Fees

devnet preview — all data is replay

Three fees exist. Buyers see exactly one of them — and every settlement batch balances to zero, by identity, on chain.

The three fees

fee	who pays	how it works
protocol fee	the provider (seller-side)	Deducted from the provider's gross charge at settlement — never added to the buyer's price. The rate is a per-class basis-point value locked into the lease at creation: a fee change can never touch a live lease. Classes are governance-bounded, and index-source books deliberately carry low rates so the cleanest volume feeds the benchmark.
relay fee	the buyer — only by signed approval	A distribution fee for whoever carried your order. It exists only if you signed a relay fee approval, is capped three ways by that signature (rate, per-lease, total) plus your order's own cap, and is paid only on successful settlement. Batches charge cumulative deltas — a fee can never be charged twice.
data fees	whoever posts the bytes	Per-byte fees on posted payload and output data — cost-causer-pays. They flow to validators (together with a share of the protocol fee) as security compensation.

The reservation floor (not a fee)

Reserving capacity guarantees the provider a minimum: billable units are the greater of what you actually used and a floor fraction of what you reserved. That is the price of certainty, not a fee — it goes to the provider, not the protocol. Floor true-ups happen only at terminal close, and every division in settlement rounds down in the payer's favor.

The floor fraction is governed per lease type. The spec defines five types; the venue currently sells one — every listed book is an agent-session book, at a 20% floor on devnet. The other four are defined in spec and not yet offered on any book. See Books & categories.

The identity

For every settlement batch, exactly:

escrow_debited == provider_net_payment
                + protocol_fee
                + relay_fee
                + refunds
                + slashed_or_reserved_amounts

Nothing leaks. Every unit of escrow that leaves is accounted to a named destination, and the books balance to zero on chain — batch by batch, not eventually.

On a token

There is no token. Fees are paid in USDC. Nothing here implies a future token.

Worked example — the replay trace

In the A1 lease this site replays: the provider's gross charge was 600, the protocol fee took 15 (seller-side), the relay fee took 6 (user-approved), and after fault offsets the provider netted +463 — while the buyer's unused escrow returned home. settled fill ↗ provider account ↗

Rates are parameters, not promises. The exact basis-point values are governance-bounded parameters; devnet runs placeholder values. The live schedule publishes with the public devnet, and rate changes are forward-only — a lease keeps the rate it was created with.