PHI

The protocol’s asset: its fixed supply, every use today and coming, where the network’s fees go, and staking on Final Chain nodes with delegation.

Last updated 2026-09-08 · maintained in the Final Wiki

Figures marked with the release arrive with the wallet release; planned ones are ruled and not yet live.

#What PHI is

A fixed amount of 100,000,000 PHI, kept as a ledger on the state plane (the Pre-Final Chain today, Final Chain at release). The ledger holds the invariant: what is held plus what is allocated to every chain always equals the total.
The amount never changes. Nothing is minted beyond it and nothing is ever burned. PHI pays for the network's services, and what it pays goes to the people who run and hold the network, not out of existence.
Value per token grows with the ecosystem. The same fixed amount stands behind more as other chains join the network as modules and other assets arrive as vAssets; each token comes to hold more over time because what it backs grows, not because the amount shrinks.
Native on every supported chain. PHI's presence on an execution chain is a spawn from the ledger; moving it between chains is lock and spawn. There is no wrapped PHI.
The Launch Sale (the presale, renamed because the PHI is usable the moment it is delivered) earmarks 5,000,000 PHI, five per cent of the amount, at a fixed USD 1.00, paid on any supported chain in any asset the network accepts as a fee and delivered on the chain the buyer chooses. Purchases are terminal. Delivery is liquid: no vesting, no whitelist, no per-address cap.

#Now: a ledger, and a fee asset on the execution chains

On the Pre-Final Chain, PHI is a ledger without external submission: the protocol records supply, allocations, locks and Launch Sale admissions there, and nobody else transacts on that chain yet. Where PHI is used today is on the execution chains:

Use	How
Tier on the particle ladder	The PHI your wallet holds across all supported chains sets your tier; the tier discounts every service fee. [[particle-ladder	The Particle Ladder]]
Paying fees	PHI is one of the fee tokens a posted intent can pay in, and paying in PHI takes a further 20 % off the percentage fee and the ledger surcharge. [[fees-and-phi	Fees and PHI]]
API access tier	An API key's tier is the higher of its purchased plan and the holder's PHI tier. [[developer-api	Developer API]]
Launch Sale delivery	Launch Sale PHI is delivered to the chain you choose; the network fee on delivery is charged at the beneficiary's tier. [[fees-and-phi#Launch Sale network fee	Launch Sale network fee]]

Plainly: today PHI sets your fee tier, pays fees at a discount, raises an API key's tier and is what the Launch Sale delivers.

#Next: the execution asset of Final Chain

Use	How	Status
Paying for execution on Final Chain	PHI is Final Chain's execution asset: every transaction there is paid in PHI, and fees split between holders, node operators and the treasury.	with Final Chain
Locked PHI pays every fee	Lock PHI on any execution chain where you hold it; the lock sets your tier and pays your fees, with native gas on source and target sponsored by the protocol. Coins never move.	with the release — the default PHI lane — [[fees-and-phi#Paying in PHI (with the release — the default PHI lane)	Paying in PHI]]
Collateral for morphing	Locked PHI backs a morphed position: exposure to another asset, long or short, with leverage bounded by the per-asset cap the asset registry sets, cash-settled in PHI; all you can lose is what you morphed. Morphed PHI still counts toward your tier.	live on the Pre-Final Chain now — [[morphing	Morphing]]
Staking on Final Chain nodes	Delegated proof of stake (dPoS): every PHI holder can stake — not only node operators — by delegating to an operator's node from their own wallet; the PHI never leaves it. Stake earns a share of Final Chain's fees, scaled by the particle ladder and by the node types and modules run.	planned, after Final Chain — below
The Liquidity Cloud	Morphing of vAsset positions on Final Chain, with PHI as the backing asset.	planned — [[liquidity-cloud	Liquidity Cloud]]
Governance: voting on modules	Holders vote for the modules and module changes they want — a new module, an upgrade, a fork, hosting — and the vote commits the incentives that pay the node operators who deliver them. Below.	with Final Chain — [[phi#Governance: voting on modules	below]]

Plainly: with Final Chain, PHI becomes the asset every transaction there is paid in, the lock that pays every fee, the collateral behind morphing, the stake behind the nodes, the backing of the Liquidity Cloud and the vote on modules — each row says whether it is live, comes with the release or is planned.

#Governance: voting on modules

PHI governance shapes the protocol itself. For now it is a vote on the modules: holders vote for the modules and module changes they would like to see — a new module, an upgrade to an existing one, a fork of one, hosting more of one — and, through them, what the protocol becomes. The vote acts directly on the node operators, because it is a vote on incentives:

Large incentives upfront. A winning vote commits an upfront payment to the operators who develop, adapt, fork and host what was voted for.
Traffic-based payments after. Once the module runs, the operators hosting it earn on the traffic it carries, for as long as it is used.
More work, more pay. An operator who takes on more of what holders asked for — more modules, faster adaptation, more hosting — earns more. This is the operator's side of the user-based module incentives: demand grows with the users who want a module, and the vote turns that demand into payment.
Hosting follows demand. When demand for a module grows, more operators host it; when it fades, hosting fades with it. Nothing is assigned: the incentives follow needs, and the network settles where the users are.
Any scope, free to join. A module's scope is the whole chain, one zone or one group, and identities join and leave modules as they please.
Ground rules, not gatekeepers. The protocol accepts a module as valid only if it meets a small set of ground rules — the interfaces it must honour, the proofs it must produce, the security it must not weaken. Within them, anything holders want and operators build is a module.

Governance does not touch the supply: PHI is a fixed amount of 100,000,000, and the incentives are paid from the fees the chain earns. The upfront incentives are largest while Final Chain is young; as they are used up, the treasury's share of fees shrinks toward the operators, and the PHI set aside for module work decreases — in PHI, not in value. Governance opens with Final Chain; the parameters it will read from the registry are published with it.

#Where the fees go

Every fee the network charges today is published in Fees and PHI: fixed floors per state-plane write, a ledger surcharge rather than gas, a percentage on vAsset crossings, a lock fee on morphs, a spread on fee-token conversion, the RPC and oracle API plans (paid keys and pay-as-you-go), and what the order-flow auction earns above the user's fixed quote. Today those fees fund the protocol's float and treasury.

On Final Chain, the fees go to the holders and the node operators. Nothing is burned. While Final Chain is young, a share of the fees also goes to the treasury that funds the upfront module incentives governance votes for; as those initial incentives are used up and the chain matures, that share shrinks and more of every fee goes to the operators. The PHI set aside for module implementations and changes decreases over time too — in PHI, not in value, as the fixed amount comes to back more.

How the allocation, the sale, the staking reserve and the three-way split of fees are laid out, with the model's figures: PHI Tokenomics.

Identity and KYC savings are shared. A platform that accepts Final Identities stops paying to verify and re-verify its users; part of that saving goes to the very person who was verified, part to the protocol, part to all holders and node operators. The split is never fixed — it is set dynamically, per group, within limits that keep every party better off — and it is a revenue stream of its own beside the fees: see Fees and PHI and Final Identity.

#Staking on Final Chain nodes (planned)

Delegated proof of stake, open to every holder. Final Chain is secured by dPoS: node operators run the nodes and stake their own PHI on them, and every other holder takes part by delegating stake to a node of their choice — from their own wallet, without running anything. Staking is not an operators' privilege: it opens to every PHI holder once Final Chain is released.
Two sources. Stake earns from the staking reserve (10,000,000 PHI, releasing 12 % of what remains each year — 1.2 M in year one, 90 % spent by year 18, never a cliff) and from the operators' share of fees, which rises gradually and automatically from 10 % to 30 % of every fee as the incentive pools are spent. With 10 M PHI staked in year one the reserve alone yields 12 %; with 30 M, 4 % — before the fee share, which rises with traffic. Indicative; the whole model: PHI Tokenomics.
Node types from Light and Access (own stake from 500 PHI, 30-day lock) to Final (from 20,000 PHI, 365-day lock, up to 1,000,000 PHI in total stake); delegation from 100 PHI at a flat 2 % operator commission, the operator's own stake slashed first. Validation is one module among many: a node earns on every module it runs and the traffic it carries.
Several node types, dozens of modules. A Final Chain node is a set of modules — the HTML interface, routing and protection, co-signing and slot keys, the shard log, the fee ledger, settlement, the encrypted tunnel endpoint, and more. Which node types an operator runs and which modules they carry determine the share of fees those nodes earn.
Module incentives are user-based. When users want to use a module, demand for it — or for a new one, or an upgrade — grows, and the operators who adapt faster earn more. Nodes upgrade independently; there is no network-wide upgrade gate.
Rewards scale with the particle ladder. A staker's share of a node's earnings depends on their tier; the same ladder that discounts fees raises staking gains.
Delegated staking without assets leaving wallets. A holder can delegate stake to an operator's node while the PHI stays locked in their own wallet on whichever chain they hold it, recorded on the state plane. No transfer, no custody, no wrapper; the delegation is a record, and the lock keeps counting toward the tier.
Operators earn for the work their modules do, holders earn for the stake that secures it. The exact split per node type and module is published on Final Chain's registry when staking opens, not before.

PHI