The money: who pays whom
Dues, free issuance, the reuse fee and its split (example values: 0.90 + 0.10), the free counterparty check, and the trust score every payment builds. Every flow diagrammed, every number framework-governed.
The money: who pays whom
Three flows carry the whole business model: yearly dues, free issuance, and the paid reuse - plus one deliberate non-flow, the free counterparty check. Every amount below is an agreed, framework-governed value (who sets what is the first table on this page), and the fee amounts are examples: the split mechanism reads the same for any framework's schedule. On the current testnet these panels are a simulated preview: they switch to live chain data - real sessions, real beneficiary queries, real deposits - with the next network upgrade.
Who governs which number
First, so every number below reads correctly: nothing on this page is a protocol constant. The fees are agreed inside the framework and frozen across renewals; the rates are network governance parameters. The 0.90 + 0.10 split is an example schedule - ANY framework sets its own numbers, and every panel reads the same.
| Parameter | Governed by |
|---|---|
| Dues, issuance and verification fees | The Association and each member, agreed at onboarding, frozen across renewals (example schedule: 0.90 issuer + 0.10 ecosystem per reuse, issuance 0) |
| Pricing asset (USDC) | The Association, per schema |
| Authorized providers, re-binding rule, evidence SLAs, slashing causes | The Association, in the EGF |
| Deposit-bound rate, agent reward rates, decay | Verana network governance - not the Association |
Membership dues
Once a year, per member, on onboarding and renewal
The payer's own trust deposit grows too: trust units worth 250 minted on this payment.
- Crypto Exchange Association (demo)dues released from escrow on validation5,000 USDCTU worth 250
While the onboarding is pending, dues and deposit-bound amounts sit in escrow: cancelling refunds as-is, and nothing is minted. Verifier dues follow the same flow at 2,000.
First onboarding: full KYC + free issuance
Once per new customer without a credential
- IdentiSure (demo)the full check: documents, liveness, AML screening1.85 USDC · off-chain
- Verana networkissuance session: credential digest anchored, receipt for the walletreceipt only
Issuing is free by design - the Association puts no toll on the on-ramp. The 1.85 becomes recoverable the moment the credential starts circulating.
The reuse: one paid verification, evidence included
Every time a member accepts the credential
The payer's own trust deposit grows too: trust units worth 0.05 minted on this payment.
- Aurum Exchange (demo)the original issuer, paid on every reuse (example fee 0.90)0.855 USDCTU worth 0.045
- Crypto Exchange Association (demo)the ecosystem share (example fee 0.10)0.095 USDCTU worth 0.005
- Alice's wallet providerwallet user agent reward, 5% of the fees0.048 VNA-eqTU worth 0.003
- User agent provideruser agent reward, when a registered agent brokered the session0.048 VNA-eqTU worth 0.003
What 1.15 all-in buys, in the order that matters: a funded account in minutes instead of days, the abandonment recovered that a fresh onboarding would have lost, the identity decision, and the complete sealed evidence file in the verifier's own records - against an all-in onboarding cost that is a multiple of the 1.85 vendor floor. 0.90 of it goes to a fellow member, not a vendor; Aurum breaks even on its vendor fee after 2 to 3 reuses. The identical split runs in every direction of the corridor: exchange to exchange, exchange to bank, bank to exchange.
The counterparty check: free by design
0 per check · dues-fundedThe fourth flow is deliberately not a flow. A member verifying a counterparty before a Travel Rule transfer trust-resolves the counterparty's DID and reads its CEXA-VerifiedCounterparty credential - published as a Linked VP, checkable by anyone, at no per-check cost. Compare: a subscription plus per-message fees to every travel rule network joined, times the number of networks it takes to reach your counterparties. Membership dues fund the registry; the checks themselves never meter.
Unit economics, at scale
~115,000 USDC all-in for 100,000 funded accounts with complete CDD files - against an all-in onboarding cost that is a multiple of the vendor fee alone, before counting the sign-ups a re-KYC wall loses.
~171,000 USDC of reuse revenue against its original KYC spend: the compliance cost center becomes an asset, breaking even per credential after 2 to 3 reuses.
Credentials its entire existing KYC'd base at zero on-chain cost - issuance is free - then earns 0.855 every time one of those customers signs up anywhere in the Association.
One membership replaces N travel rule directory subscriptions and N re-submissions of the same license - and every counterparty identity check against the registry is free.
0.10 on every reuse network-wide plus dues: audits, provider vetting, EGF upkeep and the counterparty registry, funded by usage.
The trust score every payment builds
There is no upfront stake anywhere in this story. Instead, every fee mints trust units - worth 5% of the amount - to the payer AND to the payee. The result is a public trust score with unusual properties:
- Not money: trust units are non-transferable and non-convertible. The tokens spent to mint them went to the network's distribution pool - there is no pot to raid and no run risk.
- Built by usage, on both sides: the more the market relies on an issuer's credentials, the faster its score grows - collateral that scales with exposure, with no committee setting levels.
- A subscription, not a trophy: the score decays (half-life about 23 months). Trust reflects recent proven usage - earned, never bought, gone if not maintained.
- Scores decay, liabilities do not: a slash is recorded at what was originally paid, in fiat terms. Misbehavior costs the same whether the deposit was funded yesterday or a year ago.
- A slash freezes everything: every permission of the member goes non-trustable until the obligation is repaid - and the slash count is public, forever.
| Member | Activity | TU minted / year |
|---|---|---|
| Aurum (demo) | 200,000 reuses of its credentials + dues | ≈ 9,250 |
| Borealis (demo) | 100,000 reuses accepted + dues | ≈ 5,100 |
| Novara Bank (demo) | 300,000 reuses of its bank-issued credentials + dues | ≈ 13,750 |
| The Association | earns on every flow, both sides of the dues | grows with total volume |
Trust units minted per year, as fiat-worth at mint. Under decay, a steady activity level converges to a standing score of roughly 3x the annual mint.