A decentralized automated liquidity engine on Robinhood Chain

02  Start here

How the engine works

1. Burn to mintHolders burn ROTOR to mint Blades, and every mint permanently removes that ROTOR from circulation.
2. EmitEach Blade pays a daily ROTOR reward that is minted as it is emitted, proportional to the amount burned to create it, and the rate halves every 50,000 outstanding Blades.
3. Decay on claimEvery claim burns 15% of the fragments it is claimed against, while holders who compound instead of claiming keep every fragment.
4. 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.
5. Trade freelyBlades trade on OpenSea from the moment they are minted, with no lockups and no in-house marketplace, though any unclaimed rewards are forfeited to the Treasury when a Blade moves.

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 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.

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 10,000,000 against a hard cap of 20,000,000 outstanding, and Blades are capped at 150,000. Rewards are minted as they are emitted, 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, 5,000,000 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.

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flowchart TD
  M[Mint Blade<br/>burn 10 ROTOR] --> G[Burned<br/>forever]
  E[Emissions<br/>minted daily] --> 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 --> V[Burn into Blades<br/>never sold]
  V --> G

• Starting supply10,000,000 ROTOR
• Circulating at launch5,000,000 ROTOR, 50%
• Treasury reserve5,000,000 ROTOR for ecosystem incentives
• Burned per Blade minted10 ROTOR
• Daily reward per Curl0.10 ROTOR at launch, in full
• Max supply20,000,000 ROTOR outstanding
• Blade cap150,000, or 150,000,000 fragments
• Halvingevery 50,000 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 are minted as they are emitted. 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 50,000 outstanding Blades, so it is 0.05 past the first 50,000 and 0.025 past 100,000, giving three halvings across the full Blade supply. 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 into Blades that the Treasury never sells, 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 50,000. Because the Blade supply is capped at 150,000, the schedule has exactly three steps and then holds flat. It never reaches zero.

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.

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.

The ceiling on total emissions

Because each halving epoch contains the same number of Blades at half the rate, the contributions form a geometric series summing to twice the first epoch. Total emissions across the entire life of the protocol are therefore bounded.

At a 30-day average claim interval the protocol emits 2,000,000 ROTOR in total, reaching 12,000,000 supply. At 90 days it emits 6,000,000. The 20,000,000 cap binds only if holders average more than about 150 days between claims, which is why the ceiling exists without constraining normal behaviour.

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.

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 they can be sold as they are.

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 forfeits its unclaimed ROTOR to the Treasury, so 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.

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.

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.

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.

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. The Treasury tracks unclaimed rewards, which 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%
• 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 pool on Robinhood Chain. One flow feeds that pool and it is automatic: the creation fee paid on every mint, zapped straight in. Nothing about it requires a decision, and nothing is taken from buyers or sellers.

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.

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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

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.

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 is the opposite of what a protocol built on patience should be doing, 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.

Why minting adds depth rather than just supply

A new Blade adds future emissions, which are future sell pressure. Charging the creation fee at that moment and routing it into the pool means the liquidity arrives at the same time as the obligation it will have to absorb, rather than afterwards. Sizing the fee against the ROTOR being burned keeps that relationship proportional: a position that will emit ten times as much contributes ten times as much depth.

10  Protocol

Treasury

The Treasury holds the protocol's reserve and spends the fees that are not routed to liquidity. It has two sources of funds and a narrow 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. It is burned into Blades, which destroys the tokens outright and leaves the Treasury holding positions that are never sold.

This does more than take supply off the market. Halvings arrive every 50,000 outstanding Blades, so each Blade the Treasury creates moves the counter closer to the next one, and the tribute paid by people claiming today pulls the next emission cut forward for everyone. Claiming therefore tightens the schedule twice over, once through the fragments it burns and once through the buyback it funds.

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flowchart TD
  C[Claim<br/>20% ETH tribute] --> T[Treasury]
  T --> B[Buy ROTOR<br/>on the market]
  B --> V[Burn into Blades<br/>never sold]
  V --> G[ROTOR burned<br/>forever]
  V --> H[Next halving<br/>arrives sooner]

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.

What the Treasury does not do

It does not sell the Blades it accumulates and it does not sell ROTOR into the pool. 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.

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 150,000 Blades frees about 750 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.

Supply holds steady when emissions equal the ROTOR destroyed by minting. Since mint throughput at a full cap is set by how fast decay frees headroom, that balance point depends on the same claim interval that governs everything else: faster claiming burns fragments faster, drives more minting, and destroys more ROTOR than is emitted.

What the caps are for

Neither cap is expected to bind under ordinary conditions, and that is the intent. 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

FAQ

The basics

Blades and fragments

Rewards and claiming

Emissions and supply

Fees and liquidity

Risk and limits

13  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.