Economics
A self-regulating monetary system with interlocking incentives for miners, stakers, and transactors.
Design Goals
Shekyl's monetary policy is designed to satisfy six constraints simultaneously:
Usability-first denomination
Everyday users should rarely handle very long decimals. Wallet defaults feel natural for normal payment amounts.
Long-run security budget
Consensus participants retain robust incentives after early issuance declines. No brittle fee-only end state.
Predictability and credibility
The emission schedule is simple to reason about and does not require frequent governance intervention.
Implementation safety
Supply and atomic-unit arithmetic remain safe under uint64 accounting with no overflow-prone combinations.
Demand-responsive emission
Coin release rate reflects real network usage. High activity accelerates emission; low activity conserves supply.
Self-regulating balance
Miners, stakers, and transactors form interlocking constituencies that self-stabilize without manual governance.
Core Parameters
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Headline supply | 2³² whole SHEKYL (≈ 4.29 billion) |
| Canonical accounting precision | 9 decimals (1 SKL = 1,000,000,000 atomic) |
| Core/wallet display precision | 9 decimals (matches canonical accounting) |
| Website readability display | 6 decimals (UI formatting layer only) |
| Block time target | 2 minutes |
| Blocks per year | 262,800 |
| Emission curve | Each block pays from the coins still unissued, shifted by 22. About 1,024 SKL at genesis, and about half the supply around year 11. This curve has been in the release since v3.1.0-alpha.9, and v3.1.0-alpha.10 carries it unchanged. |
| Tail emission | 0.6 SKL per block, perpetual |
The large unit count (4.29 billion whole coins) avoids “satoshi-style” UX pain — users work with whole numbers for normal transactions rather than unwieldy decimal fractions.
The Four-Component Economic Model
Four interlocking mechanisms operate on a single fixed supply constraint. Together they create a self-regulating economy.
#1Transaction-Responsive Release Rate
Transaction volume controls how quickly the CryptoNote emission curve releases coins from the fixed 2³² supply. This does not create additional coins — it adjusts the timeline of the predetermined emission schedule. High on-chain activity pulls emission forward; quiet periods slow it down.
#2Adaptive Fee Burn
A portion of each transaction fee is permanently destroyed. The burned share grows with transaction volume and with how much of the supply is already circulating, so early burns stay gentle and later burns tighten on their own. A share of what is burned funds stakers; the rest is gone.
#3Archival Staking
Stakers bond collateral, hold the chain history ordinary nodes discard, and answer challenges that prove the work. They do not vote on the burn. The burn follows transaction volume and how much of the supply is already circulating.
#4Staker Emission Share
A fraction of each block reward joins a share of burned fees in the staker reward budget. That budget is divided by verified archival work, with a cap so a larger position does not buy a proportionally larger share. Miners are paid to extend the chain; stakers are paid to keep its history.
Self-Regulating Design
These four components are designed to reach equilibrium without manual intervention. Miners extend the chain, stakers keep the history ordinary nodes discard, transactors set the pace of issuance, and the burn follows volume and supply on its own.