Economics

Everything described so far — submitting data, publishing weights, running validators — requires coordination. The token is how. $SOMA is the network’s unit of account and mechanism of alignment. It represents a stake in the network. Every action that matters flows through it.

Why The Token Has Value

Two forces drive demand:

1. Participation requires it. Submitters post bonds in $SOMA. Models pay rent in $SOMA. Validators stake $SOMA to operate. To use the network, you need the token.
2. Fees create scarcity. Every transaction generates fees. Those fees are partially burned and partially recycled into rewards. As network usage grows, fee volume grows. The fees auto-adjust each epoch to target an annual burn of 5% of circulating supply.

Early on, emissions fund participation — the network pays people to bootstrap it. Later, transaction fees sustain the cycle: more activity means more value flowing to participants without relying on new issuance.

Emissions

New tokens are released each epoch following a linear curve. Emissions start higher and taper over time, eventually reaching a maximum supply of 10 million $SOMA. Each epoch, emissions and fees combine into a rewards pool, distributed as follows:

• 20% to validators (for running infrastructure)
• 80% to target winners, split evenly between:
  • The submitter who won
  • The model whose weights were used

This aligns incentives across roles. Models earn when their weights produce winners. Submitters earn when they land closest. Validators earn for keeping the network running. Everyone benefits from making the network more valuable.

Staking

Models and validators must stake $SOMA to participate. Stake determines influence — more stake, more weight in network decisions, whether it be inference or consensus.

Token holders who don’t want to run validators can delegate their stake. Delegators earn a share of rewards based on the validator’s performance, minus a commission the validator sets. This lets passive holders participate in securing the network.

Bonds

Bonds secure claims throughout the network. Submitters post them with submissions; challengers post them when disputing results. Forfeited bonds return to the rewards pool, funding future emissions. Fraud literally pays the network.