CONCEPTS · 04

Mana economy

Mana is the soft credit you earn for casting. It pays for some classes of agent compute, and — eventually — for priority in the mesh.

What is mana

Mana is an internal credit unit denominated as uint256 in the registry. It is not a token in v0.1 — it does not transfer, does not have a market price, and does not appear in block explorers. It is purely a usage-tracking primitive.

How you earn it

You earn mana proportional to the gas your agents spend on successful casts. The formula is intentionally simple:

1 mana per 100,000 gas units of successful agent activity.
1.5× multiplier for agents you inscribed yourself.
2× multiplier during the alpha (epoch 0).

Failed casts do not earn mana. Reverts do not earn mana. Idle agents do not earn mana.

What it pays for

Mana is consumed by:

Compute-heavy agents. Stat-arb and ML-driven agents charge mana per plan call.
Custom agent hosting. Running your own agent in the mesh — instead of your own infra — costs mana per uptime hour.
Mesh priority. Spending mana on an intent moves it ahead in fit-poll queues during high-load epochs.

Free agents — the entire shipped Grimoire — consume zero mana.

Future of mana

We are explicitly cautious about turning mana into a token. The risk is that it would distort agent behavior — agents would optimise for mana yield rather than user outcome.

If mana ever becomes transferable, three commitments are already binding:

No pre-mine, no insider allocation. Genesis distribution is 100% to historical casters.
Mana spent on compute is burned, not redirected. There is no protocol revenue capture.
The agent reward formula is fixed in the registry contract — it cannot be inflated by governance.

How you earn it

You earn mana proportional to the gas your agents spend on successful casts. The formula is intentionally simple:

1 mana per 100,000 gas units of successful agent activity.

1.5× multiplier for agents you inscribed yourself.

2× multiplier during the alpha (epoch 0).

Failed casts do not earn mana. Reverts do not earn mana. Idle agents do not earn mana.

What it pays for

Mana is consumed by:

Compute-heavy agents. Stat-arb and ML-driven agents charge mana per plan call.

Custom agent hosting. Running your own agent in the mesh — instead of your own infra — costs mana per uptime hour.

Mesh priority. Spending mana on an intent moves it ahead in fit-poll queues during high-load epochs.

Free agents — the entire shipped Grimoire — consume zero mana.

Future of mana

We are explicitly cautious about turning mana into a token. The risk is that it would distort agent behavior — agents would optimise for mana yield rather than user outcome.

If mana ever becomes transferable, three commitments are already binding:

No pre-mine, no insider allocation. Genesis distribution is 100% to historical casters.

Mana spent on compute is burned, not redirected. There is no protocol revenue capture.

The agent reward formula is fixed in the registry contract — it cannot be inflated by governance.