Fees & token
The 3% premium, how it is split between burn, stakers and treasury, and the $THRM supply.
Therm has exactly one fee: a 3% premium on every pass. There are no fees on spending therms, no fees on transfers, no management fee on the pool and no performance fee on staking.
The premium#
The premium is taken from your deposit. When you pay 1,000 USDG for a pass, 970.87 USDG buys therms at the locked rate and 29.13 USDG is the premium. Equivalently, the effective price of each therm is the locked rate plus 3%.
The premium is separate from the spread. The spread is the pool's underwriting result, which can be positive or negative. The premium is paid on every pass regardless of what the base fee does afterwards.
How the premium is split#
| Share | Destination | On a 1,000 USDG pass | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50% | Buy & burn $THRM | 14.56 USDG | Returns value to all THRM holders by reducing supply. |
| 30% | Stakers | 8.74 USDG | Pays the backstop for carrying first-loss risk, independent of the spread. |
| 20% | Treasury | 5.83 USDG | Funds audits, the bug bounty, infrastructure and bundler relationships. |
Buy & burn runs continuously. The protocol accumulates the burn share in USDG and buys THRM on-chain in small tranches, then sends it to a burn address. Purchases are rate-limited so the program is not a predictable target for front-running.
The staker share accrues in ETH alongside the spread, using the same pro-rata accounting, so it shows up in your accrued balance immediately.
The treasury share is held by the protocol treasury under the same multisig and timelock that governs protocol parameters. Treasury spending will be reported publicly.
Why 3%#
The premium has to cover the cost of running the protocol and pay stakers a floor return for committing capital, even in periods when the spread is flat. It cannot be so high that locking a rate is obviously worse than paying spot. At 3%, a pass bought at a fair rate breaks even for the buyer if the average base fee over the life of their therms is 3% above the locked rate — a threshold that a single moderate spike will clear. The premium is a governed parameter and any change applies only to passes bought after it takes effect.
The $THRM token#
$THRM is the protocol's staking and governance token. It has three functions:
- Backstop. Staked THRM is the first-loss capital behind the pool.
- Value accrual. Half of every premium buys and burns THRM.
- Governance. THRM holders will vote on protocol parameters: the premium, the curve slope and target, the hourly cap and the sponsorship allowlist. At launch, parameters are controlled by a multisig behind a timelock, with governance handed to THRM holders on a published schedule.
You do not need THRM to buy or spend therms. A user who only wants fixed-price gas never has to touch it.
Supply and allocation#
$THRM has not launched. There is no contract address and no presale. Supply, allocation and the launch date will be announced first on the project's X account, @ThermRH (opens in a new tab), and then added here. Until then, any token presenting itself as $THRM is not affiliated with Therm, and Therm will never send you a contract address by direct message.
The structure below is set; the numbers are not.
| Allocation | Share of supply | Tokens | Vesting |
|---|---|---|---|
| Backstop incentives | TBD | TBD | Emitted to stakers over TBD years |
| Community & ecosystem | TBD | TBD | TBD |
| Treasury | TBD | TBD | Unlocked by governance vote |
| Core contributors | TBD | TBD | TBD-year vest, TBD-month cliff |
| Early backers | TBD | TBD | TBD-year vest, TBD-month cliff |
| Initial liquidity | TBD | TBD | At launch |
| Total supply | 100% | TBD |
Commitments that will hold regardless of the final numbers:
- No allocation will be able to stake into the backstop while still subject to a cliff. Locked tokens cannot earn the spread without bearing the loss.
- Contributor and backer tokens will vest linearly after their cliff; there will be no bulk unlocks.
- The token contract will have no mint function after issuance. After that, supply can only fall, through buy & burn.