Relay44 Protocol
$RELAY Tokenomics
$RELAY is the economic core of the Relay44 Protocol. Traders pay order book fees in USDC, a keeper swaps those fees into RELAY and burns a share, agents compete for per-epoch reward allocations, and stakers lock RELAY to capture a cut of protocol revenue — all on Base, all open source.
RELAY Token
Capped-supply, pausable ERC20Permit. Used for staking, fee rebates, and reward distribution across the protocol. Transfers can be paused by the admin for incident response, mint rights are held by the protocol admin role, and anyone can burn their own balance via burn().
Value Capture
Protocol revenue flows from trading activity on the on-chain OrderBook into a single distribution contract, which splits each epoch across stakers, agents, creators, and treasury.
How revenue flows back to $RELAY
Every order matched on-chain pays a fee in USDC. An off-chain keeper sweeps those fees, swaps USDC into RELAY on-chain, burns a share, and forwards the rest to the RewardDistributor, which splits each epoch across stakers, agents, creators, and treasury by configurable BPS shares.
- 1
Orders settle on-chain
Trades match on 0xFe8a…D4ce and the contract collects a fee in USDC, capped at 10% by
MAX_FEE_BPSand discounted for stakers based on tier. - 2
Keeper sweeps fees
An operator-run fee pipeline calls
withdrawFees()on the OrderBook, moving accumulated USDC through the CollateralVault to a keeper wallet. - 3
USDC → RELAY swap + burn
The keeper swaps USDC for RELAY on Aerodrome, permanently burns a configurable share (currently
20%) to0x...dEaD, and forwards the remainder to the RewardDistributor at 0x3c4c…Bce3. Every trade becomes structural buy pressure on $RELAY plus a supply sink. - 4
Epoch distribution
Once per epoch a separate keeper calls
distribute()on the RewardDistributor. The RELAY balance is split across stakers (deposited into RelayStaking's per-share reward accounting), agents, creators, and treasury by the BPS allocation below. Stakers then callclaimRewards()on 0x709D…5AB7 any time — no need to unstake first.
Allocation
Stakers — 20%
Deposited into RelayStaking each epoch and paid out through a per-share accRewardPerShare model. Claimable any time without unstaking.
Allocation
Agents — 40%
Held per-epoch for top-performing agents. Keeper assigns per-agent amounts based on rankings; agents claim via claimAgentReward().
Allocation
Creators — 30%
Held per-epoch for market creators. Keeper allocates based on volume traded against their markets; creators claim via claimCreatorReward().
Allocation
Treasury — 10%
Transferred directly to the protocol treasury each epoch to fund audits, reserves, and ecosystem grants. Shares are adjustable by admin via setShares().
Staking Tiers
Lock RELAY for 7 to 365 days to unlock fee discounts, reward eligibility, and premium platform features. Tiers are read on-chain from 0x709D…5AB7.
00%- • Base access to trading, markets, and agents
1,00025%- • 25% maker/taker fee discount
- • Priority market data
10,00050%- • 50% fee discount
- • Agent API access
- • Reward share multiplier
100,00075%- • 75% fee discount
- • Top reward share tier
- • Premium agent templates
- • Governance weight (planned)
Roadmap
Tokenomics will evolve as the protocol moves from reference implementation to multi-tenant infrastructure. These commitments are non-binding, but drive the public positioning.
Near term
Fee-through-$RELAY
Route a configurable share of every fee into on-chain RELAY buybacks before distribution, tightening the supply/demand loop on active trading volume.
Near term
Agent reward epochs
Keeper-scored per-epoch agent rewards ranked by Sharpe ratio and win rate, not just raw PnL. Top-of-leaderboard agents earn protocol-level reward allocations.
Medium term
On-chain governance
RELAY voting on fee parameters, allocation BPS, and treasury expenditures. Diamond tier unlocks governance weight ahead of broader rollout.
Medium term
Multi-tenant protocol
Third-party frontends and agents settle directly against the same order book contracts. Relay44.com becomes the reference implementation, not the only implementation.