Where money actually moves — the canonical fee statement every claim scopes to · content/fees.md
Fees — where money actually moves
The canonical fee statement, scoped by Pricing — when wording and those two pages ever disagree, Pricing wins.
The network never charges. Full stop.
The Qalnet network has no fees. There is no per-transfer, per-message, per-receipt or per-anchor charge anywhere in the code — no transaction charge, no network levy, nothing. Spam and abuse are not priced out; they are controlled structurally:
- Spend caps (loopd, owner-set) — an agent or app can be capped by the owner; caps are optional and uncapped by default, and a set cap is refused in code. The 500K-Qal sales cap is enforced the same way: the loopd sales rail refuses past-cap sales (fail-closed) and the payment bridge answers 402 past it (F11). On-chain cap-gate code exists and is tested; live enforcement is the loopd rail.
- Escrow pre-authorisation (holds) — a job locks an estimated cost before it runs and releases the difference at settle. Exposure is bounded by the hold, not by a charge.
- ~2-second identity revocation — a misbehaving identity is switched off in about two seconds (qalid), not billed into submission.
Validators are operator-run in this phase, so there is no fee market to feed. Chain fees are zero (F16): the treasury's Qal Pass sponsorship covers user transactions, so users never see a transaction charge.
- 0 — network / chain fees (no per-transfer charge anywhere in code (F16))
- ~20% — buy→redeem spread (the margin) (buy ~AU$1.20, redeem AU$1.00 of services (Pricing))
- 500,000 — hard sales cap — QALS (loopd sales rail refuses past-cap sales; bridge answers 402)
The complete fee table
| Where | Rate | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Transfers & messages | 0% | live |
| Marketplace (compute + bazaar) | 0% | live — founder policy 2026-09-12: the token spread is the margin |
| Exchange AMM (qalx) | 0.3% to liquidity providers (25 bps LPs / 5 bps treasury) | live, paper phase |
| BTC rail | 1.5% spread inside the locked invoice quote | rail in progress |
| Buy/redeem spread | ~20% — buy ~AU$1.20, redeem AU$1.00 of services value | live policy |
| Cash-out (fiat return) | 0.5% — FUTURE, licence-gated, not live | future |
One page, one pricing story: Pricing.
The three disclosed places where money moves
Money changes hands in exactly three places. None of them is "the network charging you":
1. The buy/redeem spread — the commercial margin
Topping up converts outside money (card rails today; Bitcoin when that rail completes) into credit: about AU$1.20 buys 1 Qal. Redemption is services-only in this phase: 1 Qal returns AU$1.00 of services value. The ~20% spread between the two is the margin — in the founder's words: "no marketplace fees — the token spread is the margin." The amount you pay is shown before you confirm; on the Bitcoin rail the rate is locked at invoice time and the 1.5% spread is part of that quote (Paying with Bitcoin). Full story: Pricing.
2. Compute market prices — provider prices, not network charges
When you hire a computer on the marketplace, you pay what the provider charges — a market price for someone's GPU, set by the provider and held in escrow until the job is done. That is a price for hardware and time, not a network charge, and qalarc adds 0% on top (F17). One adjacent, also-disclosed item: some chat channels charge to post — anti-spam plus creator earnings, not a chain fee (F18).
3. Exchange swaps — the AMM's LP fee
Swaps on the qalx exchange carry 0.3%, paid to liquidity providers (25 bps LPs / 5 bps treasury) — a market fee inside the AMM, not a network charge. Cash-out (fiat return) does not exist yet: it arrives only in the licensed phase, planned at 0.5%, licence-gated (Pricing).
Value as proof of identity — worth it case by case
One honest nuance, so this page really is the whole story. For high-stakes verifications, a tiny round-trip value transfer — a send-and-return challenge, the proof pattern qalid already uses — can demonstrate that someone controls the key they claim to. Putting a little value on the line and getting it back is a strong proof of control.
It is deliberately optional and case-by-case — think a large claim or a high-value unlock — never a default requirement. And it costs the user nothing: the value returns. This is a proof mechanism, not a fee — no charge is kept, and it never appears on a bill.
The honest Phase-3+ caveat
Today every validator is run by qalarc, so nothing needs to feed a validator set. If validators are ever decentralised beyond qalarc, validator economics will need a funding source — protocol fee share, reserve yield, or service margins. That is a Phase-3+ design decision that will be made deliberately and in public. We don't hide it and we don't overstate it: it is not today's product.
Proof: the receipts behind every claim here live on Evidence (claims→evidence table, test-suite inventory, audit + era-checkpoint records) and Testing Roadmap & Strategy. Sources: Ground Truth F6–F19 · founder fee-policy decisions 2026-09-12 (11_system_audit/FACT_DISPLAY_AUDIT_2026-09-12.md §2.1 #5) · cap enforcement suites: qalpay/test_caps.sh, loopd/demo.sh (repo) · era-1 checkpoint: object 0xe9eff274…fab7905, tx 2gopkDw9ecBexPAA3U8vZhnoMqvZ673cKk9278G3NYGS.