igneum/docs/plans/funding.md

Funding plan

3 October 2026. What the project costs to build, review, run and defend, what pays for it today, what waits on revenue, and what pauses if revenue is late. Every dollar figure is approximate unless it cites a price list, and the basis is stated in the row. Nothing here is a sale of anything and no figure is a price of the coin.

1. What funds the project

Source	What it is	Status
The founder's own means	Private money and the founder's own time. The amount committed is not published and this plan does not pretend to know the ceiling	The only source today
The official client's 1% fee	The official miner client charges 1% of a miner's rewards to the operating company (litepaper, "What a miner's hour looks like"). It is a client setting, not a protocol rule; any miner can run another client and pay nothing	Zero until there is mining with value, which is mainnet (November 2027 on the roadmap); then unknown, because it is hashrate times coin price times 1% times the share of miners on the official client
The team's own mining, proving and apps	The team mines from genesis like anyone, runs provers in the job market and collects the 20% app share on contracts it deploys (spec 5.5)	Zero until mainnet; competitive, not guaranteed
Protocol treasury, protocol fee, emission share	None exists and none will (spec 5.5, 5.6)	Zero, by rule
Token sale, pre-sale, allocation, grant from a foundation	None	Zero, by rule

So until mainnet every cost below is the founder's. After mainnet the 1% fee and the team's open-market earnings join, and both depend on a chain that has not launched and a coin that has no value today.

2. The table

Columns: estimated cost with its basis; what is funded today; what depends on future revenue; what happens if revenue arrives late. "Revenue" means the 1% fee and the team's open-market earnings after mainnet, and nothing else.

Item	Estimated cost (approximate) and basis	Funded today	Depends on future revenue	If revenue is late
Development: founder and agents through mainnet (13 months)	No dollar figure: the founder's time and the agent tooling the founder already pays for. Basis: CLAUDE.md team section; docs/fud-fixes.md row 29 (method disclosed)	Founder's own means	No	Continues
Development: a contracted cryptographer for phases 1 and 2 (lottery hash soundness, VDF code against chiavdf, seed derivation; docs/fud-fixes.md row 71, O-1.4, O-4.1)	USD 80,000 to 150,000 for about six months part time. Basis: from memory of contract rates for applied cryptography, approximate	Founder's own means	No	Scope shrinks to the gate 1 review of the fair-lottery properties only; the VDF review moves to the audit row
Development: the second independent node client	Not in the 13-month plan (docs/fud-fixes.md rows 31, 47). Basis: decision pending	Not funded	Yes, entirely	Does not start
Independent review: finality rule v2 (gate 3, phase 4, the rule external review is paid to break)	USD 50,000 to 100,000. Basis: a focused review of one consensus rule plus its simulation by two reviewers over a few weeks, from memory, approximate	Founder's own means	No	Not pausable: the roadmap says the phase 4 gate is "finality design passes external review". If it cannot be paid, phase 4 does not close and the dates move
Independent audit: the node fork (consensus delta, p2p, difficulty, header validation, the pow engine) before public testnet	USD 60,000 to 120,000. Basis: the delta is listed row by row in docs/fork-divergence.md; the base is rusty-kaspa, already audited upstream, approximate	Founder's own means, second in order after the finality review	Partly: a second pass after the attack harness closes its stubs	The single pass is kept; the second pass waits. Public testnet does not open without the first pass
Independent audit: execution layer and proving integration (revm driver, two-dimensional gas, proof records, the veto, the ProofSystem version 1 integration) before mainnet	USD 80,000 to 150,000. Basis: an EVM-integration audit of a new client's execution path, from memory, approximate	Not funded	Yes	Mainnet moves until it is paid. Mainnet does not ship with an unaudited execution layer
Independent audit: the official client and release process (spec 08: reproducible builds, release key, update path)	USD 20,000 to 40,000. Basis: a short application security review, from memory, approximate	Not funded	Yes	The one-click app ships at testnet unaudited and says so on the download page; the audit lands before mainnet or the app does not carry the mainnet release key
Infrastructure: the 20-node cloud devnet	USD 476 per month for 20 nodes (Hetzner API prices of 3 October 2026, net, docs/plans/cloud-devnet.md); about USD 6,000 for the 13 months, plus rented GPU hours for the hourly-compile and shard measurements at USD 0.22 to 0.74 per card hour (RunPod, 3 October 2026): under USD 1,000 over phase 2	Founder's own means	No	Node count drops to 8 (two per location); the rented GPU hours are replaced by the project's own cards
Infrastructure: seed nodes, site, observer database, domains	Seed nodes USD 50 to 80 per month for three to five (docs/plans/seed-nodes.md); the site and the observer's database are on free or near-free tiers today, approximate; 15 domains at the registrar's renewal price, approximate USD 500 per year	Founder's own means	No	Three seeds not five; nothing else changes
Incident response: an on-call second engineer from public testnet, an emergency-release drill, the soundness-bug path of spec 5.7 and design 5.5 rehearsed	USD 3,000 to 6,000 per month retainer from August 2027; about USD 40,000 through the first mainnet quarter. Basis: a part-time retainer at contract rates, from memory, approximate	Not funded	Yes	The founder is the on-call engineer alone; the drill still runs, because it costs time and not money; the retainer starts when the fee pays it
Challenge reward: the chip bounty (O-1.17), paid to anyone who shows a chip design that beats a GPU by more than 2x	USD 50,000 standing. Basis: sized to pay for a credible design study with a measured operation count, not a tapeout; the amount is a decision, not a market rate	Not funded; the terms and the payer are the entity's (docs/fud-fixes.md row 50)	Yes: the bounty is announced with the January 2027 benchmark and escrowed when the entity has the money	Announced at a lower standing amount (USD 10,000) and raised when revenue allows; a bounty that cannot be paid is not announced
Challenge reward: the finality break bounty (litepaper "Questions miners ask")	USD 25,000 standing. Basis: as above	Not funded	Yes	As above
Challenge reward: the reproduction reward of docs/benchmarks/proving-e2e.md 8.1 (a fixed, equal, disclosed amount per unrelated operator)	USD 1,000 per operator per workload set, three operators, about USD 3,000 per campaign. Basis: covers electricity and a day of attention, approximate	Not funded	Yes	Reproduction is asked for without a reward; the standard allows that
Legal: counsel on the entity, the promotions question, the testnet payment terms, the no-custody structure of the job market (docs/fud-fixes.md rows 46, 58, 59)	USD 20,000 to 50,000. Basis: from memory, approximate	Founder's own means	No	Continues; it gates public text, not code

3. Totals

Bucket	Approximate total	Funded today
Development (cryptographer; founder time unpriced)	USD 80,000 to 150,000	Yes
Independent review and audits	USD 210,000 to 410,000	The finality review and the first node pass: USD 110,000 to 220,000. The execution and client audits, USD 100,000 to 190,000: no
Infrastructure	USD 8,000 to 10,000 through mainnet	Yes
Incident response	USD 40,000 through the first mainnet quarter	No
Challenge rewards	USD 78,000 standing plus USD 3,000 per campaign	No
Legal	USD 20,000 to 50,000	Yes
Total	USD 440,000 to 740,000 through the first mainnet quarter, plus standing bounties	About USD 220,000 to 430,000 funded; about USD 220,000 to 310,000 unfunded, all of it after public testnet

The unfunded half is the half that comes after the chain exists and before and just after it launches: the execution audit, the client audit, incident response and the bounties. Each row says what pauses. Two things never pause and instead move the date: the finality review (phase 4 gate) and the execution audit (mainnet). The plan is to delay rather than to launch unreviewed.

4. What the 1% fee could be, and why it is not counted

The fee is 1% of rewards on the official client. Rewards in year one are 963 million IGN (ramp included, docs/analysis/security-budget.md). At the low, base and high price inputs of that analysis the fee's ceiling, with every miner on the official client, is USD 48,000, 193,000 and 963,000 a year. Those are inputs, not expectations, and the share of miners on the official client is unknown. Nothing in section 2 is funded against them.

5. Rules

1. No item is paid from emission or from a protocol fee, because neither exists.
2. A review or audit that is paid for is published whole, pass or fail, and linked from docs/evidence.md.
3. A bounty is announced only when it is escrowed.
4. This plan is revised when a number changes; the git history of this file is the record.