$PRZ Token Economics, Supply Mechanics, Staking Architecture, and Read-Fee Model

Working Paper — Draft for Discussion — Companion to the Notachain Protocol Whitepaper

1. Introduction

This document defines the economic model of the $PRZ token — the native token of the Notachain Protocol. The Notachain Protocol creates a trust layer between the blockchain and the real world by enabling credentialed legal professionals to attest off-chain facts on-chain. The $PRZ token exists to bootstrap this network, align incentives across participants, and create an immediate economic penalty for fraudulent attestation that complements the slower machinery of legal accountability.

This document covers four mechanisms: the schedule of release (how the fixed supply enters circulation), the emission and burn model (how supply adjusts dynamically in response to network activity), the staking architecture (how tokens create economic accountability for registered attestors), and the read-fee model (how attestation access generates revenue for wallet holders, attestors, and the protocol).

2. Design Principles

3. Token Overview

The $PRZ token is the native token of the Notachain Protocol, deployed on an EVM-compatible chain as a standard ERC-20 token.

3.1 Core Function

  1. Staking and accountability. Registered attestors stake $PRZ against their registration. The stake is slashable for proven fraudulent attestation.
  2. Network bootstrapping. Grants denominated in $PRZ incentivise early registration of legal professionals and licensing bodies.
  3. Fee medium and burn mechanism. Attestation creation fees and read fees are collected in $PRZ. A portion is permanently burned.
  4. Read-fee settlement. $PRZ is the medium through which protocols pay for attestation access and wallet holders receive their share.

3.2 What the Token Is Not

$PRZ is not a governance token in the conventional sense. The Tier 1 licensing body registry is maintained by the Notachain Protocol company based on publicly verifiable institutional credentials. It is not subject to token-weighted voting. The integrity of the trust layer cannot be made contingent on token holder preferences.

4. Token Allocation and Schedule of Release

4.1 Allocation Summary

Allocation % Purpose
Attestor Grants 40% Grants to legal professionals and licensing bodies who register on the Notachain registry.
Staking Reserves 20% Fund initial staking requirements for early attestors who receive grants.
Insurance Pool Seed 10% Seed capital for the first insurance product built on Notachain attestations.
Market Launch 10% Initial liquidity pool pairing and exchange listings.
Team Vesting 10% Quarterly vesting over two years.
Operational Budget 5% Marketing, legal, infrastructure. Quarterly with unspent tokens reverting.
Unallocated Treasury 5% Reserved for future needs. Requires standard authorisation process.

4.2 Treasury Governance

Every action against the treasury follows the standard authorisation process: (1) a reason is published, (2) a hash of the reason is recorded on-chain, (3) a public event is emitted. Authorisation and movement are separate events. Authorisations may be revoked if the need no longer exists.

4.3 Spending Cap

The treasury enforces a global quarterly spending cap. Adjustments follow the standard authorisation process. The full history is auditable via contract events.

4.4 Team Vesting

Equal quarterly instalments over two years from launch. Fixed and not subject to acceleration.

4.5 Budget Reversions

Unspent operational budget tokens revert to the treasury each quarter — a soft deflationary mechanism.

5. Emission and Burn Model

5.1 Definitions

Term Definition
Network Activity Metric (M) 90-day rolling average of attestation volume. Smooths volatility and resists manipulation.
Emission Rate (I) Annualised rate of new $PRZ minted. Percentage of circulating supply.
Burn Rate (B) Annualised rate of $PRZ permanently removed via creation and read fees.
Net Supply Change I − B. Positive = inflation. Negative = deflation.
Crossover Point Activity level where emissions equal burns. Below: inflationary. Above: deflationary.

5.2 The Inverse Sigmoid Emission Curve

The emission rate follows an inverse sigmoid: high emissions when activity is low (incentivising growth), dropping steeply through the transition zone, flattening at a floor when activity is high (network self-sustaining).

Mathematical form: I = floor + (ceiling − floor) / (1 + e^(k × (M − midpoint)))

5.3 The Linear Burn Mechanism

Burns are linear with activity. Both attestation creation fees and read fees contribute. The fees serve as natural defence against farming — emissions must exceed fee cost for gaming to be profitable.

5.4 Interaction of Emissions and Burns

Both mechanisms operate simultaneously and push in the same direction. Low volume: high emissions, low burns. High volume: low emissions, high burns. The curve amplifies itself.

5.5 Guardrails

6. Staking Architecture

6.1 Two Penalty Timescales

Mechanism Timescale Severity
Token slashing Seconds Economic loss of staked $PRZ
Legal accountability Months to years Criminal prosecution, loss of license, unlimited personal liability

The two mechanisms are independent and reinforcing. Neither is sufficient alone.

6.2 Staking Requirements

Every attestor stakes $PRZ against their registration. Minimum stake is tiered by trust classification. Early attestors receive stakes from the grant pool. Staked tokens are locked while registration is active. Voluntary deregistration triggers an unbonding period.

6.3 Slashing Conditions

6.4 Dispute Resolution

An affected party files an on-chain dispute with a bond in $PRZ. The attestor's stake is frozen. A cross-jurisdictional panel reviews evidence. If upheld: attestor is slashed, bond returned. If rejected: bond is slashed, attestor's stake unfrozen. The bond requirement prevents frivolous accusations. The cross-jurisdictional panel prevents collusion.

6.5 Slashed Token Destination

Slashed tokens are either burned (permanent deflation) or redirected to the insurance pool (reimbursement), depending on the dispute type.

7. Read-Fee Model and Privacy Economics

7.1 Attestations as Revenue-Generating Assets

Every time a protocol reads an attestation blob, they pay a read fee in $PRZ. The fee splits three ways: the wallet holder (compensation for privacy exposure), the attestor (residual income for ongoing risk), and the protocol burn (deflationary mechanism).

Every attestation becomes a revenue-generating asset for both the wallet holder and the attestor.

7.2 Incentive Inversion

Without read fees, attestation is a cost borne reluctantly. With read fees, attestation is an investment — every boolean you notarise is a potential income stream. Wallet holders are incentivised to notarise every provable fact. Attestors build portfolios of signed attestations generating residual income in perpetuity.

7.3 The Privacy Tax

Each boolean is individually harmless. But booleans compose — enough together can fingerprint a person. The read fee makes individual queries cheap and rational while making bulk surveillance prohibitively expensive. One insurer checking one boolean: $2.50. An adversary scraping 50 booleans across 10,000 wallets: $1.25 million.

7.4 Pricing Structure

Parameter Value Rationale
Base read fee $2.50 equiv in $PRZ Accessible for single queries. Negligible against policy or loan value.
Scaling mechanism Escalating per additional boolean on same wallet Makes profiling increasingly expensive.
Wallet holder share [TBD]% Compensation for privacy exposure.
Attestor share [TBD]% Residual income for ongoing risk.
Protocol burn [TBD]% Deflationary mechanism.

7.5 Monotonic vs Temporal Booleans

Monotonic: facts true forever once verified. Age thresholds, citizenship, credentials. Notarised once, earn indefinitely. Temporal: facts that may change. Employment, security practices, claim history. Require periodic re-attestation. Both contribute to burns through their respective fees.

7.6 User Sovereignty

Wallet holders are warned that boolean intersections narrow anonymity sets. The protocol encourages distributing attestations across multiple wallets. Escalating read fees compensate for increased exposure when multiple booleans on one wallet are read.

7.7 Supply Impact of Read Fees

Read-fee burns scale with the installed base of attestations, not just new creation. A mature network with millions of existing booleans queried thousands of times daily generates substantial burn volume even if new attestation creation slows. The network becomes more deflationary as it matures.

8. Token Lifecycle Summary

Source Mechanism Effect on Supply
Treasury releases Human-authorised, cap-limited Increases circulating
Emissions Inverse sigmoid, 90-day rolling Increases total + circulating
Creation-fee burns Linear, from attestation fees Permanently decreases total
Read-fee burns Linear, from read fees Permanently decreases total
Staking locks Step function per registration Decreases available circulating
Slashing (burn) Dispute resolution Permanently decreases total
Read-fee revenue Per-read to holder + attestor Neutral (redistribution)
Team vesting Quarterly over two years Increases circulating
Budget reversions Unspent returns quarterly Decreases circulating

9. Open Questions

This document is a working draft for discussion purposes. Nothing herein constitutes financial, legal, or investment advice. $PRZ tokens, if and when issued, may have no value and should not be purchased as a speculative investment.