01 Introduction
A decentralized automated liquidity engine on Robinhood Chain
Rotor is built around a supply that moves in both directions beneath a hard ceiling. ROTOR is burned whenever a Blade NFT is minted, emitted daily to Blade holders on a schedule that steps down as the collection grows, and bought back and burned by the protocol using accrued fees, so the circulating supply is governed autonomously by the protocol rather than any manual decision.
Robinhood Chain is an Ethereum Layer 2 built on Arbitrum, where gas is paid in ETH at a fraction of mainnet cost, which keeps minting, claiming and trading inexpensive.
- TokenROTOR
- Starting supply1,000,000
- Circulating at launch50%
- NFTBlade, 10 ROTOR
- Transfer taxesnone, on buys or sells
- Claim tribute20% in ETH
- Claim decay15% of fragments claimed
- Mint fee5–10% of the ROTOR burned, in ETH
- Max supply2,000,000
- Blade cap15,000
02 Start here
How the engine works
- Burn to mintHolders burn ROTOR to mint Blades, and every mint permanently removes that ROTOR from circulation.
- EmitEach Blade accrues a daily ROTOR reward proportional to the amount burned to create it, minted at the moment it is claimed, and the rate halves every 5,000 outstanding Blades.
- Decay on claimEvery claim burns 15% of the fragments it is claimed against, while holders who compound instead of claiming keep every fragment.
- Route fees to liquidityThe creation fee paid on every mint is zapped straight into the ROTOR/ETH pool, and a 20% tribute paid in ETH on each claim funds Treasury buybacks. There are no taxes on buying or selling.
- Trade freelyBlades trade on OpenSea from the moment they are minted, with no lockups and no in-house marketplace, though any unclaimed rewards are extinguished when a Blade moves.
Mint and claim loop
Every path through the engine either burns ROTOR or deepens liquidity, and the only value that leaves the loop is the ETH tribute, which returns as buybacks.
03 Protocol
Blades
A Blade is minted by burning ROTOR, and fragments are the unit that earns. The Curl is the base tier at 1,000 fragments for 10 ROTOR, and every tier above it is a multiple of the ones below, so a Vortex is five Curls, a Maelstrom is two Vortexes and so on up to the Gyre at 100,000 fragments. The protocol can fuse lower tiers into higher ones automatically, or split a holding into whole Blades when someone wants to sell part of it.
- Curl1,000 fragments
- Vortex5 Curls, 5,000 fragments
- Maelstrom2 Vortexes, 10,000 fragments
- Cyclone5 Vortexes, 25,000 fragments
- Jetstream2 Cyclones, 50,000 fragments
- Gyre2 Jetstreams, 100,000 fragments
There are no monthly fees. Minting carries a creation fee paid in ETH and sized as a share of the ROTOR being burned, from 10% on a Curl down to 5% on a Gyre, plus gas. That fee is not kept by the protocol and goes straight into liquidity, as set out under Liquidity.
Fragments pay daily ROTOR, and every ROTOR claim burns 15% of the fragments it is claimed against, as described under Claim decay.
What trades
The Blade is the tradeable object. It carries a fragment balance, and that balance is what earns, but fragments are not listed or sold on their own. A holding splits into whole Blades rather than into arbitrary balances, so the smallest thing anyone buys or sells is one Blade and the collection has a floor price that means something.
No lockups
Blades are standard NFTs on Robinhood Chain and can be listed on OpenSea from the second they are minted, so there is no in-house marketplace to learn or trust. Lockout periods force holders to burn tokens for an asset they cannot sell and then trap them until the window ends, which is why Rotor has none. A Blade is worth its market value at all times, and its holder can exit whenever they choose.
04 Protocol
Tokenomics
ROTOR launches with a starting supply of 1,000,000 against a hard cap of 2,000,000 outstanding, and Blades are capped at 15,000. Rewards accrue daily and are minted when they are claimed, and because every burn returns headroom beneath the cap, the ceiling constrains the float rather than the total ever minted. Half of that starting supply, 500,000 ROTOR, is held by the Treasury rather than circulating, and is reserved for future ecosystem incentives. Against that, every Blade mint burns 10 ROTOR, every claim burns 15% of the fragments it is claimed against, and the protocol buys back and burns more using accrued fees, so the supply moves in both directions and settles wherever those flows balance.
Where ROTOR goes
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flowchart TD
M[Mint Blade<br/>burn 10 ROTOR] --> G[Burned<br/>forever]
E[Rewards accrue<br/>minted on claim] --> C[Claim<br/>20% ETH tribute]
C --> S[Burn 15%<br/>of fragments]
C --> T[Treasury]
T --> B[Buy ROTOR<br/>on the market]
B --> G
- Starting supply1,000,000 ROTOR
- Circulating at launch500,000 ROTOR, 50%
- Treasury reserve500,000 ROTOR for ecosystem incentives
- Burned per Blade minted10 ROTOR
- Daily reward per Curl0.10 ROTOR at launch, in full
- Max supply2,000,000 ROTOR outstanding
- Blade cap15,000, or 15,000,000 fragments
- Halvingevery 5,000 outstanding Blades
- Claim tribute20% in ETH, no token cut
- Claim decay15% of fragments claimed against
- Transfer taxesnone, on buys or sells
Every Blade mint burns the full 10 ROTOR paid for it, while rewards accrue daily and are minted on claim. A Curl earns 0.10 ROTOR a day at launch and receives it in full, because the tribute on claiming is paid separately in ETH and takes nothing out of the tokens themselves. That rate halves every 5,000 outstanding Blades, so it is 0.05 past the first 5,000 and 0.025 past 10,000, with a third halving to 0.0125 that applies only while the collection is completely full. Outstanding is what exists right now rather than a running total, so a Blade claimed against counts for less than a fresh one and the schedule tracks the live collection. On top of the halving schedule, every claim burns 15% of the fragments it is claimed against, so the base that emits shrinks the more the community claims.
The declining emission schedule is deliberate, because projects that overpromise rewards eventually lose control of their supply. The Treasury exists to prevent that outcome: it receives a 20% tribute on every claim, paid in ETH, and uses those funds to buy ROTOR on the open market, cover operations and finance future additions to the engine. The ROTOR it buys is burned outright, which is set out under Treasury.
05 Protocol
Emission schedule
Rewards are paid per fragment, at a rate that steps down as the Blade supply grows. This section sets out the schedule, what a position earns under it, and the point at which minting a new Blade stops returning what it cost.
The rate
Every fragment earns the same rate, and that rate halves each time the outstanding Blade count crosses a multiple of 5,000. Because the Blade supply is capped at 15,000, the schedule has exactly three halvings and then holds flat. It never reaches zero.
The counter reads outstanding Blades rather than cumulative mints, so it cannot run away when positions are reminted into freed headroom. The floor division returns three only at exactly 15,000, so the third halving applies while the collection is completely full and the first fragment burned anywhere takes the rate back to 0.025. The clamp holds it at three, and the schedule is fixed at deployment with no function to change it.
| Outstanding Blades | Halvings | Per Curl | Per fragment |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 – 5,000 | 0 | 0.10000 | 0.0001000 |
| 5,000 – 10,000 | 1 | 0.05000 | 0.0000500 |
| 10,000 – 15,000 | 2 | 0.02500 | 0.0000250 |
| 15,000, full | 3 | 0.01250 | 0.0000125 |
The counter moves in both directions, so the bottom row is not permanent. It holds only while every one of the 15,000 Blades is intact, and the schedule steps back up the moment claim decay takes the live count below the cap.
What a position earns over its life
A position does not earn forever, because every claim destroys 15% of the fragments it was claimed against. Earnings therefore form a geometric series that converges, and the sum has a closed form.
Here r is the rate per fragment per day and T is the average number of days a holder leaves between claims. The result is linear in T, which is the single most important property of the design: the same Blade returns very different amounts depending on nothing but how often its holder claims.
When minting stops paying
A Curl costs a fixed 10 ROTOR to mint, plus a creation fee of 10% of that, so 11 ROTOR-equivalent. The yield halves with the schedule but the cost does not, so each halving doubles the claim interval at which a position still covers what it cost. Larger tiers pay a smaller fee, so their threshold is marginally shorter.
This is a claim interval, not a waiting period. At launch a Curl pays for itself only if its holder claims less often than every 17 days; claim faster than that and the position is exhausted before it has returned 11 ROTOR, no matter how long it is held. After the first halving the threshold becomes 33 days, after the second 66.
It is what governs how far the Blade supply actually fills, because minting continues only while there is someone willing to claim at least that slowly. The supply grows until it reaches the patience of the marginal buyer rather than until it hits the cap.
How long a position takes to pay for itself
That threshold says whether a position ever covers its cost. How long it takes is a separate question, and the answer is bounded below by simple arithmetic: a Curl earns 0.10 ROTOR a day, so recovering 11 ROTOR takes at least 110 days whatever anyone does. Every claim made before then burns fragments and slows the accrual that follows, so claiming can only push the date out.
| Claim every | Lifetime total | Days to recover |
|---|---|---|
| 10 days | 6.7 | never |
| 15 days | 10.0 | never |
| 17 days | 11.3 | 370 |
| 20 days | 13.3 | 215 |
| 30 days | 20.0 | 148 |
| 60 days | 40.0 | 119 |
| 90 days | 60.0 | 114 |
| Never claim | — | 110 |
So a monthly claimer is roughly five months in before the position has paid for itself, and a quarterly claimer about four. A holder claiming every ten days never gets there, because the fragments run out first. None of this depends on the size of the position: a Gyre costs a hundred times as much and earns a hundred times as much, so its dates are identical.
What filling the collection emits
Each halving band holds the same 5,000 Blades at half the rate of the one before, so the three bands contribute 1, one half and one quarter of the first. Filling the collection therefore emits 1.75 times what the first band does, and the figure is linear in the claim interval like everything else.
At a 30-day average claim interval filling the collection emits 175,000 ROTOR, taking supply to 1,175,000. At 90 days it emits 525,000. The 2,000,000 cap binds only if holders average more than about 171 days between claims, which is why the ceiling exists without constraining normal behaviour.
That is one pass through the collection. Claim decay frees headroom, anything minted into it emits again, and the figure above is what a single filling produces rather than a lifetime total. What bounds the protocol over any length of time is the supply ceiling itself, because burns return room beneath it while the outstanding total can never cross 2,000,000.
06 Protocol
Claim decay
What a fragment is
A fragment is the unit that earns, and a holding is a fragment balance rather than a fixed object. Minting a Curl creates 1,000 fragments and every tier above it creates a multiple of that, up to 100,000 for a Gyre. Rewards are paid per fragment, so a balance of 613 fragments earns 613 thousandths of what a full Curl earns, and two balances of the same size always earn the same amount regardless of which tier they were minted as.
How decay works
Every claim burns 15% of the fragments it is claimed against. The rate paid per fragment never changes, so what shrinks is the balance itself, immediately and permanently. A holder who has claimed ten times is left with roughly a fifth of the fragments they started with, while a holder who has never claimed still holds all of them.
fragments after n claims = fragments held Ă— 0.85n
The rate paid per fragment is set by the halving schedule and does not change when you claim.
A Curl, claimed repeatedly
Starting from a freshly minted Curl of 1,000 fragments, each claim takes 15% of whatever is left at that moment.
- At mint1,000 fragments
- After 1 claim850 fragments, 150 burned
- After 2 claims722 fragments
- After 3 claims613 fragments
- After 5 claims442 fragments
- After 10 claims194 fragments
The 613 fragments left after three claims are an ordinary balance from that point on. They earn what any other 613 fragments earn, and the Blade holding them can be sold as it is.
The chart below follows one position for 24 months under three claiming habits. A holder who never claims keeps every fragment, a monthly claimer is down to about 2% of their fragments by month 24, and a weekly claimer burns through almost the entire position inside the first half year.
Rules
- The burn happens the moment a claim settles, and it falls on the fragments that claim was made against.
- The rate paid per fragment never changes. Halvings move it for everyone at once, while claiming changes only how many fragments you hold.
- Compounding unclaimed rewards into a new Blade is not a claim, so it burns no fragments and pays no tribute.
- Fragments are the asset. Claiming destroys them outright rather than marking them, so a position is simply smaller afterwards.
- Fragments are fungible. A balance of 613 fragments earns exactly what any other 613 fragments earn, whether they were minted as a Curl and claimed against three times or are what remains of a Gyre.
- Moving a position extinguishes its unclaimed ROTOR. Rewards are not minted until they are claimed, so an unclaimed balance is never created rather than being paid to anyone else. The recipient starts with nothing accrued and receives the fragments themselves. This applies to a sale and to a transfer between your own wallets alike.
Why the series converges
Because each claim takes a fixed proportion rather than a fixed amount, a position never reaches zero but its total future earnings do converge. Writing f for the fragments held, r for the daily rate per fragment and T for the days between claims, each claim pays f × r × T and leaves 85% of the fragments behind.
The multiplier is 1 ÷ 0.15, or 6.67, so a position earns about six and two thirds times what a single claim pays before it is exhausted. Claiming twice as often halves the interval and therefore halves lifetime earnings, while leaving the holder with the same fragments at any given point in the sequence.
What that costs in practice
The table below follows one Curl at the launch rate under different habits. What it shows is the cost of the decay: a weekly claimer has nothing left after a year, while a quarterly claimer still holds half the position. The returns those positions produce are set out under Rewards.
| Claim every | Claims in year 1 | Fragments left | Lifetime ROTOR |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7 days | 52 | 0 | 4.7 |
| 15 days | 24 | 19 | 10.0 |
| 30 days | 12 | 138 | 20.0 |
| 90 days | 4 | 517 | 60.0 |
| 365 days | 1 | 850 | 243.3 |
A holder claiming weekly collects 4.67 ROTOR over the life of a Curl that cost 10 to mint. A holder claiming quarterly collects 60. The asset is identical; the difference is entirely behavioural, and it is the mechanism by which the protocol slows its own emissions without anyone adjusting a parameter.
The effect is that the engine rewards patience. Holders who compound keep every fragment they own, while each claim permanently shrinks the base that emits, and together with the 10 ROTOR burn per mint and the halving schedule, fragment burning gives the protocol a third mechanism for holding emissions in check.
07 Protocol
Rewards
Blade holders earn daily ROTOR emissions, paid per fragment.
What the rate works out to
A Curl costs 10 ROTOR to mint plus a creation fee of 10% of that, so 11 ROTOR-equivalent in total, and it earns 0.10 ROTOR a day at the launch rate. Ignoring decay that is a nominal 332% a year, and nobody receives it, because every claim destroys 15% of the fragments it was claimed against.
What a holder actually receives depends on how often they claim. The figures below are for one Curl at the launch rate, with the first-year column accounting for the decay compounding through the year.
| Claim every | Claims | Year 1 | Return | Lifetime | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 days | 52 | 4.67 | 42% | 4.7 | 0.4x |
| 15 days | 24 | 9.81 | 89% | 10.0 | 0.9x |
| 30 days | 12 | 17.23 | 157% | 20.0 | 1.8x |
| 60 days | 6 | 25.12 | 228% | 40.0 | 3.6x |
| 90 days | 4 | 28.96 | 263% | 60.0 | 5.5x |
| 180 days | 2 | 33.69 | 306% | 120.0 | 10.9x |
| 365 days | 1 | 36.50 | 332% | 243.3 | 22.1x |
Claiming weekly returns 42% in the first year and never recovers the mint cost. Claiming monthly returns 157%. Claiming quarterly returns 263% and leaves most of the position intact to keep earning. The published rate is the same in every case.
How it steps down
Each halving halves every figure above. The schedule applies to the rate itself, so a position minted later earns proportionally less from the same number of fragments.
| Halvings | Per Curl, daily | Nominal APR | Year 1, monthly |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 0.10000 | 332% | 157% |
| 1 | 0.05000 | 166% | 78% |
| 2 | 0.02500 | 83% | 39% |
These figures are denominated in ROTOR
Every number above counts tokens, not currency. That makes them a property of the protocol rather than of the market: a Curl earns 17.23 ROTOR in its first year at a 30-day claim habit whatever the token is worth, because both the cost and the reward are denominated in the same asset.
What a holder realises in dollars is that figure multiplied by the change in price since they minted. A position opened before a doubling returns twice as much in currency terms, and one opened before a halving returns half. The protocol return does not move; the denominator does.
| Price at year end | Weekly | Monthly | Quarterly |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.5× | 21% | 78% | 132% |
| 1× | 42% | 157% | 263% |
| 2× | 85% | 313% | 527% |
| 3× | 127% | 470% | 790% |
| 5× | 212% | 783% | 1316% |
One thing this does not do is improve the terms for a new minter. Someone minting after a doubling pays twice as much in currency for the same 10 ROTOR burn and earns the same tokens back, so their return in ROTOR is unchanged. Appreciation rewards positions already open; it does not make the next one cheaper.
Everything a holder has earned can be claimed in a single transaction, and because gas on Robinhood Chain is minimal, that transaction costs almost nothing.
Holders can also skip claiming altogether. Unclaimed rewards are tracked by the protocol and can be compounded directly into new Blades without paying the tribute or burning any fragments, making compounding the cheapest way to grow a position. Compounding still mints a Blade, so it pays the same creation fee, which goes into liquidity rather than to the protocol.
08 Protocol
Fees
Rotor charges nothing on buying or selling. ROTOR is a plain ERC-20 with no transfer hook, so it routes through aggregators, bridges and lending markets like any other token. The engine is funded at the two moments a position is opened and realised instead: the creation fee on a mint, and the tribute on a claim.
- Buy tax0%
- Sell tax0%
- Liquidity poolROTOR/ETH on Uniswap V2
- Creation fee5–10% of the ROTOR burned, in ETH, zapped into LP
- Claim tribute20% of the claim, in ETH
- Claim decay15% of fragments claimed against
Both charges are paid in ETH and neither is kept by the protocol. The creation fee goes to liquidity and the claim tribute goes to buybacks, which are covered under Liquidity and Treasury.
09 Protocol
Liquidity
ROTOR trades against ETH in a single Uniswap V2 pool on Robinhood Chain. Two things feed that pool and both are automatic: the creation fee paid on every mint, zapped straight in, and the 0.30% fee on every trade, which V2 retains in the reserves. Neither requires a decision. The 0.30% is the pair’s own swap fee and is the same on any Uniswap V2 market, not a tax the protocol adds on top, and Rotor itself takes nothing from a buy or a sell.
Why the pair is ETH
Pairing against ETH keeps every route through the protocol on one asset. Gas is ETH, the creation fee is ETH, the claim tribute is ETH and the Treasury spends ETH, so none of those have to be converted through a second pool before they can be used. A stablecoin pair would need that extra hop in both directions, adding slippage and a dependency on a market the protocol does not control.
Where the creation fee goes
The creation fee is not revenue. It is charged in ETH and sized against the ROTOR being burned, so it scales with the position rather than with the number of transactions, and the rate falls as the tier rises.
- Curl10% of 10 ROTOR
- Vortex9% of 50 ROTOR
- Maelstrom8% of 100 ROTOR
- Cyclone7% of 250 ROTOR
- Jetstream6% of 500 ROTOR
- Gyre5% of 1,000 ROTOR
Every time a Blade is minted, whether it is bought outright or compounded from unclaimed rewards, the fee is routed through a zap contract straight into liquidity. The contract spends half the ETH buying ROTOR from the pool, pairs it with the other half, and adds both sides, so the whole fee lands as depth. Compounding pays it too, because compounded fragments emit exactly like minted ones and the fee is what funds the depth to absorb them.
How a multi-Blade mint is charged
A mint is decomposed into the largest tiers that fit, and each resulting Blade pays its own tier rate. Seven Curls’ worth becomes one Vortex charged at 9% and two Curls charged at 10%. The decomposition always takes the largest tier first, which is both the cheapest result for the minter and the same grouping the protocol uses when it fuses a holding.
Per-Curl cost falls as the mint gets larger, from 1.00 ROTOR on a single Curl to 0.50 on a Gyre, so splitting a large mint into small ones is never cheaper. Crossing into a higher tier can make a slightly larger mint cost less in absolute terms, which is the taper working as intended.
How the fee is priced
The fee is denominated against the ROTOR being burned and paid in ETH, so the contract reads a price. It takes the higher of the pool TWAP and the current spot price. A sudden dump cannot make minting cheap, because the TWAP holds, and a spike costs the minter nothing beyond what they chose to send, because any excess ETH is refunded in the same transaction.
The rates are fixed at deployment. There is no function to change them.
Creation fee zap route
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flowchart TD
F[ETH fee<br/>% of ROTOR burned] --> Z[Zap route<br/>contract]
Z --> R[Buy half<br/>in ROTOR]
Z --> U[Hold half<br/>as ETH]
R --> P[Add both sides<br/>to the pool]
U --> P
P --> L[LP tokens to Treasury<br/>locked incrementally]
Charging against the burn rather than per transaction keeps the proportion steady across the ladder. A flat fee would fall almost entirely on the smallest tier, because a Curl burns 10 ROTOR while a Gyre burns 1,000, so the same absolute charge is a hundred times heavier per fragment at the bottom. Sizing it as a percentage removes that distortion and also keeps the fee meaningful if the token appreciates, which a fixed figure would not.
This is what hedges the emissions a new Blade creates. The same transaction that starts a position paying daily ROTOR also puts a buy through the market and leaves the pool deeper than it found it, so minting adds liquidity at the same moment it adds supply.
The pool is Uniswap V2, and its fees compound by themselves
The ROTOR/ETH pool is a Uniswap V2 pair. Every trade through it pays a 0.30% fee, and the defining property of V2 is where that fee goes: it stays in the pool reserves rather than being held aside for collection. The liquidity position does not accrue a separate balance that somebody has to harvest. It simply becomes worth more.
That means the liquidity minted by the creation fee compounds on its own. Each trade leaves its fee behind in the reserves, the reserves grow, and every position in the pair grows with them. There is no harvest transaction, no keeper bot, no scheduled call and nobody deciding when to reinvest. The compounding is a property of the pair rather than a process run on top of it.
Where the LP tokens sit
Launch liquidity is burned. The LP tokens minted when the pair is created are sent to a dead address, which removes that depth from anyone’s reach permanently. There is no withdrawal function and no address holding a claim on it.
The LP tokens minted afterwards by the creation fee zap accrue to the Treasury and are locked incrementally as they arrive, in batches rather than in one scheduled event. The withdrawable share of total liquidity therefore only falls over time, starting from the burned launch position and diluting further with every mint that adds locked depth beside it.
Locking costs nothing because V2 retains fees in the reserves. A locked position still deepens with every trade, since it grows in place rather than accruing a balance somebody has to collect.
| Daily volume | Fees per day | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| $25,000 | $75 | $27,375 |
| $50,000 | $150 | $54,750 |
| $250,000 | $750 | $273,750 |
| $1,000,000 | $3,000 | $1,095,000 |
At any real volume this is the larger of the two inflows by a wide margin. The creation fee seeds depth from minting, and trading compounds it from there.
Why V2 rather than V3
A V3 position earns more per dollar of liquidity, and it does so only while the price stays inside a range somebody chose. Ranges have to be watched and moved, and moving one is a decision about where the price is going. Rotor does not have a treasury rebalancing a range every few weeks, because that is manual intervention and the protocol runs without it.
V2 has no range. The constant-product curve covers every price from zero to infinity, so the position never needs attention and never goes idle. Fees in V3 also sit outside the position and have to be collected, which is another scheduled action and another address with the authority to perform it. V2 removes both.
The trade is accepting less capital efficiency in exchange for a pool that requires nothing from anyone. That is the same trade the rest of the protocol makes.
Why there is no transfer tax
A tax on selling would add depth too, and it would cost more than it returns. Fee-on-transfer tokens are excluded by most aggregators, nearly every centralised venue and most lending markets, so the token loses routing and composability. It also charges people for leaving, which runs against everything else in the design, and it deters entry just as much, since anyone buying prices in the exit.
Funding the pool at mint instead means the depth arrives from someone opening a position rather than from someone closing one.
Liquidity scales with emissions
A new Blade adds future emissions, and emissions are future sell pressure. Routing the creation fee into the pool means the same transaction that creates that pressure pays for the depth to absorb it, at the same moment rather than afterwards.
What makes the two track each other is that both are driven by the same quantity. Fragments minted determine how much the protocol will emit, and they also determine how much fee is collected, because the fee is sized against the ROTOR being burned rather than charged per transaction. A position that will emit ten times as much pays ten times the fee, so the ratio holds whatever is minted and whoever mints it.
The ratio is fixed within an epoch and improves across them, because the fee stays pinned to the 10 ROTOR burn while the emissions that Curl will produce halve with the schedule.
| Halvings | Rate | Emissions | Depth | Per ROTOR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 0.10000 | 20.0 | 1.00 | 0.05 |
| 1 | 0.05000 | 10.0 | 1.00 | 0.10 |
| 2 | 0.02500 | 5.0 | 1.00 | 0.20 |
The coupling is proportional rather than complete. Across a full collection the creation fee contributes 15,000 ROTOR-equivalent of depth against roughly 175,000 ROTOR of emissions at a monthly claim habit, so it covers about 9% of what that pass emits. What it guarantees is that depth arrives in step with the obligation, not that it arrives in equal measure.
The magnitude comes from trading. The 0.30% swap fee compounds into the same pool and scales with volume rather than with minting, and at any real volume it is the larger contributor by a wide margin. The creation fee sets the proportion and trading sets the size.
10 Protocol
Treasury
The Treasury holds the protocol's reserve and spends the fees that are not routed to liquidity. Its inflows are narrow, and so is the set of things it does with them.
Where the claim tribute goes
The 20% tribute on every claim arrives in ETH, and the Treasury spends it buying ROTOR on the open market. That ROTOR is not held as a balance and it is not minted into anything. It is burned, which removes it from supply permanently and frees headroom beneath the ceiling.
The Treasury holds no Blades, accrues no rewards and claims nothing. Every claim therefore tightens the supply twice over, once through the fragments it burns and once through the buyback it funds, and neither of those creates anything that has to emit later.
Claim tribute route
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flowchart TD
C[Claim<br/>20% ETH tribute] --> T[Treasury]
T --> B[Buy ROTOR<br/>on the market]
B --> G[Burned<br/>forever]
G --> H[Headroom returned<br/>under the cap]
The launch reserve
Half the starting supply sits with the Treasury rather than circulating, reserved for ecosystem incentives and future additions to the engine. It is not emitted on a schedule and it does not earn rewards, so it exerts no pressure on the supply while it is held.
The liquidity it receives
The LP tokens minted by the creation fee zap arrive at the Treasury and are locked incrementally as they come in. They are custody rather than capital: there is nothing to spend, nothing to harvest, and the withdrawable share of the pool only falls as more of it is locked. The launch position is already beyond reach, since its LP tokens were burned at creation.
What the Treasury does not do
It holds no Blades, it does not sell ROTOR into the pool, and it earns nothing from emissions. It cannot introduce a transfer tax either, because the token has no hook to charge one with, which is a property of the contract rather than a policy anyone has to keep to.
11 Protocol
Supply dynamics
Both supplies are capped, and both caps are written against what exists rather than against a running total. This section explains what that distinction does and how the two supplies interact once the Blade cap is full.
Outstanding, not cumulative
A cap on cumulative minting counts every unit ever created and never decreases. A cap on outstanding supply counts what is live right now, so anything burned returns headroom beneath the ceiling. Rotor uses the second form for both caps, and the difference is not cosmetic.
What the supply cap counts
The ceiling applies to tokens minted plus rewards accrued and not yet claimed. Both are obligations the protocol has already issued, so both are reserved against the cap the moment they arise.
Accrual stops when that total reaches the ceiling. Claiming converts an obligation into supply and changes nothing, so an accrued balance is always claimable in full and nobody can be left unable to claim because somebody else got there first. Burning reduces minted supply, which frees headroom, and accrual resumes.
Counting only minted supply would not work. Rewards are not minted until claimed, so the ceiling would never stop accrual, the unclaimed balance would grow without limit, and the first people to claim near the ceiling would be paid while the rest could not be.
Under a cumulative cap, the constant burning that the protocol relies on would ratchet the usable supply downward until emissions had to stop, even with the circulating supply far below the ceiling. Under an outstanding cap, burns free the protocol to keep emitting, and the ceiling constrains the float rather than the total that has ever existed.
The same reasoning applies to the halving. It reads the live Blade count, not the number ever minted, because once the Blade cap is full those two figures separate completely.
Rotation
When the Blade supply is at its cap, the only way a new Blade can be minted is if an existing holding shrinks first. Claim decay is what makes that happen: every claim destroys 15% of the fragments it was claimed against, freeing room beneath the cap for someone else.
At a 30-day average claim interval a full supply of 15,000 Blades frees about 75 Blades of headroom a day, so roughly 0.5% of the collection turns over daily. Slower claiming slows the rotation and faster claiming accelerates it. A new entrant at a full cap is therefore buying either from an existing holder on the open market or into headroom that someone else's claim has just created.
Where the two supplies meet
Minting couples the supplies in opposite directions. Each Blade minted destroys 10 ROTOR and creates 1,000 fragments; each claim creates ROTOR and destroys fragments. One supply expands while the other contracts, and the protocol settles where the two flows balance.
| Action | ROTOR supply | Fragment supply |
|---|---|---|
| Mint a Blade | − 10 per Blade | + 1,000 per Curl |
| Daily emission | + rate per fragment | no change |
| Claim | + the reward, minted on claim | − 15% of the claim base |
| Treasury buyback | − amount bought | no change |
| Compound | − 10 per Blade | + 1,000 per Curl |
Supply holds steady when emissions equal the ROTOR destroyed by minting. The claim path does not balance itself, so that condition is set out below.
What a claim actually costs the supply
A claim of e ROTOR mints the full amount to the holder, because the tribute is charged in ETH and takes no token cut. The Treasury spends that tribute buying ROTOR, and at a 20% rate it buys back a fifth of what the claim paid out.
So the buyback never retires the emission it was charged on. Four fifths of every claim remains in supply, and slippage on the buy makes the real figure slightly worse. The claim path is net inflationary on its own, and nothing in the halving schedule changes that: a halving lowers e for a given fragment balance, but the leftover is still four fifths of whatever was claimed.
The buyback is a clean retirement. The Treasury burns the ROTOR outright rather than minting it into Blades, so it creates nothing that has to emit later and the fifth it removes stays removed. What it does not do is cover the other four fifths.
What does offset it
Minting is the mechanism that retires supply, because each Blade burns 10 ROTOR outright and creates nothing that has to be bought first. Setting mint burns against the unbought part of claims gives the condition for a flat supply:
which works out to one new Curl for every 12.5 ROTOR claimed. That ratio contains no rate term, so it is the same at every point in the schedule. What the halving changes is the other side: a given fragment base produces less to claim, so a constant rate of minting covers a growing share of it.
| Outstanding | Rate per Curl | Base emits | Curls per day |
|---|---|---|---|
| Just under 5,000 | 0.10000 | 500 ROTOR / day | 40 |
| Just under 10,000 | 0.05000 | 500 ROTOR / day | 40 |
| Just under 15,000 | 0.02500 | 375 ROTOR / day | 30 |
| 15,000, full | 0.01250 | 188 ROTOR / day | 15 |
Each row takes its band at the largest it gets, with every Blade intact, so the figures are the most minting the band can ask for.
That is the real content of the halving schedule. It does not make any single mint worth more, since one Curl still covers 12.5 ROTOR of claims whenever it is minted. What it does is hold down how much claim-flow there is to cover. The base doubles from 5,000 Blades to 10,000 while the rate halves, so the requirement stays at 40 Curls a day across that whole step, and the last 5,000 Blades are less than a doubling, so it falls to 30 by the time the collection is nearly full and to 15 once it is. Faster claiming cuts both ways in the same direction: it burns fragments faster, which frees headroom and drives more minting, and it is the condition under which the protocol destroys more ROTOR than it emits.
What the caps are for
Neither cap binds under ordinary conditions. They exist so that no sequence of events can dilute holders past a known point, not as a parameter the protocol operates against day to day.
12 Reference
Parameters
Every constant in one place. The first group is fixed at deployment. The second follows from those figures and is given so the arithmetic can be checked rather than taken on trust.
Supply
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Starting supply | 1,000,000 ROTOR |
| Circulating at launch | 500,000 ROTOR, 50% |
| Treasury reserve | 500,000 ROTOR |
| Maximum supply | 2,000,000 ROTOR outstanding |
Blades
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Blade cap | 15,000 outstanding |
| Fragment cap | 15,000,000 |
| Burned per mint | 10 ROTOR per 1,000 fragments |
| Curl | 1,000 fragments |
| Vortex | 5,000 fragments |
| Maelstrom | 10,000 fragments |
| Cyclone | 25,000 fragments |
| Jetstream | 50,000 fragments |
| Gyre | 100,000 fragments |
Emissions
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Launch rate, per Curl | 0.10 ROTOR per day |
| Launch rate, per fragment | 0.0001 ROTOR per day |
| Halving step | every 5,000 outstanding Blades |
| Halvings across the cap | 3 |
| Halving counter | outstanding Blades, not cumulative mints |
| Schedule mutability | fixed at deployment |
| Lowest rate below a full collection | 0.025 ROTOR per Curl per day |
| Rate at a full collection | 0.0125 ROTOR per Curl per day |
Claiming
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Claim decay | 15% of the fragments claimed against |
| Claim tribute | 20% of the claim, in ETH |
| Compounding | no tribute, no decay |
| Transfer | unclaimed ROTOR extinguished, never minted |
| Reward minting | on claim, not on accrual |
| Capped quantity | minted supply plus unclaimed rewards |
Fees and liquidity
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Buy tax | 0% |
| Sell tax | 0% |
| Creation fee, Curl | 10% of the ROTOR burned, in ETH |
| Creation fee, Vortex | 9% |
| Creation fee, Maelstrom | 8% |
| Creation fee, Cyclone | 7% |
| Creation fee, Jetstream | 6% |
| Creation fee, Gyre | 5% |
| Liquidity pair | ROTOR/ETH, Uniswap V2 |
| Swap fee | 0.30%, charged by the pair |
| Fee charging | split by tier, largest first |
| Fee pricing | higher of pool TWAP and spot, excess refunded |
| Fee mutability | fixed at deployment |
| Launch liquidity | LP tokens burned |
| Zap LP tokens | to Treasury, locked incrementally |
Figures that follow from the above
None of these are set anywhere. They are consequences of the parameters, and they assume a 30-day average claim interval where one is needed.
| Quantity | Value | From |
|---|---|---|
| Cost to mint a Curl | 11 ROTOR-equivalent | 10 burned plus the 10% fee |
| Lifetime yield, one Curl | 20.0 ROTOR | 1,000 × r × T ÷ 0.15 |
| Slowest break-even claim habit | every 17 days | 11 × 0.15 ÷ (1,000 × r) |
| Fastest possible payback | 110 days | 11 ÷ 0.10 per day |
| Payback at monthly claims | 148 days | accrual against 15% decay |
| Emitted filling the collection | 5,833 × T | 5,000 × 1,000 × r ÷ 0.15 × 1.75 |
| Emitted at monthly claims | 175,000 ROTOR | the above at T = 30 |
| Claim habit that reaches the cap | about 171 days | 1,000,000 headroom ÷ 5,833 |
| ROTOR to fill the Blade cap | 150,000 | 15,000 × 10 |
| Rotation at a full cap | 75 Blades per day | 0.15 × 15,000 ÷ 30 |
13 Reference
FAQ
The basics
What is Rotor?
Rotor is a decentralized automated liquidity engine on Robinhood Chain. ROTOR is burned to mint Blade NFTs, which pay daily ROTOR, and the combination of burns, halvings, claim decay and buybacks governs the supply without anyone steering it.
How do I get ROTOR?
ROTOR trades against ETH on decentralized exchanges on Robinhood Chain. It is not listed on any centralized exchange.
How do I get a Blade?
Either burn ROTOR through the protocol to mint one, or buy an existing one on OpenSea.
Are Blades locked after minting?
No. They are standard NFTs and can be listed on OpenSea from the moment they are minted. There are no lockups and no in-house marketplace.
Blades and fragments
What is a Blade?
A Blade is an NFT minted by burning ROTOR. It holds fragments, and fragments are what earn. A Curl, the base tier, holds 1,000 fragments and costs 10 ROTOR to mint.
What is a fragment?
The unit that earns. Rewards are paid per fragment, so a balance of 613 fragments earns 613 thousandths of what a full Curl earns. A holding is a fragment balance rather than a fixed object, which is why positions can be split and fused.
Why are there tiers?
Tiers are a convenience for holding larger positions in fewer tokens. Each is a multiple of the ones below, from the Curl at 1,000 fragments to the Gyre at 100,000. The protocol can fuse lower tiers into higher ones automatically, or split a holding when someone wants to sell part of it.
Do higher tiers earn more per ROTOR burned?
No. Every fragment earns the same rate regardless of which tier it sits in, and every tier costs the same 10 ROTOR per 1,000 fragments. The only difference is the creation fee, which falls from 10% on a Curl to 5% on a Gyre.
Rewards and claiming
What is the reward rate?
0.10 ROTOR per Curl per day at launch, which is 0.0001 per fragment. Holders receive it in full, because the claim tribute is paid separately in ETH and takes nothing out of the tokens.
What is claim decay?
Every claim burns 15% of the fragments it was claimed against. The rate paid per fragment never changes; what shrinks is the position. A holder who has claimed ten times holds roughly a fifth of the fragments they started with.
Why does claiming cost me fragments?
It is what lets the protocol pay the published rate in full rather than skimming the reward. Emissions slow because the base that emits gets smaller, which happens in proportion to how much the community is claiming rather than by anyone adjusting a parameter.
How often should I claim?
That is the main decision a holder makes. Claiming weekly returns about 42% in the first year and never recovers the mint cost. Claiming monthly returns about 157%, quarterly about 263%. The published rate is identical in each case.
Does decay reset if I sell?
No, and there is nothing to reset. What you hold and sell is a fragment balance. Claiming destroys fragments rather than marking them, and fragments are fungible, so 613 fragments pay exactly what any other 613 pay regardless of tier or history.
What happens to unclaimed rewards if I transfer?
They are extinguished. Rewards are not minted until they are claimed, so an unclaimed balance is never created rather than being handed to anyone else, and it does not count against the supply cap once it is gone. The recipient starts with nothing accrued and receives the fragments themselves. This applies to a sale and to a transfer between your own wallets alike.
What is compounding?
Rolling unclaimed rewards straight into a new Blade. It is not a claim, so it pays no tribute and burns no fragments, which makes it the cheapest way to grow a position. It still mints a Blade, so the creation fee applies.
Emissions and supply
What is the halving?
The reward rate halves each time the outstanding Blade count crosses a multiple of 5,000. Because Blades are capped at 15,000 there are exactly three halvings, and the third applies only while the collection is completely full, so the working rate runs 0.10, 0.05 and 0.025 per Curl. It never reaches zero, and because the counter reads the live count it steps back up when decay shrinks the collection.
What does outstanding mean?
The Blades that exist right now, not the number ever minted. Claim decay reduces it, so a Curl claimed against three times counts for less than a fresh one. The distinction matters because once the Blade cap is full, people remint into headroom that claims have freed, and a cumulative counter would race ahead while the live count never moved.
What stops a claim pushing supply over the cap?
The cap counts minted supply plus rewards accrued and not yet claimed, because both are obligations the protocol has already issued. Accrual stops when that total reaches 2,000,000, so a balance is reserved the moment it accrues and is always claimable in full. Claiming converts an obligation into supply and changes the capped total by nothing.
Is the supply capped?
Yes, at 2,000,000 ROTOR outstanding and 15,000 Blades. Both count what is live rather than what has ever been created, so burns return headroom beneath the ceiling instead of ratcheting it away.
Will the supply cap ever be reached?
Filling the collection emits roughly 5,833 multiplied by the average days between claims, so about 175,000 ROTOR at a monthly habit and 525,000 at a quarterly one, against 1,000,000 of headroom. The ceiling binds on a single pass only if holders average more than about 171 days between claims. Over longer horizons the cap is what bounds the supply rather than the schedule, because decay frees headroom and reminting into it emits again.
What stops emissions running away?
Three things at once: 10 ROTOR burned on every mint, 15% of fragments burned on every claim, and the halving schedule. Together they mean the base that emits shrinks as the community claims and the rate steps down as the collection grows.
Fees and liquidity
What does it cost to mint?
10 ROTOR per 1,000 fragments, burned, plus a creation fee paid in ETH of 5 to 10% of that burn depending on tier. A Curl costs 10 ROTOR plus 10%, a Gyre 1,000 ROTOR plus 5%.
Why is the fee a percentage?
A flat fee would fall almost entirely on the smallest tier, since a Curl burns 10 ROTOR and a Gyre burns 1,000. Charging against the burn keeps the proportion steady across the ladder and keeps the fee meaningful if the token appreciates.
How is the fee charged on a multi-Blade mint?
The mint is split into the largest tiers that fit and each Blade pays its own tier rate. Seven Curls’ worth becomes one Vortex at 9% and two Curls at 10%. Per-Curl cost always falls as the mint gets larger, so breaking a large mint into small ones is never cheaper.
Can the fees be changed?
No. The creation fee rates are fixed at deployment and there is no function to alter them, raise them or add new ones.
Can I trade fragments on their own?
No. The Blade is the tradeable object and it carries a fragment balance. Holdings split into whole Blades rather than arbitrary balances, so the smallest unit anyone buys or sells is one Blade.
Where does the creation fee go?
Straight into liquidity through a zap contract. It spends half the ETH buying ROTOR from the pool, pairs it with the other half and adds both sides, so the whole fee lands as depth. None of it is kept by the protocol.
Can the liquidity be pulled?
The launch position cannot. Its LP tokens are burned at creation, so no address holds a claim on that depth. The LP tokens minted later by the creation fee zap go to the Treasury and are locked in batches as they arrive, so the withdrawable share of the pool only shrinks as minting continues.
Are there any taxes on buying or selling?
None from Rotor. ROTOR is a plain ERC-20 with no transfer hook, so the protocol takes nothing on a buy, a sell or a transfer, and no tax can be added later. Trading through the pool pays Uniswap V2’s standard 0.30% swap fee, which is charged by the pair rather than by Rotor and stays in the reserves as depth. The engine itself is funded by the creation fee on minting and the 20% tribute on claiming, both in ETH.
What is the claim tribute?
20% of the value of a claim, paid separately in ETH. It takes nothing out of the ROTOR itself, which is why the published rate is the rate received. The Treasury uses it to buy ROTOR off the open market.
Risk and limits
Does the protocol promise a return?
No. The figures in these docs are denominated in ROTOR and are a property of the schedule, not a forecast. What a holder realises in any other currency depends on the token price, which the protocol does not control.
Does a higher token price improve the yield?
Not in ROTOR terms. Both the cost and the reward are denominated in the same asset, so the return in tokens is unchanged. What scales is the currency value of a position opened before the move; someone minting afterwards pays more for the same tokens and earns the same back.
What happens when the Blade cap is full?
Minting continues only as fast as claim decay frees headroom. At a monthly claim habit a full supply of 15,000 Blades frees roughly 75 Blades of room a day, so new entrants either buy from existing holders or mint into space a claim has just created.
Is Rotor affiliated with Robinhood?
No. Rotor is an independent project built on Robinhood Chain and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or operated by Robinhood Markets, Inc.
14 Reference
Disclaimer
Rotor does not promise any return. ROTOR and Blades are digital assets, and anyone using the protocol accepts the risks that come with them, including market conditions that the team cannot control. Rotor is an independent project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or operated by Robinhood Markets, Inc.