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Credits — the unit of compute

Compute on a machine is metered in compute credits, and a credit is one hour of compute (4,633.2 Zeqonds; 1043 plancks, the coin's own scale). Every execution has a real, itemised cost, and the pricing doctrine matches the physics doctrine: stated, never silent. You are told what a thing costs, in a unit you can audit, before anything is spent. Credits are the fuel; the envelope is the value the work mints in return. The full statement of the economy is Compute credits, ZEQ coin and tiers; this page is the metering half.

The unit model​

Credit = hour

The unit you read and reason about. A call is charged for the Zeqonds it actually ran (never less than the one-Zeqond floor), so a 20 ms operator compute costs 1/4,633 of a credit — the ledger keeps the exact plancks.

The free hour

A signed-in account gets one free compute-hour every 30 days. It lands on the account by itself — there is no claim, no proof-of-work door — and it never stacks.

Funding source

Whether a call is fuel-funded (your hours) or try-funded (the per-IP try budget) decides who owns the envelope it mints — you, or the Foundation.

What an hour costs, and where hours come from​

  • One price. usd_per_hour = cost_basis × (1 + markup) = 1.98×1.5=∗∗1.98 × 1.5 = **2.97 per compute-hour**, published live at GET /api/pricing/tiers (price). Every tier and every rail pays the same number.
  • Bought from the Foundation — a card subscription (bonded for the cycle, see below) or crypto (USDC, ETH, BTC; the hours never expire). Nothing you pay ever mints a coin.
  • Burned from earned ZEQ — POST /api/credits/from-coin { zeq } burns coins 1:1 into hours (the peg: 1 ZEQ = 1 hour). This is the only bridge and it runs one way.
  • Bonded for a cycle — a subscription bonds that cycle's hours in your wallet (seat price ÷ $2.97: 9.764 / 26.599 / 67.003 / 168.013 h for Starter / Builder / Advanced / Architect). Compute burns the bond first, then your non-expiring hours. Unused bonded hours expire at cycle end; the next payment tops the bond up. POST /api/credits/bond { tier } bonds bought hours; from-coin with bond_tier bonds coins.

Balances and gates​

  • Your balance: GET /api/tally/credits/:zid → fuel_hours (non-expiring), cycle (the bond: tier, bonded, used, remaining, expires), next_free_hour_zeqond.
  • Every charge is itemised: the compute payload's charge block carries zeqonds, plancks, hours, floor_applied, from_bond_plancks, from_fuel_plancks and fuel_after_hours.
  • Out of hours: a per-IP try budget (5 an hour) keeps the demo alive, then the machine answers 402 INSUFFICIENT_FUEL. It is refused outright — never a diluted answer. There is no "degraded physics" mode: a paid compute and a free compute run the same solvers, the same pipeline, the same proofs.
  • A free demo key carries a small mint budget (DEMO_MINT_BUDGET) so you can spin up a state machine and get your ZID: curl -X POST https://zeqsdk.com/api/demo-key/mint. There are no daily caps anywhere else; fuel is the only gate.

Free vs paid — and what you keep​

Every charged compute mints one envelope, with a face equal to the plancks it was charged — 1:1, no multiplier. It does not mint ZEQ: ZEQ is issued by the clock, one per Zeqond, by the issuer, and paid out to the machines that contributed CPU. How the call was funded is the only thing that decides where the envelope lands:

  • Fuel-funded (your hours, bonded or bought or burned from coin) → the whole movable envelope mints to you.
  • Try-funded (the per-IP try budget) → the envelope mints to the Foundation; you keep the soulbound light proof that your machine did the work. The try budget buys results, not transferable value.

Why metering looks like this​

The same honesty contract that forbids fabricated physics forbids fabricated pricing: the machine tells you what a thing costs, in units you can audit, before it refuses. Every planck spent lands on the machine's audit trail like everything else, so an owner can reconcile spending against the record exactly — and the price is one number, the same on every node.

  • Compute credits, ZEQ coin and tiers — the one page that states the economy.
  • Overview — the two ledgers and three units, and which one credits are.
  • Envelopes — the receipt a charged compute mints, at a 1:1 face.
  • Issuance — where ZEQ actually comes from, and why it isn't compute.
  • The tally — the ledger every mint and move is written to.