Incentives

Tangle’s incentives come from two sources:

1. Service fees paid by customers when they create and run blueprint services.
2. TNT incentive budgets funded to the protocol (no automatic minting).

Claim paths: staker fees + staker inflation via ServiceFeeDistributor, TNT staking incentives via RewardVaults, and operator/customer/developer TNT via InflationPool.

Code references: Payments.sol, ServiceFeeDistributor.sol, InflationPool.sol, RewardVaults.sol, TangleMetrics.sol

Service Fees

Customers pay for blueprint services using the chain’s native token or an ERC-20 payment token (including TNT). Fees are split between:

• Developer (blueprint owner, or a payout address returned by the blueprint’s service manager)
• Protocol treasury
• Operators (weighted by that service’s per-operator exposure)
• Stakers (delegators who staked with the chosen operators)

The default split is 20% developer / 20% protocol / 40% operators / 20% stakers, and can be updated by governance.

Staker shares are routed per-operator to the on-chain ServiceFeeDistributor, which distributes fees to delegators based on:

• Delegated amount (and optional lock multiplier)
• Blueprint selection (All vs Fixed)
• Optional per-asset security requirements and operator commitments (and optional USD normalization via a price oracle)

TNT Incentives (Pre-Funded)

TNT incentives are distributed from a pre-funded on-chain pool:

• InflationPool holds TNT allocated by governance/treasury and distributes it in epochs.
• The staking portion funds RewardVaults, which pays TNT incentives for delegated assets (with a deposit cap per asset).
• Other portions become claimable TNT balances for operators, customers, and developers.
• If stakersBps > 0, a staker TNT budget is distributed by service exposure and routed through ServiceFeeDistributor.

Metrics and Scoring

The protocol can optionally record activity into a metrics contract (TangleMetrics) using best-effort hooks (failures do not block core protocol actions). Those metrics drive merit-based distributions in InflationPool.

• See Metrics and Scoring for details.

Why This Layout Works

• One staker fee path: Service fees always flow through ServiceFeeDistributor, so payout math is consistent across tokens and services.
• Budget clarity: Incentives only exist if governance funds them; there is no hidden inflation.
• Predictable integration: Developers can reason about exactly where funds go and how to claim them.

Source Contracts (GitHub)

• Payments.sol
• ServiceFeeDistributor.sol
• InflationPool.sol
• RewardVaults.sol
• TangleMetrics.sol