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Licensed Participation Model

Ault operates with a fixed maximum of 1,000,000 Node Licenses.
A license is a protocol-recognized right to operate a Licensed Mining Node and to participate in DAO governance under the one-license, one-vote rule defined in the Constitution. Licensed Mining Nodes are separate from validators. Validators are responsible for consensus and block production. Licensed Mining Nodes do not participate in consensus. Instead, they perform protocol-defined off-chain tasks and submit verifiable results to the chain. At genesis, the sole function of Licensed Mining Nodes is VRF-based randomness generation. Selected nodes submit VRF outputs that contribute to the network’s randomness beacon, which can be used for governance processes and application-level entropy.

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Epoch-Based Work Structure

Licensed Mining work is divided into fixed one-minute epochs. In each epoch, a subset of licensed nodes is randomly selected to submit work. Not all licenses participate at the same time. Over time, selection rotates across the full license set. This structure ensures:
  • Each license has repeated opportunities to participate.
  • Work is bounded within a defined time window.
  • Contributions can be counted and verified per epoch.

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Work Verification and Reward Logic

To submit valid work, a selected node must complete a lightweight Micro-PoW check. This mechanism prevents spam submissions and ensures that only eligible nodes can claim participation during their selection window. It is intentionally lightweight and not designed to reward higher hardware power. When a node submits valid work during an epoch, it earns work credits. Work credits represent confirmed participation under protocol rules. Mining emissions allocated to Licensed Mining Nodes are distributed proportionally based on accumulated work credits in each epoch. In practical terms:
  • No valid submission → no work credit.
  • More valid participation → more work credits.
  • Emissions are split pro-rata according to total credits across all participating nodes.
This ties rewards directly to measurable participation.

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Emissions Allocation

Under Ault’s tokenomics design:
  • 95% of total emissions are allocated to Licensed Mining Node rewards.
  • 5% of total emissions are allocated to staking rewards.
Licensed Mining rewards follow the protocol’s predefined emissions schedule. The emission curve and allocation logic are fixed at the protocol level and are transparent to all participants.

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Long-Term Expansion

At launch, Licensed Mining Nodes only generate VRF-based randomness. The architecture allows additional protocol-defined tasks to be added in future upgrades. These may include oracle services, data indexing, or AI-related workloads.