Protocol
Pricing
The rule behind every quote, the limits that can lower it, and a worked example.
Every quote comes from one rule applied to the source's own history, then lowered if the vault's limits require it. There is no forecast, no scoring of the token, and no negotiation.
The rule
- Observe. Add up the USDC fees paid into the source over the last seven days.
- Project. Run that amount flat across the term: seven days of fees, scaled to the number of days you're selling.
- Take your share. Multiply by the share you're selling.
- Pay a quarter. The price is 25% of that.
The price is never more than the seven days themselves took in. The vault's share then stops at its cap, twice the price, or at the end of the term.
- The week run across 30 days
- 78,857
- Your 30% of it
- 23,657
- Price, a quarter of that
- 5,914
- Vault’s cap, 2 × price
- 11,829
In USDC. The vault’s limits can lower the price; your source’s page shows the live one and the limit that set it.
Why a quarter
Fees rarely hold steady. A week's rate run flat across a month is the optimistic case, and the price is set well under it so the vault can absorb streams that fade and still come out ahead on the ones that don't. The cap limits the other side: once the vault has twice what it paid, the rest of the term's fees are yours.
For the vault to get its money back, a stream only needs to bring in a quarter of what its week projected. To reach its cap, half.
Limits that can lower it
The rule gives the most Flume will pay. Each of these limits can lower it, and the price is the lowest of them all:
| Limit | What it keeps |
|---|---|
| The rule | A quarter of your share of the projected fees |
| The week | No more than the fees paid in over the last seven days |
| One creator | Your streams together under 10% of the vault |
| Reserve | The vault's free cash above 30% of what it holds |
| One purchase | No more than 10% of the vault's free cash |
| Live quotes | Room for quotes already issued to other creators |
On a source's page, How this price is set lists all six with their current values and marks the one that set your price. When a limit leaves no room at all, the checklist says so and there is no quote until it changes.
Eligibility
A source can only be quoted when all of these hold:
- quotes are open on the vault and its pricing model is current,
- the source has no open stream,
- the vault has deposits,
- Flume has read the source's fees up to the latest block,
- the source has seven full days on record and USDC fees on at least four of them, counted in UTC,
- the creator has a USDC account to be paid into.
The Before a quote checklist shows each one, and when it's only a matter of time, the date and hour quotes open.
The model is pinned
The vault stores a version number and a hash of every parameter above, from the 25% to the rounding rules. A purchase only goes through if it names that version, so the rule can't change under a quote. The vault's admin can move to a new model only while no stream is open.
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| History | 7 days, fees on at least 4 |
| Share | Up to 50% |
| Term | 1 to 30 days |
| Price | 25% of the projected share, at most the week's fees |
| Cap | 2 × price |
| Firm quote | Valid for 120 seconds |