Revenue & the flywheel
Receipts first. Funded rewards and reserve growth follow.
The proposed flywheel connects real product usage to token holders. It only works if the product earns fees and those fees actually reach the accounting system. Buying FOLD or seeing its price rise is not protocol income.
Where revenue comes from
In the app, FOLD/ETH swaps create a protocol fee. Scenario controls can also inject sample external product fees or sample stock income. The latter are explicit example receipts, not earned dividends, issuer payments or a deployed integration.
No operating revenue source is connected to FOLD today. Launch fees, partner products and stock-related income must be integrated, reconciled and verified before any real distribution can be described as earned.
How a receipt is allocated
| Destination | Share of protocol income | Use |
|---|---|---|
| Rewards | 50% | Funds the separate ETH rewards balance |
| Reserve | 30% | Adds ETH backing to the common basket |
| Operations | 20% + rounding dust | Records the operating allocation |
These are illustrative browser parameters. They are not approved mainnet tokenomics and are not the behavior of the existing two-recipient FoldRevenueRouter contract.
1.000000 ETH protocol receipt
→ 0.500000 ETH rewards
→ 0.300000 ETH reserve
→ 0.200000 ETH operationsFollow one swap
At reset, buying with 1 ETH charges a total 1% swap fee. Of the input, 0.007 ETH remains with LPs and 0.003 ETH is protocol income. The protocol part splits into 0.0015 ETH rewards, 0.0009 ETH reserve and 0.0006 ETH operations. Price impact is separate from these fees.
Where the loop can stop
- No trading or external earnings means no new fee receipts.
- Thin liquidity can make trading expensive and reduce activity.
- Revenue on a third-party platform may require an operator to sweep and collect it.
- Stock income depends on the eventual token issuer and the rights attached to that token.
- Reward claims consume funded revenue. They are never replenished merely by increasing a displayed price.