Token Design

AURA Token Overview

Token name: AURA. Total supply: 10,000,000,000 (10B). Network: Solana (SPL Token). Utility: Gas for encrypted compute, staking, governance, mining rewards.

Allocation

FHE Mining Rewards: 30% — Emitted over 10 years, halving every 2 years. Ecosystem and Grants: 20% — 4-year linear unlock. Team and Advisors: 15% — 1-year cliff, 3-year linear vest. Treasury: 15% — Governed by DAO, 6-month timelock on large disbursements. Strategic Investors: 10% — 1-year cliff, 2-year linear vest. Community and Liquidity: 10% — Partially unlocked at TGE for market-making and airdrops.

Token Utility

Compute Gas: Every encrypted operation on the AFHE network consumes AURA tokens. The coprocessor, Aura Shield, and confidential token operations all require AURA for execution. This creates direct demand correlation with network usage.

Staking: AURA holders can stake tokens to participate in threshold decryption committees (required for confidential token operations) and earn protocol fees. Minimum stake requirements ensure economic alignment with network security.

Governance: AURA token holders govern protocol parameters, treasury allocation, and upgrade decisions. Voting power is proportional to staked tokens with a time-weighted multiplier rewarding long-term alignment.

Mining Rewards: FHE miners receive AURA tokens for contributing lookup tables to the network. The emission schedule is designed to bootstrap the table library aggressively in years 1-3 while transitioning to fee-based sustainability.

Value Accrual Mechanics

The AURA token captures value through three mechanisms. Fee Revenue: a percentage of all encrypted compute fees are distributed to stakers and burned — as network usage grows, fee revenue grows proportionally. Supply Reduction: a portion of compute fees are permanently burned, creating deflationary pressure that increases with adoption. Staking Lock-Up: threshold decryption committee participation requires long-term staking, reducing circulating supply and aligning token holder incentives with network security.

Why a Separate Token: A native AURA token is required rather than denominating fees in SOL for three structural reasons. First, the burn mechanism — permanently removing tokens proportional to network usage — creates deflationary pressure that aligns token value with protocol adoption; this is impossible with SOL, which AURA does not control. Second, operator staking requires a slashable asset specific to the AURA network; slashing SOL for FHE compute failures would require Solana validator-level integration that does not exist. Third, governance over cryptographic parameters, fee structures, and emission schedules requires a dedicated token whose holders are specifically aligned with the encrypted compute network's long-term health.