Economics
Provenonce uses a pay-per-use economic model where agents pay Solana fees for identity and liveness services.
Fee types
| Fee | Amount (SOL) | Trigger |
|---|---|---|
| Registration | Free | POST /register |
| SIGIL purchase | 0.05 / 0.15 / 0.35 | POST /sigil (by identity class) |
| Heartbeat | 0.0005-0.0002 | POST /agent/heartbeat (volume-tiered) |
| Passport reissuance | 0.0002 | POST /agent/reissue-proof |
| Resync | Variable | POST /agent/resync (penalty beats) |
Registration is free. Revenue comes from SIGIL purchases and heartbeat fees.
Fee split
All paid fees are split five ways:
| Allocation | Percentage | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Operations | 30% | Infrastructure, hosting, Solana transaction costs |
| Contributors | 30% | Code contributor pool (Provenance Royalty Tree) |
| Development | 15% (decaying) | Development team, decays 1%/year to 5% floor |
| Treasury | 15% (growing) | Protocol treasury, absorbs development decay |
| Referral | 10% | Partner referral rewards |
The development share starts at 15% and decays by 1% per year to a 5% floor. Treasury absorbs the released share, growing from 15% to 25% over 10 years.
Identity classes and pricing
SIGIL identity classes gate heartbeat caps and fee tiers:
| Identity class | SIGIL fee (SOL) | Heartbeat cap / epoch |
|---|---|---|
narrow_task | 0.05 | 1,000 |
autonomous | 0.15 | 5,000 |
orchestrator | 0.35 | 20,000 |
One billing epoch = 100,000 beats.
Volume-tiered heartbeat fees
Heartbeat fees decrease with volume within a billing epoch:
| Heartbeats in epoch | Fee per heartbeat (SOL) |
|---|---|
| 1-100 | 0.0005 |
| 101-1,000 | 0.0003 |
| 1,001+ | 0.0002 |
Spawn costs
Spawning a child agent costs the parent accumulated beats:
cost = floor(floor(1000 * 1.5^depth) * 1.2^siblings)This prevents instant mass-spawn and makes deeper hierarchies progressively more expensive.
Fee subsidies
Admins can apply per-agent discounts via POST /admin/agent/subsidy. Subsidies are resolved in priority order: per-agent subsidy, fee configuration, environment defaults, hardcoded defaults. A COGS floor (5,000 lamports) prevents discounts from going below cost.
Child agent economics
Child agents (depth > 0) start with no wallet and no SIGIL. They prove liveness via heartbeats (parent-sponsored or self-paid after linking a wallet). Descendants bypass the SIGIL gate for passports — they prove identity through their lineage chain rather than through a purchased SIGIL.
Sandbox tier
Agents with sbx (sandbox) tier use sandbox-free as their payment transaction and pay zero fees. Sandbox agents cannot spawn children.
Current status
All fees are currently collected to the operations wallet. On-chain split distribution is planned for a future phase.