from projection.