The economy
The framework's economy is built on one idea: computation becomes value. There are two things to keep apart, and everything else follows from them.
Credit — the fuel
The user-facing unit of compute. Every call has a real, itemised cost in whole credits, drawn against your balance. You always see the price before it runs.
Envelope — the value
The signed, movable coin the work mints — one per compute, its value set by the work done. This is the framework's value primitive.
Tally — the ledger
The machine's own hash-linked, sealed record of every envelope it mints and every move it makes. The books are the audit trail.
Both are honest by construction: you can read a cost before you pay it, and you can verify any envelope or supply figure against the machine's own audit trail. Nothing here is a balance you have to take on trust.
Stated, never silent
Metering follows the same doctrine as the rest of the framework. When your balance can't cover a call, it is refused outright — with the price itemised — never silently downgraded to a cheaper, lower-quality answer that looks real. A paid compute and a free compute run the same solvers, the same pipeline, the same proofs. You are only ever paying for capacity, never for correctness.
Explore
The value primitive
How work becomes a coin you can prove, move, and carry.
- Envelopes — the atomic signed coin, the light proof, and what sets its value
- Bearer envelopes — carry an envelope offline as a self-verifying value file
Metering compute
What a call costs and what a balance buys.
- Credits & metering — the unit, itemised cost, the welcome grant, and funding
- The tally — the ledger: supply, movements, and the public record
Open books
The whole economy, published live.
- Transparency — network supply state per Zeqond: now, history, breakdown, revenue
The metering, tally, and envelope APIs are in the economy reference.