7. The Economy

A well-designed economic model is fundamental to the continued stable operation of Ethanim and the metaverse applications on top of it, as the ecology is built primarily by economic attractiveness. Ethanim's native token is $EPU, and the economic model is built around $EPU, which is designed with the basic principles of incentivizing all parties to work together to advance the platform, discourage behaviors that harm its development, and remain effective over time.

Meanwhile, Ethanim, as an ecological project of Trias, uses Trias' Leviatom underlying basic trusted service, and Trias' native token $TRIAS will assume an important role in the Ethanim ecology.

Below we will give a brief description of Ethanim's economic model, which will be described in detail in the economic white paper.

7.1 Ethanim Token

EPU is a utility token and unit of value in Ethanim and it is the core of Ethanim's economic model. The Ethanim blockchain platform and the metaverse applications on top of it are enabled to function properly with EPU, and the ecological value of Ethanim will be expressed by EPU.

Until the Ethanim community is fully established, the issuance and regulation of EPU, its allocation ratio and more issues will be governed by the TRIAS holders of the Trias community.

7.1.1 $EPU Holders

There are mainly three user groups:

Application developers: Building DApps on Ethanim will generate fees which will be paid by EPU.

Platform users: Like Ethereum and other blockchains, EPU is used by users to pay for the use of metaverse applications on the Ethanim platform or to stake to earn interests.

Miners: Miners need to stake EPU to run consensus nodes, validators, and storage nodes.

7.1.2 $EPU Circulation Process

7.2 How to get EPU?

The Ethanim will offer EPU as a reward to each party that makes a contribution and provides resources to the system. And it also encourages applications to build their own token economic models to reward the corresponding nodes.

7.2.1 Miners

Miners are the basic components of the Ethanim system and keep it running properly. Miners with different roles receive tokens in the following ways:

● Consensus Node: Miners are rewarded by staking TRIAS to run consensus nodes, maintaining main chain security, performing smart contract computation, and completing snapshot retrieval requests, etc.

● GPU Mining Machine: Miners can connect GPU mining machines to Ethanim virtual GPU resource pooling and get token rewards based on their GPU computing power contribution.

● Storage Nodes: Storage nodes are responsible for running Ethanim's eternal file system, where users can access their own idle hard drives and receive staking rewards based on the amount of storage space provided and the length of continuous storage.

● Validators: Validators can be run by users with consumer-grade devices, which is a very low threshold and can benefit more common users and promote the decentralization and horizontal scalability of the system. More details can be found in "Validation Mining" below.

7.2.2 Users

Users are the foundation of Ethanim's ecology. It is a principle of Ethanim's economic model to enable users to obtain EPU in more and more low-threshold forms, and users can obtain EPU in a number of ways including but not limited to the following:

● Validation Mining: Staking EPU to run the validator client and receive staking rewards by completing the verification of the reliable state of the RSM. Ethanim provides users with a very low-threshold way to participate in mining. The validator client is integrated into the application market client, and users can choose to perform validation at the same time to receive token rewards, regardless of whether they are using any application or just hanging in the background. The number of token rewards will be allocated according to the running hours and the reputation value of the validator.

● Community Contribution: Ethanim sets aside tokens for the community, which will be given in airdrop to users who contribute to the community, such as volunteers, advice providers, marketing promoters and more.

● Using applications: Using apps on Ethanim will earn EPU airdrops, the more frequent users use the platform, the more EPU they will get. And the frequency depends on early participation, long-time application using and more.

● Authorized staking: Users can stake EPU to the consensus node to participate in consensus voting and get the staking rewards.

7.2.3 Developers

Developers are the key builders of the Ethanim ecosystem, and Ethanim provides developers with more and more flexible incentive schemes than traditional approaches:

● Application Development: Developing applications on Ethanim will not only give developers EPU but also continuous EPU rewards based on the application's popularity after it goes online. Popularity is determined by the number of users of the app, GAS fee consumption, average user usage time, and other factors.

● Hackathon Participation: Getting EPU rewards for participating in events such as hackathons held by Ethanim.

● Code Contribution: Ethanim, as a decentralized system, needs more developers to work together to develop. Developers who contribute to the Ethanim system by developing the system, finding bugs, fixing vulnerabilities, etc. will be rewarded with EPU.

● Originality Bonus: Original applications that are transformed into different versions can receive a share of the derivative application revenue.

7.3 Deflation

There are two components of the Ethanim economic system that can cause deflation, namely, "costs" and "forfeitures":

7.3.1 Costs

Using the Ethanim platform is supposed to pay for the resources used, often referred to as "GAS". But the paying experience is always unpleasant, and no one wants their tokens to keep decreasing as they use the system. So Ethanim's default fees are deducted from the pending revenue staked by the user, and if the pending revenue does not cover the fees, the user can choose to increase the number of tokens staked or extend the staking time to get more revenue to cover the fees, so the vast majority of users can use the system for free.

The resources that require payment are mainly divided into two parts:

1. Data Storage

Fees generated from storing the application's code, files, and data will be paid with $EPU rewards and can also be paid with token rewards provided by the applications and users don't need to do any payment.

2. Execution

Execution such as transferring money on the main chain, executing smart contracts, running applications by computing nodes, image rendering, etc. will also incur costs, the amount of which is determined by the complexity of the computation and can be paid preferentially by the pending revenues from the user's participation in staking. The application also can pay on behalf of the users.

Each cost of execution is calculated as a "base cost" and a "burning cost", with the base cost being paid to the resource provider and the burning cost being permanently destroyed to offset system inflation.

7.3.2 Forfeitures

To maintain the security of the system, proof of challenge is available between Ethanim nodes. As opposed to being rewarded for honest work, if a malicious node is run or dishonestly uses the application, it will be punished and the system will forfeit the staked tokens. The forfeited tokens will be divided into two parts, partly to reward the reporting user and partly to be completely burnt, the ratio will be decided by the community governance vote.

7.4 Inflation

The economy of a sustainable system will continue to grow in size, and EPU, as a utility token, also bears the responsibility of maintaining the stability of the economic system and node rewards, and will necessarily need to meet the demand for an increased number of tokens. Therefore, EPU will predictably enter an inflationary state, but due to the existence of the burning mechanism, when the platform is heavily used, EPU will likely be burnt in large quantities and the system will enter a deflationary state.

But any fixed and rigid economic governance will fail in a changing market, and scientifically flexible governance will provide great help to the stability of the economic system. Therefore, the future amount of EPU increase and the use of allocation will be decided by the community together, with scientific and flexible governance.