Tokenomics
Revenue sources
Subscriptions
The ultimate goal of Dolphin is competing with ChatGPT, Claude & Gemini to be a household name for consumer AI usage.
Subscriptions will be available soon with different tiers of access to the services provided on the network.
Premium users will have access to
- Web chat - higher usage limits & access to all premium models running on the network
- Discord & Telegram bot creator access - tiered based on usage allowance
- Image, Video & Audio generation plans
- Custom model creation via our Tinker style UI
Inference API
Users with credit can send requests to our API, which are randomly routed to any node running the user’s chosen model.
By pooling distributed idle compute on consumer GPUs, our network can offer a cost-effective, reliable inference API. Our cost basis is significantly lower than providers running models on traditional data-center hardware, where per-generation costs are often ~10x higher than those of comparable deployments on consumer GPUs.
Compared to renting a dedicated node, API access offers both higher throughput and better cost efficiency. Inference consumers can tap into all eligible nodes for their chosen model, and they only pay for the requests they actually send. For most businesses and developers integrating AI into their workflows, this makes the API a very compelling default option.
Global AI inference market is expected to grow from ~$106B in 2025 to ~$255B by 2030.
If we take a narrow focus on AI audio generation as an example, the current leader in the space is ElevenLabs and they are bringing in >$300m in Annual Recurring Revenue.
Dolphin network can process high quality AI audio generation as a substantially lower cost than the current leaders in the space - due to the leading open-source audio models fitting perfectly on most modern consumer GPUs. This also applies to image & video generation and we believe these three modalities are the perfect fit to be powered by our global pool of idle compute.
We aim to capture a slice of the global demand for inference by competitively pricing on the back of our lower cost basis & offering an all-in-one marketplace for many popular AI models.
Dolphin Foundation
The Dolphin Foundation is a shareholder-free company incorporated in the Cayman Islands to act on behalf of the protocol in the real world. POD is Dolphin’s sole value-accruing asset: the Foundation has no shareholders or separate equity interests competing with POD holders for the value created by the network.
The Foundation can enter contracts, hold core intellectual property, sell inference services, support contributors and manage relationships with customers and infrastructure providers. Its purpose is to support the development and adoption of the Dolphin Network, growing network usage, revenue and the value flowing through POD.
The Foundation is onboarding with banking providers to enable credit card payments for subscriptions and API access ahead of the inference API launch.
Read more about the Foundation in our blog post.
Value flow & token alignment
Users can buy credits from our API or subscribe with $POD, $ETH, $BTC, $USDC, $XMR & $ZEC.
100% of inference revenue is used to buy POD on the open market, except for payments in POD which skip that step. More inference usage drives more protocol revenue and POD buybacks.
We have yet to decide what ratio of POD gets routed to
- treasury to replenish emissions that left
- staking contract as yield
This offsets selling pressure from node emissions & creates upward pressure on the price when the network is operating at net profit.
Credit to Heurist for the diagram
Node rewards
You can only optimize for two out of the three points in the diagram above
We choose to remain permissionless and let rewards for each node float based on the current levels of inference demand.
Nodes earn POD tokens based on inference work completed.
If more people are using the network, utilization of each node will increase which naturally incentivises more supply to come online (with a bit of a delay).
We like this because the node count grows naturally with demand, compared to other networks that overly incentivise the supply side with predictable rewards – resulting in a vast network of mostly idle compute & heavy token emissions.
Node operators earn emissions from treasury based on inference tokens processed.
Currently on datagen.dphn.ai we pay $0.5 per 1m tokens worth of POD in emissions.
In prod, we may set pricing so that protocol revenue targets net buy pressure, or set pricing lower than emissions so that we subsidise growth with emissions.
Peer-to-Pool economic design
The peer-to-pool design is different to some other peer-to-peer networks that link buyers of compute into a “session” with a node for X period of time, and settle on-chain at the end.
On the demand side, API users buy credit from the protocol by depositing tokens to a smart contract. Their requests get sent to any node on the network depending on what is currently available.
On the supply side, nodes running the same model form a ‘pool’ that processes requests sent to that model. Nodes are assigned jobs based on availability and performance, and no direct link between the request sender and node provider is made. Nodes are rewarded for their contributions with POD tokens from the node rewards pool.
The decoupling of the buy and sell sides of the network means that more or less POD can be distributed to nodes than what is received from revenue.
This allows the network to initially operate at a net loss to grow the number of available nodes and offer larger amounts of free inference until the network stabilizes around a natural equilibrium of inference demand and node supply.
The network is designed to have protocol revenue outpace emissions when nodes are close to full utilization, which would mean that the network is operating at a profit resulting in net positive buy pressure on POD
Tokenomics
Our token design is inspired by the best parts of other projects that we found to compliment our distributed inference & training network
- ETH style slashable bond deposits for node operators & validators
- CRV style reward boosting for node operators (up to 1.3x boost for bonding staked POD - up to 1.2x is linear with 3 months of bond, and 1.2x to 1.3x is competitive based on what other node operators are doing plus an absolute 6 month bond requirement for the max boost)
- xSUSHI / yCRV / yYFI style auto-compounding staking, no need to claim rewards means that staked POD can be deposited as a bond to boost node rewards. Tax efficient as no claims have to be made and all appreciation is in the staked POD position
- stAAVE style 3 month cooldown windows for staking & bonding + stAAVE & vlCVX constant non-decaying rewards
POD can be staked into a transferable auto-compounding vault similar to xSUSHI / yCRV / yYFI.
Staked POD wallet balance stays same as rewards are distributed - redemption ratio increases as POD rewards are sent to the contract.
eg. Stake 10 POD on day one.
We add 10% dividend.
Redemption ratio is now 1.1.
Withdraw your staked position - receive 11 POD.
Staked POD is for investors or inference users who receive
- A portion or all of network revenue, in POD (auto-compounding balance)
- Access to different levels of product subscriptions without having to pay directly
- Daily free inference allowance
Staked POD has delegation function for both governance & daily inference allocations.
Meaning that we could have a CRV / CVX style votemarket where people bid to receive delegations from stakers who don’t use their daily inference.
Extra yield for stakers who don’t use their allocation & cheap inference below the market rate for those who bid for delegations.
vlCVX “constant power” refers to the mechanism within Convex Finance where the voting power & staking APY derived from locking CVX tokens for 16 weeks (vlCVX) remains constant throughout that lock-up period, unlike Curve Finance / other veTokens where voting power decays over time and it forces you to perpetually re-lock with capital becoming a sunk cost.
Many consider this an improvement over veTokenomics as the asset is more attractive to buy & stake.
This takes the benefits of vlCVX (consistent full APY without having to re-lock to maintain 100% of rewards) while having users stay constantly staked by default instead of all stakers becoming unlocked every 16 weeks.
Bonding & node reward multiplier
Our node bonding contract takes staked POD as deposit - this becomes bonded POD.
Bonded POD is non-transferable with slashing / freeze & some other features.
Node operators that are bonded can be slashed if they are caught doing anything malicious such as trying to cheat by modifying the node software or model that is being run.
Hot wallets on validator nodes can freeze bonds if they detect model mismatch - this disables exit during the 3 month cooldown, can be cancelled if false flag.
Multisig can slash or unlock these frozen wallets upon review - this process can be automated further in the future.
The POD reward multiplier determines how much additional yield an operator earns on top of their base node rewards. It is inspired by Curve’s LP boost mechanism, but adapted for a decentralized AI network with usage-based rewards, account-wide bonding, epoch-based accounting, and slashable operator bonds.
At a high level:
- Nodes earn base rewards from completed inference, validation, and related protocol work.
- Accounts that bond staked POD receive a multiplier on eligible node rewards owned by that account.
- Boosts activate only for registered, unsuspended accounts with enough recorded earnings history and at least roughly $5 of total lifetime base earnings at launch. This is implemented as a governance-set POD threshold, not as a live USD oracle and not as a $5/day requirement.
- The earnings denominator is based on a trailing multi-epoch average of base rewards, then updated with asymmetric smoothing: it rises quickly when activity increases, but falls slowly when activity decreases.
- Reward multipliers are computed only at epoch boundaries and then frozen for the next reward epoch. Reward workers use the frozen account snapshot instead of recalculating from live state.
- Bonding the equivalent of 3 months of earnings (13 weeks) gives a linear pathway up to a 1.2× multiplier on boostable rewards once the account is boost-eligible.
- The maximum multiplier is 1.3×. The pathway from 1.2× to 1.3× is competitive, based on relative over-bonding versus other operators, and also requires at least 6 months of earnings bonded as an absolute requirement for the max boost.
- Accounts that maintain at least ~3 months of earnings bonded (13 weeks) can become validator-eligible. Validators check the logprobs of other nodes to detect and report deviations from the expected model fingerprint. Eligibility uses persistent epoch-based hysteresis to prevent flapping.
- Providers exclusively earn bonded POD for the first month of operation so that all nodes have a strong economic incentive not to cheat.
- Node providers have two options when claiming their weekly rewards from the contract: claim as bonded POD as the standard option, or claim as liquid POD with a 20% fee that goes directly to stakers by being sent to the staking contract.
- Until an operator has 4 weeks worth of their expected earnings as bond, they can only claim bonded POD. After this point, they can choose between both options.
- Bonds who activate the cooldown timer lose boost + the ability to claim liquid POD & validator status.
All calculations are done in POD units only, without any price oracle inside the reward engine. The bond is per account (wallet), and the resulting multiplier applies across all nodes owned by that account. Adding more nodes increases the account’s base earnings and therefore requires proportionally more active bond to maintain the same weeks-bonded ratio.
Token allocation
Total supply: 500,000,000 POD
| Allocation | Tokens | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Treasury | 214,634,419 | 42.93% |
| Team | 125,000,000 | 25.00% |
| Seed | 117,600,000 | 23.52% |
| Uniswap v4 pool | 42,765,581 | 8.55% |
Team vesting
The 125,000,000 POD team allocation (25% of total supply) is divided between active team allocations and a reserve for future team members:
- 87,500,000 xPOD in active allocations: an 85,000,000 xPOD stream to the team allocation vault, plus ten individual streams of 250,000 xPOD each.
- 37,500,000 POD reserved for future team allocations: held in a separate vesting stream to the same vault and not yet allocated to individual employees.
The two large streams fund the Dolphin team allocation vault, which manages grants and distributions to individual employees. The vault pays employee grants in xPOD and can stake POD released from the reserve stream to fund those payments.
Vault funding streams
| Detail | Active team allocation | Future team reserve |
|---|---|---|
| Sablier stream | 85,000,000 xPOD — #1186 | 37,500,000 POD — #1185 |
| Recipient | Team allocation vault | Same vault |
| Start date | 20 September 2026 | 20 September 2026 |
| Cliff date | 1 May 2028 | 1 May 2028 |
| Cliff unlock (1%) | 850,000 xPOD | 375,000 POD |
| Remaining linear vesting (99%) | 84,150,000 xPOD | 37,125,000 POD |
| Fully vested | 1 May 2038 | 1 May 2038 |
| Cancellation | Non-cancellable | Non-cancellable |
| Stream NFT transfer | Non-transferable | Non-transferable |
Nothing unlocks from either vault funding stream before 1 May 2028. At the cliff, 1% unlocks; the remaining 99% vests linearly over the following ten years, ending 1 May 2038. These milestones occur at 01:00 UTC (11:00am AEST).
Individual team streams
The ten 250,000 xPOD streams total 2,500,000 xPOD and remain active allocations to their individual recipients. These existing streams retain their original schedule: 4 July 2026 start, 4 May 2028 cliff with 2,500 xPOD (1%) unlocked per stream, then the remaining 247,500 xPOD (99%) vesting linearly until 4 May 2038. Their milestones occur at 12:03:51 UTC. They are also non-cancellable and their stream NFTs are non-transferable.
View the ten 250k xPOD streams
Active team allocations
87,500,000 xPOD
85,000,000 xPOD unlocks from 1 May 2028 to 1 May 2038. The ten 250,000 xPOD streams unlock from 4 May 2028 to 4 May 2038. The combined curve includes both schedules. Move across the curve or drag the slider to inspect dates and amounts in UTC. These are scheduled Sablier releases before withdrawals; vault distributions follow individual employee grants.
Employee grants and safeguards
All twelve Sablier streams above are non-cancellable: the funding Safe cannot cancel them to recover unvested funds. Their non-transferable setting applies to ownership of the stream NFTs, not to tokens once withdrawn.
Individual employee grants inside the vault are managed separately. If a team member stops contributing, the treasury’s 4/7 multisig, which administers the vault, can cancel their grant: earned entitlement is preserved, while the unvested allocation is released for future grants. This does not cancel the underlying Sablier funding streams or return their locked balances to the treasury. The vault is upgradeable by its administrator; its grant policies are separate from Sablier’s stream restrictions.
Active team allocations and employee payouts are in staked tokens (xPOD). Staking rewards remain within the autocompounding xPOD vault receipt tokens and cannot be claimed separately during vesting. The unallocated reserve stream is denominated in POD.
Some contractual team members received shorter vesting schedules as part of their salary compensation. These separate streams can be viewed here: 1, 2, 3.
Seed round and treasury
Our seed round was $886,000 on 20th June 2024 for 117,600,000 tokens with 1 year cliff vesting.
All seed tokens have been fully unlocked since 20th June 2025
4.25m tokens were also sold otc across 3 deals in 2025.
1 year cliff + 2 year linear vesting was applied to these sales - issued as staked tokens.
The treasury tokens and liquidity positions are held in a 4-of-7 Gnosis Safe multisig. Its seven signers are six team members and the Dolphin Foundation, with four signatures required to approve a transaction.
Treasury tokens will only be used for node emissions or future fundraising.
We have implemented a policy to limit treasury token sales to 10% of the total token supply, with a minimum 1-year cliff.
Any investment proceeds from treasury sales will be managed within the 4/7 treasury multisig Safe.
Node emissions are paid solely based on how much inference is processed by node operators.
This avoids over incentivising supply in the absence of demand.
Exit queue
Right now staking and bonding both have a 3 month stAAVE style cooldown period - with a 1 week withdraw window to claim at the end.
Bonding withdrawals can exit directly to POD, as the bonding contract is whitelisted to bypass a double cooldown.
The exit-queue from these contracts can be watched live at https://exitqueue.dphn.ai
Node emissions
Node emissions are sent out from the POD emissions 2/6 multisig. Its six signers are team members, with two signatures required to approve a transaction.
This multisig is used for all POD reward distributions to node operators & it will be periodically topped up by the treasury.
For security, this multisig never holds more than 1,000,000 POD at a given time.
Our network dashboard shows the current & past distributions to node operators, including the average daily & weekly emission rate.
The emissions rate is determined by the total inference performed by the network on a daily basis.