Two currencies, one rule.
Notis runs on karma — reputation you earn by contributing — and credits — money that's mined, spent, and traded. Here's how each works, and the game theory that makes cheating cost more than it's worth.
The firewall
The single most important rule in the whole system: karma and credits never convert into each other. You can't buy karma with money, and you can't cash karma out for money — in either direction, the door is welded shut.
That firewall is what keeps reputation meaning something. If karma were purchasable, it would just be money wearing a costume, and the wealthiest — not the most valued — would look the most reputable. Sealing the two apart lets money be money and reputation be reputation, each doing its job honestly.
Reputation
- Earned socially, by being liked
- Indivisible — whole numbers only
- Non-transferable — you can't send it
- Decays if you go inactive
Money
- Mined via proof-of-work
- 8 decimals — divisible like most coins
- Transferable & tradeable
- Pays fees and secures the chain
Karma — the reputation economy
What it's for
Karma is a legible, on-chain record of who the community values. The protocol doesn't try to judge quality itself — its job is to record endorsements honestly and keep the patterns visible, so people and apps can interpret them. The node keeps the books; the community reads them.
Where karma comes from — invitations with skin in the game
New karma is created in exactly one place: invitations. When you invite someone, you lock a bond of your own karma, and the newcomer instantly receives a starter grant. Your bond only flows back to you as that newcomer earns genuine likes — and it's forfeited if they turn out to be a ghost.
Picture farming karma by inviting your own fake accounts. You mint a grant to a sock puppet — but to claw your bond back, you have to make that puppet genuinely liked, which means spending real karma to like it, or eating the forfeit. The numbers are set so a self-invite always nets zero or less: the bond you'd lose (or the karma you'd burn faking engagement) is designed to exceed the grant you minted.
Inviting real people who genuinely get liked, meanwhile, is nearly free — those likes would have happened anyway. Honest growth costs nothing; faking it always costs more than it makes. That asymmetry is the entire defense.
Likes — endorsements that have to cost something
A like isn't free. The liker spends a little karma; the author is paid most of it back, and a small sliver is burned. Why make liking cost anything at all? Because a free like is just noise — it carries no information. A like that cost the giver something is a real signal that they valued what they saw.
And because a fraction burns on every like, a ring of accounts liking each other's posts slowly bleeds karma instead of printing it. Genuine appreciation moves value toward good contributors; manufactured appreciation just drains the manufacturer. (It's all whole numbers — an author collects x−1 karma for every x likes, with one burned. No fractions anywhere, by design.)
Decay — reputation you have to keep earning
Karma isn't a trophy you win once. If an identity goes quiet, its karma decays; stay genuinely active and it doesn't. The hard part is stopping people from faking "active" on the cheap — so keeping your karma alive is tied to posting, and posting is itself bonded: a post locks a bond that only returns as it earns likes.
The only cheap way to keep your karma alive is to post things people actually like — that is, to genuinely contribute. Wash-posting junk just to reset the clock locks up bonds you can't recover, which costs more than simply letting the decay happen. You cannot fake activity without doing the real thing. (An unliked post's bond is burned after a grace period of about a week.)
Sybil resistance, in one idea
You can't make a network like this truly un-gameable — given enough patience and accounts, anything can be Sybil-attacked. So the goal isn't perfection; it's to make gaming slow, visible, and more expensive than it's worth. Every path that creates karma is gated by a real cost that a faker pays and an honest contributor doesn't. And because every endorsement lives on-chain, unnatural accumulation leaves patterns that apps and indexers can flag. The protocol stays a neutral record-keeper — judgment stays with the community.
Credits — the money & security economy
What it's for
Credits are the utility layer: the money that pays for scarce network resources — storage, priority — and, above all, rewards the miners who secure the chain. The public square runs on karma; credits run the machinery underneath it.
Where credits come from
Credits are mined through proof-of-work and issued as block rewards on a schedule that tapers toward a fixed cap — issuance slows over time instead of inflating forever.
Paying for security — forever
A chain secured by mining has to keep paying its miners, or it gets cheap to attack. Once new issuance tapers off, miners keep earning from two perpetual sources: transaction fees, and storage rent.
A small charge on coins that sit completely untouched for years (about four) — it gently recycles genuinely lost or dormant coins back to miners. The effect is a permanent security budget without permanent inflation: nothing new is printed, long-lost coins simply return to circulation to keep the lights on. Coins you actually use never pay it.
A fair launch — no premine
Notis starts from zero supply. Nobody is handed a pile of coins at genesis. Instead, early supporters — holders of the Notis token on Solana that funded development — can link their wallet before launch and receive a share of the ongoing mining rewards, proportional to what they held, for as long as they keep it staked.
It's a share of the flow, not a stock: it can't be dumped on day one, it isn't diluted by inflation, and supporters can exit whenever they choose. A floor guarantees miners always keep a healthy share of every block, so the chain stays secure no matter how many supporters take part. Supporters receive credits only — never karma: money buys economic upside, never reputation.
The fine print
A modest slice of rewards and fees accrues to a reserve that is locked under the current protocol and set aside for future use. And credits carry eight decimal places — like most cryptocurrencies — handled as exact integers under the hood, with apps placing the decimal for display.
The through-line
If one idea ties it all together, it's this: value should be expensive to fake and cheap to earn honestly.
Minting karma costs a bond that only real engagement returns. Endorsing costs something, so endorsements mean something. Staying reputable costs genuine contribution. Securing the chain is paid for in perpetuity, so attacking it never pays off. And money and reputation sit in separate sealed compartments, so neither can corrupt the other.
Notis doesn't try to make cheating impossible — it makes cheating a losing trade.