The Particle Ladder
The five PHI tiers from Neutrino to Top Quark: what counts toward them, what each operation’s tier discount covers, and what is never discounted.
Last updated 2026-09-08 · maintained in the Final Wiki
This page supersedes the "Marine Tier" table of the earlier whitepaper (Whale, Orca, Shark, Salmon, Sardine, Jellyfish); those names and rates are retired.
#The tiers
| Tier | PHI held | Discount on % fees | Gas markup |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neutrino | under 1,000 | 0 % | 10 % |
| Positron | 1,000 – 10,000 | 10 % | 8 % |
| Muon | 10,000 – 100,000 | 25 % | 5 % |
| Z Boson | 100,000 – 1,000,000 | 40 % | 2 % |
| Top Quark | 1,000,000 and above | 60 % | 0 % |
Plainly: the more PHI you hold, the larger the discount on percentage fees and the smaller the ledger surcharge — from nothing off below a thousand PHI to 60 % off and no markup from a million.
The ranges are read from the state plane's registry, so they are one set of numbers for every chain, and they can move without a contract change.
#What counts
- Your wallet's PHI across every supported chain, as the state plane records it: locked and unlocked alike, one row per chain the wallet exists on. Each unit is counted once.
- Only actual PHI. PHI is native on every supported chain; there is no wrapped PHI, and PHI held inside a bridge or wrapper contract sits in that contract's account, not yours.
- Held, not borrowed. A balance counts once the state plane's conservation fold has seen it, so borrowing PHI for a block buys nothing.
- The tier is fixed when a fee is composed and never re-evaluated at settlement: a charge composed at Neutrino settles at Neutrino, whatever you buy in between.
#What a tier discounts
Tiers discount service fees: the percentage fees and the ledger surcharge. They never discount floors (the fixed USD amounts that cover a real cost per operation) or the float premium (the gas the protocol fronts, refunded when unspent).
| Operation | What the tier discounts | What stays fixed |
|---|---|---|
| Gateway intent, one chain | the ledger surcharge, at the tier's rate (10 % → 0 %) | not charged as gas |
| Posted intent (intent log) | — | the USD 0.10 write floor |
| Scheduled intent (with the release) | the delay component and the per-week component | the USD 0.10 posting floor, the USD 0.10 cancel fee |
| Private option (with the release) | the base of ≈ USD 2, down to ≈ USD 0.50 at the top tier | the USD 5 ceiling |
| vAsset crossing | the 0.05 % per crossing | the USD 0.50 floor each way |
| Morph | the lock fee (PHI locked × time at the liquidity-class rate) | the USD 0.10 floor per state change |
| Sub-account creation, controller binding | the 10 % ledger surcharge | not charged as gas |
| PHI Launch Sale delivery | the ledger surcharge on the delivery legs, at the beneficiary's tier | not charged as gas |
| Guardian and recovery operations | free of service fee at every tier | the USD 0.10 write floor |
| RPC and oracle API | a key's tier is the higher of its purchased plan and its PHI tier | per-request pricing of the plan |
Plainly: a tier discounts the parts of a fee that are a service — markups, percentages, the delay and privacy components — and never the parts that are a cost: the ledger surcharge is not one of them; write floors and cancel fees are the same at every tier.
Paying the fee in PHI takes a further 20 % off both the percentage fee and the tier's ledger-surcharge rate (Z Boson's 2 % becomes 1.6 %; only Top Quark's 0 % is zero), wherever a non-PHI payment option exists. The morph lock fee is PHI-denominated by design and is not discounted again by paying in PHI.
#Where the ladder goes next
- Locked PHI as the fee lane (with the release): the lock that sets your tier also pays your fees, on any execution chain, with native gas sponsored by the protocol. See Paying in PHI.
- Staking on Final Chain nodes (planned): the share of Final Chain fees a holder earns scales with their tier and with the node types and modules run, for stake on their own node and for stake delegated to an operator's node, without the PHI leaving their wallet. Staking is delegated proof of stake (dPoS): every holder can take part by delegating; running a node is not required. See Staking on Final Chain nodes.
#See also
PHI · Fees and PHI · Intents · Morphing · vAssets · Glossary