Rules explained04 / 10
Emission and Epochs
In 30 seconds
- Whitepaper plan: emission runs over 520 epochs, about 10 years
- Phase budgets are caps, not targets that must be paid out
- Actual emission follows market capacity: if it can't sell, less goes out
The short version
Emission is how AiLGNS moves from "budget" into circulation. The whitepaper puts two hard limits on it: a total cap, and a cap per epoch. Inside those caps, how much is actually released depends on how much the market can absorb.
Budget ≠ Actual Emission
Epochs: the unit of time
HELIX measures long-term emission, governance and Gauge cycles in epochs. Whitepaper p. 69
1 Epoch = 7 Days
The base Community emission cycle is 520 epochs: 520 × 7 = 3,640 days, roughly 10 years. Whitepaper p. 70
Daily settlement always happens at 00:00 Singapore time (SGT, UTC+8), which is 12:00 EDT or 11:00 EST on the previous day in New York. Whitepaper p. 63
Two emission budgets
AiLGNS has a maximum supply of 210,000,000 tokens. Two slices of it are reserved for long-term emission: Whitepaper p. 67
| Budget | Share of supply | Amount (AiLGNS) | Who receives it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Community Emission | 78% | 163,800,000 | Contributors, through Power |
| DAO Incentive | 10% | 21,000,000 | Liquidity pools, through veAiLGNS votes and Gauges |
Community emission serves Power production (HELIX-P); the DAO Incentive serves governance and market autonomy (HELIX-M). Whitepaper p. 68
The 163,800,000 figure is a maximum budget for Community emission, not an issuance target the protocol has to hit. Whitepaper p. 69
Five phases
Both budgets follow the same five-phase rhythm, weighted 7%, 24%, 30%, 23% and 16%: a low start, acceleration, a peak during expansion, then a gradual decline. Whitepaper p. 70
Community emission (epochs 1 to 520)
| Phase | Epochs | Epoch range | Share | Phase budget (AiLGNS) | Cap per epoch (AiLGNS) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Launch | 52 | 1-52 | 7% | 11,466,000 | 220,500 |
| Acceleration | 110 | 53-162 | 24% | 39,312,000 | 357,381.82 |
| Expansion | 135 | 163-297 | 30% | 49,140,000 | 364,000 |
| Maturity | 115 | 298-412 | 23% | 37,674,000 | 327,600 |
| Decline | 108 | 413-520 | 16% | 26,208,000 | 242,666.67 |
| Total | 520 | 100% | 163,800,000 |
Source: Whitepaper p. 70. The "epoch range" column is simply the phase lengths added up in order.
DAO Incentive (epochs 11 to 530)
The DAO Incentive starts 10 epochs after Community emission: Community runs from epoch 1 to 520, the DAO from epoch 11 to 530. The idea is to build Power, users and basic economic activity first, and open up governance and market competition after that. Whitepaper p. 71
| Phase | Epochs | Epoch range | Share | Phase budget (AiLGNS) | Cap per epoch (AiLGNS) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Launch | 52 | 11-62 | 7% | 1,470,000 | 28,269.23 |
| Acceleration | 110 | 63-172 | 24% | 5,040,000 | 45,818.18 |
| Expansion | 135 | 173-307 | 30% | 6,300,000 | 46,666.67 |
| Maturity | 115 | 308-422 | 23% | 4,830,000 | 42,000 |
| Decline | 108 | 423-530 | 16% | 3,360,000 | 31,111.11 |
| Total | 520 | 100% | 21,000,000 |
Source: Whitepaper p. 71
The per-epoch caps are rounded display values. The contract allocates at full precision and handles the remainders, and cumulative release can never exceed the phase budget. Whitepaper p. 70
A cap is not a quota
The phase tables list maximum budgets. The Community launch cap of 220,500 tokens per epoch means emission may not exceed that number, not that 220,500 tokens must be emitted every epoch. Whitepaper p. 72
Actual Emission ≤ Emission Cap
Three gates on Community emission
Growth in Power cannot mechanically inflate emission. Each epoch, actual Community emission has to pass three limits at once: Whitepaper p. 72
Token Hard Cap
However much active Power grows, emission cannot exceed the current phase's per-epoch cap. Whitepaper p. 72
E ≤ E(Token)DAI Value Gate
Let V(DAI) be the emission value allowed this period and P the effective AiLGNS price; the token amount is one divided by the other. A higher price means fewer tokens for the same value, and a falling price is never a reason to break the hard cap. Whitepaper p. 72
E(DAI) = V(DAI) / PEconomic Capacity Gate
The protocol watches liquidity, trading demand, the market's ability to absorb tokens, and risk. When capacity falls, the amount allowed out falls with it. A budget that permits release does not oblige the market to take it. Whitepaper p. 73
E(Capacity) = f(Liquidity, Demand, Absorption, Risk)
The strictest of the three sets the actual emission for the period: Whitepaper p. 73
E(Actual) = min[E(Token), E(DAI), E(Capacity)]
The whitepaper does not say how V(DAI) or the effective price P are determined, nor what exact form the capacity function f takes. Those are left to protocol rules and governance.
Emission and market capacity
Chapter 16 restates these gates as one equilibrium model: actual emission is bounded by token supply, the period budget and market capacity together. Whitepaper p. 137
E_Actual = min(E_Token, E_Budget, E_Capacity)
The capacity term is worked backwards from the market: Whitepaper p. 141
SafeCapacity = θ × C_Global
AvailableCapacity = max(0, SafeCapacity − InventoryPressure)
E_Capacity = AvailableCapacity / (p × σ)
In plain words:
- C_Global is the combined capacity of all qualified pools. A single pool's capacity is its weakest factor among depth, volume and LSP settlement capacity, not its TVL. Whitepaper p. 139
- θ is a safety factor, σ the share of emission that actually reaches the market, and p the AiLGNS price in DAI. The whitepaper gives no fixed values for θ or σ. Whitepaper p. 141
- InventoryPressure is the pressure from LSP inventory that has not been sold yet. The more inventory, the less new emission fits. Whitepaper p. 141
Two points are easy to get wrong:
- A higher price does not raise emission. The same number of tokens at a higher price is a bigger load in DAI terms, so it needs more market capacity, not less. Whitepaper p. 137
- If it does not sell, less is emitted. When LSP inventory keeps piling up, fills get hard or market depth drops, the protocol should tighten actual Community emission. Whitepaper p. 87
LSP Pressure ↑ → Community Actual Emission ↓
The contraction rules for risk states are in Risk control.
Daily release: the epoch sets the budget, each day releases it
Each epoch first fixes the Community emission that can actually be executed over its 7 days, then releases it over 7 daily settlement cycles. Whitepaper p. 73
Each day's Community emission is split 50% / 50% between a personal Power part and a community Power part. The split is internal only and never creates extra budget. Whitepaper p. 74
Daily Community Emission = 50% Personal Power + 50% Community Power
More active Power means more Power competing for the same limited budget, not more total emission. Whitepaper p. 74
Power Growth ≠ Emission Cap Growth
The rules for Power itself are in Power and the LSP.
DAO emission: votes set the direction, caps set the size
The DAO Incentive is not distributed through Power. veAiLGNS holders vote on which liquidity pool (Gauge) it flows to. Whitepaper p. 70 A vote is not the same as emission, though: each pool receives the smaller of what the vote asks for and the protocol's cap. Whitepaper p. 107
EᵢActual = min(EᵢVote, EᵢMax)
The full form also includes the pool's economic capacity, the single-pool emission cap and the DAO budget available that epoch: Whitepaper p. 110
EᵢActual = min(EᵢVote, EᵢEconomic, EᵢPoolCap, EᵢDAOAvailable)
Before execution, the Gauge budget is also multiplied by the execution ratio for the pool's HealthScore; below a score of 40, new emission to that pool is paused. Whitepaper p. 109 The voting process is described in veAiLGNS governance.
Where unused budget goes
If actual Community emission in an epoch stays below the cap, the difference is not forced onto the market just to "complete the plan". Whitepaper p. 75
Unused = E(Token) − E(Actual)
- Unused Community budget: 50% goes to the DAO Incentive Reserve and 50% to the Insurance Reserve. Once moved, it never returns to Community. Whitepaper p. 75
- Unused DAO budget: the part cut by the HealthScore gate goes to the Insurance Reserve; budget left unused for other reasons (no valid votes, a pool cap reached, no qualified LP and so on) stays in the DAO Incentive Reserve. No amount may be counted in both. Whitepaper p. 75
- Phase VI: if the DAO reserve still holds unreleased AiLGNS after the five base phases, a sixth phase starts automatically. It adds no new native budget and keeps releasing the accumulated reserve epoch by epoch until it is empty. Whitepaper p. 76