Token & economy

The $ASHAO token

The dual-token model: real revenue, buyback-and-burn, and staking rewards.

$ASHAO is the token that turns network usage into ownership. It isn't a points balance you spend on inference — that's what credits are for. $ASHAO captures the value the whole network produces and routes it back to the people who secure and run it.

1B
Total supply
6
Decimals
$ASHAO
Symbol

Two tokens, two jobs

ashao deliberately separates the unit you use from the unit you own. Conflating them is how usage tokens end up volatile and ownership tokens end up meaningless.

  • Credits are the stable unit of usage — priced in dollars, spent per message and per image. They keep the product predictable to use. See Credits & tiers.
  • $ASHAO is the ownership and incentive token. You stake it to back the network and earn from it; you never need it to send a message.

Where the value comes from

Every paid action on ashao generates real revenue. Workers are paid their share for the compute they contribute, and the remainder accrues to the protocol treasury in a stable asset (USDC). That treasury is the engine behind $ASHAO — it is funded by usage, not emissions.

What the treasury does

Treasury revenue is split down the middle by protocol policy, with no discretionary lever in the hot path:

50%
Buyback & burn
50%
Staking rewards
0%
Discretionary

Buyback & burn

Half of treasury revenue is used to buy $ASHAO on the open market and burn it. As the network does more work, more supply is permanently removed — usage tightens the float instead of inflating it.

Staking rewards

The other half is paid to stakers. Stake $ASHAO, back the network, and collect a share of revenue proportional to your stake. Staking also unlocks the worker earnings boost described in Staking.

Revenue-backed, not emission-backed

Both flows are funded by money the network actually earned. There is no inflationary reward schedule printing $ASHAO to pay stakers — rewards exist because usage exists.

The flywheel

Put together, the pieces reinforce each other:

  • More usage → more treasury revenue.
  • More revenue → more $ASHAO bought back and burned, and more paid to stakers.
  • More rewards → more reason to stake and run workers → more capacity and a more secure network.
  • More capacity → a better product → more usage.

Not financial advice

This page describes how the $ASHAO mechanism is designed to work. It is documentation, not investment advice, and nothing here is a promise of returns. Tokens carry risk.

Live treasury figures — balance, amount burned, rewards paid, circulating supply — are available on the $ASHAO dashboard and the /api/treasury endpoint.