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Compute credits, ZEQ coin and tiers (ECON v5, 2026-09-04)

This is the one page that states the economy. Every other page, the pricing page, the Vault and GET /api/pricing/tiers say the same thing; if one of them ever differs, this page and the API are the truth.

The unit — one hour of compute​

  • 1 compute credit = 1 hour = 4,633.2 Zeqonds (3600 s ÷ 0.777000777 s). The ledger is in plancks: 10^43 plancks per credit-hour, the coin's own scale, so the peg is exact.
  • Metered per Zeqond. Each compute is charged for the Zeqonds it actually ran, never less than the floor (one Zeqond by default). A 20 ms operator compute costs 1/4,633 of a credit. Every tier pays; only the Foundation owner and BYOK LLM calls are waived.
  • Where hours come from: one free hour every 30 days (it never stacks), hours bought from the Foundation (card subscription or crypto), and hours made by burning earned ZEQ coin (POST /api/credits/from-coin). Credits never move between accounts.
  • What a compute answers with: charge: { zeqonds, plancks, hours, floor_applied, fuel_after_hours, from_bond_plancks, from_fuel_plancks }. Your balance: GET /api/tally/credits/:zid → fuel_hours, cycle, next_free_hour_zeqond. Out of hours: a per-IP try budget (5 an hour), then 402 INSUFFICIENT_FUEL.
  • Envelopes are 1:1. Every compute mints one ZEQ envelope carrying the exact plancks it cost (value_plancks); a fuel-paid compute's envelope is yours, a try-budget compute's goes to the Foundation.

The price — one number​

usd_per_hour = cost_basis × (1 + markup). The cost basis is what an hour of the fleet's CPU, electricity, broadband and wear costs, published as 1.98;themarkupis0.5.∗∗Onecompute−hourcosts1.98; the markup is 0.5. **One compute-hour costs 2.97**, which is $0.000641 per Zeqond. There is no other price: not per tier, not per payment method. It is published live at GET /api/pricing/tiers (price block) and GET /api/oracle/compute-price.

ZEQ coin — earned, never sold​

The issuer mints one ZEQ per Zeqond into the WORM spine (about 4,633 an hour). Each hour: 0.1% is burned, 5% goes to the treasury, 95% is the contributors' budget, paid to the machines that supplied sealed compute that hour at one coin per CPU-hour (1/4,633.2 coin per Zeqond of CPU), compressed pro-rata above capacity; whatever the contributors did not earn stays in the treasury.

Coins are bearer tokens: transferable, exportable, bondable. Coins are only earned. The Foundation does not sell coins, there is no credits-to-coin bridge, and nothing mints a coin for a payment. The one bridge is coin → hours: POST /api/credits/from-coin { zeq } burns the coins (supply falls) and credits the same number of hours, because 1 ZEQ = 1 hour by the peg.

Tiers — a bond for this cycle that burns​

A subscription buys hours for one cycle (30 days = 3,335,904 Zeqonds) at the one price: hours per cycle = seat price ÷ $2.97.

TierPer seat per monthHours per cycle
Starter$299.764
Builder$7926.599
Advanced$19967.003
Architect$499168.013

Those hours are bonded in your wallet for the cycle. As you compute, the bond burns first, then your non-expiring bought hours, then the free hour. Unused bonded hours expire at the end of the cycle; the next payment tops the bond up. That is what the subscription is: a monthly top-up, not a purchase you keep. Your tier is the live cycle bond; when it expires you get 7 days of grace, then the plan mirror falls back to Free. Tiers set machine, app and disk limits and provenance cadence — never the price of an hour.

You can bond a cycle without a card: POST /api/credits/bond { tier } moves the tier's hours from your bought hours into a 30-day bond; POST /api/credits/from-coin { zeq, bond_tier } burns earned coins straight into a cycle bond. Paying for the same tier again mid-cycle schedules the next cycle; upgrading carries the unused hours into the new bond.

Card payments happen on the payments node and bond the hours on your home node through the federated fuel_bond event. Crypto (USDC, ETH, BTC) buys hours at the same price; the hours never expire unless you bond them.

Share your CPU, earn coin​

Switch on sharing in the Vault (Your Node), the launcher, or zeq-local share --key my.zeqkey. Free public computes are replicated to your machine; a reproduced result is credited for the node-measured Zeqonds (capped per job) and enters the hourly distribution: one coin per CPU-hour, paid to your wallet on your home node, nothing kept by the Foundation. GET /api/contribute/share shows cpu_zeqonds_paid, zeq_earned and the next settlement. Because a coin is an hour, contributing an hour of CPU earns the hour back.