Important Notice

This document describes the design principles, economic structure, and protocol-level rules governing the AERX utility token and the AEREDIUM Blockchain. It is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation to purchase any security, token, or financial instrument.

AERX is a utility token designed exclusively to provide access to, and payment for, services on the AEREDIUM Blockchain. AERX does not represent equity, debt, profit-sharing rights, governance rights over any entity, or any claim on the assets or revenues of AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd, AEREDIUM Digital Ltd, or any related party. AERX is not offered, sold, or distributed for the purpose of generating investment returns.

Statements in this document regarding future protocol behaviour describe the deterministic rules encoded in the AEREDIUM Blockchain. They are not forecasts, projections, or promises of economic outcomes. Token holders should not expect appreciation of AERX value as a result of managerial, entrepreneurial, or promotional efforts of AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd, AEREDIUM Digital Ltd, or any affiliate. The AEREDIUM Blockchain operates through deterministic, TEE-attested execution without reliance on human discretion or entrepreneurial stewardship.

This document does not constitute legal, tax, financial, or investment advice. Prospective participants should consult their own professional advisors and consider applicable laws in their jurisdiction before interacting with the AEREDIUM Blockchain or AERX token.

1. Executive Summary

AEREDIUM is institutional-grade blockchain infrastructure engineered to carry the continuous, high-volume flows of real-world finance — stablecoin settlement at payment-network scale, tokenised real-world asset issuance and lifecycle processing, and cross-chain value movement without congestion or delay. The network's demonstrated capacity of over one million transactions per second (ingestion, under test conditions) is not a performance target. It is the operating requirement for financial infrastructure in which throughput, determinism, and finality must each hold under sustained load.

AERX is the unit of payment that meters every operation on this network. Every transaction consumes computational gas, payable exclusively in AERX, so as institutional usage scales the demand for AERX scales with it. More transactions processed, more gas consumed, more AERX required to settle the activity. Network utilisation therefore drives demand for AERX directly — as the unit of settlement for computation, not as the output of financial engineering. AERX does not pay staking yield, is not supported by buybacks, and does not distribute revenue. It derives its value from the simplest and most durable source available to a token: being the required input for operating high-throughput financial infrastructure. The ceiling on this network is the market, not the chain.

The AEREDIUM Blockchain operates through a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus protocol with attested, deterministic execution across all validators. AERX is not a governance instrument, not a staking asset, and not a claim on any entity. Its sole function is to price and meter gas consumed by network operations.

The technology assures the governance. Network integrity is not maintained by human consensus, staking economics, or discretionary governance — it is guaranteed by deterministic protocol rules enforced through TEE attestation at the consensus layer.

This tokenomics model is constructed on the principle that verifiable computation, not economic incentive design, is the primary source of network assurance. Economic parameters — supply, distribution, gas-fee routing, staking-reward rules — are accordingly encoded as protocol constants rather than managed policies. AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd exists to maintain software, support ecosystem development, and administer the Foundation Treasury, the Community Pool, and the Staking Incentive Program; it does not control transaction validation, ordering, or settlement outcomes.

Core Parameters at a Glance

Total supply: 1,000,000,000 AERX, fixed. No inflation, no additional issuance.

TGE circulating supply: 100,000,000 AERX (10.00%). Composed of Foundation Treasury unlock (60,000,000 AERX), Public Liquidity (20,000,000 AERX), Strategic Reserve unlock routed into the Foundation Treasury at TGE (5,000,000 AERX), the Private Sale TGE unlock (13,000,000 AERX), and the Community Pool Airdrop TGE unlock (2,000,000 AERX). The Staking Incentive Pool (100,000,000 AERX) is held in the Staking Contract from genesis and emits only against actively staked balances, contributing to circulation only as staking rewards are earned and claimed.

On-chain pools: Three protocol-defined pools — the Foundation Treasury (holds the Foundation Treasury allocation, the Strategic Reserve, and excess gas fees above the staker-reward cap), the Community Pool (holds the 288M Community allocation from which grants are issued), and the Staking Incentive Pool (holds the 100M bootstrap allocation that funds fixed-rate staking rewards until exhausted). All three pools are administered by AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd under the direction of its Foundation board.

Community Pool mechanics: The Community Pool is not itself subject to a pool-level vesting schedule. The Foundation board issues grants from the pool at its discretion. Each grant is subject to a 3-month lock from the grant date followed by 12-month linear vesting, except grants designated as gas-fee programmes, which are immediately usable by recipients.

Staking Incentive Program: Time-bounded bootstrap incentive for AERX holders who lock tokens into the non-custodial Staking Contract. Target reward rate of up to 4% annualised, comprising a 2% fixed rate emitted from the 100M Staking Incentive Pool and up to 2% variable rate drawn from gas fees. Minimum 3-month lock; all accrued rewards are forfeited if stake is withdrawn before the lock expires. Programme terminates when the 100M pool is exhausted, after which rewards are drawn only from gas-fee contributions within the 2% cap. See Section 8.

Fee mechanics: Gas fees payable in AERX; routed deterministically at block finalisation to the Fee Router contract, which directs up to 2% annualised of total actively staked AERX to the Staking Contract as variable staking reward, and routes the remainder to the Foundation Treasury.

Foundation role: Steward, not operator. No price support, no buybacks, no supply management. Administers pools under fixed protocol rules.

Network assurance: TEE-BFT consensus with Ed25519 USIG attestation. Validator authority derives solely from TEE attestation, not from token stake. AERX holder staking in the Staking Incentive Program is unrelated to consensus and confers no validator role, voting right, or governance privilege.

Structural Demand Drivers

The AEREDIUM Blockchain is designed to support categories of financial activity that are undergoing structural expansion rather than speculative adoption. Global payment systems are increasingly shifting toward digital settlement layers, with stablecoins emerging as a primary medium for on-chain value transfer. Financial institutions and asset issuers are advancing the tokenisation of real-world assets, requiring infrastructure capable of handling issuance, transfer, and lifecycle management at scale. And cross-chain interoperability is becoming a baseline requirement as value moves between networks rather than remaining within isolated ecosystems.

These trends are not dependent on the success of any single protocol. They reflect a broader transition in financial infrastructure toward programmable, on-chain systems. As these categories expand, the volume of transactions requiring deterministic execution, high throughput under sustained load, and predictable cost structures is expected to increase.

AEREDIUM is engineered specifically to operate under these conditions. Growth in these underlying markets therefore translates directly into increased utilisation of infrastructure designed to support them. Because all network activity is metered in AERX, any increase in utilisation results in a corresponding increase in demand for AERX as the unit of settlement for computation.

The relevant question is not whether transaction volume will grow, but which infrastructure is capable of supporting it when it does.

2. Foundational Principles

2.1 Deterministic Governance

The AEREDIUM Blockchain operates through a Deterministic Governance Model in which transaction ordering, validation, and settlement are governed by verifiable computation rather than human consensus or economic staking.

Every validator node runs inside a hardware-backed Trusted Execution Environment. Each node produces an attestation proof signed by an Ed25519 USIG key, certifying that the code executing inside the enclave matches the canonical AEREDIUM Blockchain binary. Consensus is reached through a BFT protocol that accepts votes only from attested enclaves. Non-attested nodes cannot participate; no amount of economic stake grants entry.

The consequence is that protocol behaviour — transaction inclusion rules, fee calculations, state transitions, Treasury routing — is not a product of validator discretion or governance vote. It is a product of deterministic code executing in cryptographically verified environments. Any deviation is detectable, rejected by other validators, and leaves a public attestation trail.

2.2 Utility Over Investment

AERX exists because the AEREDIUM Blockchain requires a unit of account for metering computational resources. Every on-chain operation has a resource cost measured in gas — CPU, memory, state reads and writes. AERX is the currency that prices this gas.

AERX is not issued as a mechanism for capital formation by AEREDIUM Digital Ltd. It is not marketed as an investment. It is not represented as appreciating in value as a consequence of the efforts of AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd or any affiliate. Its utility is the AEREDIUM Blockchain itself.

2.3 Separation of Infrastructure and Economics

AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd operates software. It does not operate markets. A strict separation is maintained between:

Protocol infrastructure (maintained by AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd): software releases, security audits, developer documentation.

Economic parameters (enforced by the AEREDIUM Blockchain): supply, distribution schedules, gas-fee mechanics, Treasury and Community Pool routing.

Economic parameters, once deployed, cannot be changed by Foundation action within the running chain. They can only be changed by releasing a new version of the canonical protocol binary through the protocol upgrade lifecycle described in Section 7.2, which requires the new binary to pass canary validation, be accepted during a transition window in parallel with the existing binary, and be independently attested by every validator's TEE against the public list of approved code hashes. The economic rules under which AERX holders acquire their tokens are therefore protected by the protocol itself, not by discretionary policy.

3. Token Specification

Identity

Symbol: AERX

Name: AEREDIUM

Standard: Native to the AEREDIUM Blockchain (Layer-1). AERX exists solely on the AEREDIUM Blockchain; it is not issued or represented as a token on Ethereum or any other external network.

Decimals: 18

Issuer entity: AEREDIUM Digital Ltd (BVI)

Protocol steward: AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd (Cayman Islands)

Supply

Maximum supply: 1,000,000,000 AERX

Floor supply: 1,000,000,000 AERX (fixed; no burn mechanism)

Inflation rate: 0%. The AEREDIUM Blockchain contains no issuance mechanism beyond the initial mint at genesis.

Hard cap enforcement: Enforced at the consensus layer as a protocol invariant. Any modification would require a new canonical binary to be released and successfully complete the protocol upgrade lifecycle described in Section 7.2.

Utility Functions

AERX is the sole unit of payment for all use of the AEREDIUM Blockchain. Every operation — transaction inclusion, smart contract execution, state reads and writes, and any on-chain service invoked by a contract — is metered as gas and paid for in AERX.

Market Pricing

AERX will be introduced to secondary markets through listings on centralised and decentralised venues. No offering price, target price, or reference price is set, endorsed, or projected by AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd, AEREDIUM Digital Ltd, or any affiliate. The price at which AERX trades — at listing and thereafter — is determined solely by secondary-market participants through the supply and demand dynamics of public venues.

Prospective participants should form their own view of AERX's utility and likely usage, and should not rely on any private discussion, informal estimate, or third-party commentary as an indication of the price at which AERX will trade. AERX is a utility token whose function is to meter and pay for network operations; its market price will reflect demand for that utility, not managerial efforts of any affiliate.

4. Token Distribution

The one-billion AERX supply is allocated at genesis according to the following schedule. All allocations are encoded in the genesis block and are subject to on-chain vesting contracts that cannot be accelerated by any party, including AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd.

4.1 TGE Circulating Supply

The Token Generation Event (TGE) releases the float necessary to establish secondary-market price discovery and to seed the Foundation Treasury, the Community Pool Airdrop, and public liquidity. TGE circulating supply is set at 100,000,000 AERX (10.00%), sourced from the following protocol-encoded components:

The TGE circulating supply shown above is deterministic and encoded in the genesis block. It is not adjustable by any party. Further circulation growth proceeds only through the vesting and emission schedules defined below, each of which is executed by immutable on-chain contracts deployed at genesis.

4.2 Vesting Schedules

Founders (15.0% / 150M AERX)

Twelve-month cliff from TGE. Linear monthly vesting over the subsequent thirty-six months. Fully vested at month 48. Vesting is executed on-chain by an immutable vesting contract deployed at genesis; acceleration is not possible.

Contributors (10.0% / 100M AERX)

Identical to Founder terms: twelve-month cliff, thirty-six-month linear vesting, fully vested at month 48. Individual contributor allocations are determined by AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd prior to TGE and published transparently.

Private Sale to institutions and early adopters (13.0% / 130M AERX)

Ten percent (13,000,000 AERX) is unlocked at TGE. The remaining ninety percent (117,000,000 AERX) is subject to a three-month cliff followed by three-month linear vesting, fully vested at month 6. Private sale agreements are executed only with accredited and institutional investors in compliance with Regulation D, Regulation S, or equivalent jurisdictional exemptions. Private sale holders receive no governance rights, no revenue share, and no entitlement to distributions.

Foundation Treasury (10.0% / 100M AERX)

Of the 100,000,000 AERX allocation, 60,000,000 AERX (60%) is unlocked at TGE into the Foundation Treasury. The remaining 40,000,000 AERX (40%) is held under an on-chain twelve-month lock and then released linearly over the subsequent twenty-four months into the Foundation Treasury, reaching full vesting at month 36. The Foundation Treasury is administered by AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd under the constraints set out in Section 6.

Strategic Reserve (5.0% / 50M AERX)

Of the 50,000,000 AERX allocation, 5,000,000 AERX is unlocked at TGE and routed into the Foundation Treasury. The remaining 45,000,000 AERX is released linearly over ten months from TGE, also routed into the Foundation Treasury at each release event. The Strategic Reserve is not held in a separate wallet, is not subject to a category-restricted-use condition, and is fully released by month 10. Once routed, Reserve balances are indistinguishable from, and administered identically to, any other balance in the Foundation Treasury.

Community Pool (28.8% / 288M AERX)

The Community Pool is held at genesis by the Foundation board of AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd. It is not itself subject to a pool-level vesting schedule, is not held in the Foundation Treasury, and its disbursements are not routed through the Foundation Treasury. The Foundation board issues grants from the pool at its discretion over time.

Grants from the Community Pool fund community programmes, developer bounties, integration partnerships, gas-credit programmes, airdrop distributions, and community incentives of any form the protocol roadmap requires. Grants are provided as AERX tokens directly to recipients; they are not pre-vested before being provided.

Each grant is subject to the following per-grant vesting terms from the date the grant is provided to the recipient:

• 3-month lock from the grant date during which the granted AERX is not transferable by the recipient.
• 12-month linear vesting following the lock, during which the granted AERX becomes available to the recipient on a pro-rata monthly basis.
• Full vesting fifteen months after the grant date.

Exception: grants designated by the Foundation board as gas-fee programmes — grants made specifically to fund recipient gas consumption on the AEREDIUM Blockchain — are immediately usable by the recipient to pay gas. These grants are not subject to the 3-month lock or 12-month vesting described above; they are provided in a form that permits immediate consumption against gas fees. Gas-fee programme grants are recorded on-chain under a distinct grant contract type to preserve the category. The gas-fee grant contract type is enforced at the smart-contract level: tokens issued under it can only be transferred to the AEREDIUM gas-payment path. The recipient cannot transfer the balance to another wallet, sell it on an exchange, or convert it to an unrestricted AERX balance. The designation is therefore a property of the contract at issuance, not a label the Foundation board can subsequently apply or reverse. An ordinary grant, once issued under the standard vesting contract, cannot be re-classified as a gas-fee grant.

A 20,000,000 AERX Airdrop is pre-allocated from the Community Pool to identified recipients at TGE. The Airdrop is structured as follows:

• 2,000,000 AERX (10% of the Airdrop) is immediately usable at TGE.
• 18,000,000 AERX (90% of the Airdrop) follows the standard per-grant terms: 3-month lock from TGE, then 12-month linear vesting, fully vested at month 15.

All Community Pool disbursements are executed on-chain. AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd publishes quarterly Community Pool Reports detailing grants issued, recipient categories, grant contract types (standard vesting vs. gas-fee programme), and pool balances on the same cadence as the Foundation Treasury Report.

KIMA Community Conversion (4.2% / 42M AERX)

Following AEREDIUM's partnership with the KIMA Foundation, holders of KIMA tokens are entitled to convert their holdings into AERX at a fixed conversion ratio of five KIMA per one AERX (5:1), up to the 42,000,000 AERX allocation cap. This conversion represents a complete migration of the KIMA community into the AEREDIUM ecosystem. Converted AERX is subject to the same vesting discipline as Founder allocations: twelve-month cliff followed by thirty-six-month linear vesting, with the cliff commencing at TGE for conversions executed on or before TGE and at the conversion date for conversions executed after TGE. This equivalence is deliberate — it reflects long-term alignment rather than a liquidity event and removes any basis for characterising the conversion as a distribution for investment purposes.

The KIMA community can convert their tokens only through the StablePro Wallet (AEREDIUM's own wallet), where the 5:1 swap mechanism is being programmed. The swap opens on 1 June 2026 and closes on 30 June 2026. After that date, KIMA tokens can no longer be converted. All KIMA tokens collected by AEREDIUM during the swap will be burned. From 1 July 2026, the KIMA token will be delisted and will no longer be available or tradable on any venue.

Public Liquidity (4.0% / 40M AERX)

Of the 40,000,000 AERX allocation, 20,000,000 AERX is unlocked at TGE solely to provide market liquidity on centralised and decentralised exchanges. The remaining 20,000,000 AERX is vested linearly over the six months following TGE and released for the same liquidity purpose. These tokens are not distributed to any holder — they are deployed as liquidity pairs (AERX/USDC, AERX/ETH, etc.) to enable two-sided price discovery. Liquidity provision is executed through bonded liquidity contracts that prevent AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd from withdrawing these tokens for any purpose other than reconstituting liquidity on alternative venues.

Staking Incentive Pool (10.0% / 100M AERX)

The Staking Incentive Pool is allocated at genesis to the non-custodial Staking Contract. It funds a time-bounded bootstrap programme under which AERX holders who stake into the contract receive fixed-rate rewards until the pool is exhausted. The pool is not held by AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd and cannot be redirected by any party, including the Foundation board; it is programmed to pay out only as staking rewards under the deterministic rules set out in Section 8.

Emission rate: 2% annualised on the total AERX actively staked at any given time. Emissions apply only to actively staked tokens; unstaked AERX accrues nothing from this pool. Pool lifetime is therefore inversely proportional to aggregate staking participation. Under steady participation of 250M AERX staked (25% of total supply), the pool lasts approximately 20 years; under 500M staked, approximately 10 years. When the pool reaches zero, the fixed-rate emission stops; the variable fee-based reward component continues for as long as the Staking Contract remains in operation.

The Staking Incentive Pool cannot be topped up. The 100M allocation is the total amount the programme will ever emit. This is a protocol invariant.

5. Fee Mechanics

Every use of the AEREDIUM Blockchain consumes network resources measured in gas. Users pay for this gas in AERX. Gas fees are the sole mechanism by which the AEREDIUM Blockchain is paid for the work it performs.

5.1 Gas Fees

Each transaction specifies a gas limit (the maximum work units it may consume) and a gas price (the AERX payable per unit of gas). The fee charged is gas_used × gas_price, deducted from the sender's balance at block finalisation. Gas accounting is encoded in the protocol binary and is identical across all validators.

All network operations are priced in gas and paid for in AERX: transaction inclusion, smart contract execution, state reads and writes, and any on-chain service invoked by a contract. There are no separate fee categories and no protocol-level fees outside gas.

5.2 Fee Destination

Gas fees are protocol-enforced and routed deterministically by the consensus layer. No fee flows through AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd intermediation. No fee is distributed to passive AERX holders. No fee is characterised as yield, dividend, or revenue share on the basis of token ownership.

Gas fees collected at block finalisation are routed to the Fee Router contract, which applies a protocol-defined split:

• Up to 2% annualised of the total AERX actively staked in the Staking Contract is directed to the Staking Contract to be distributed as the variable component of staking rewards (see Section 8). The exact amount directed per period is computed as the lesser of (a) the 2%-annualised target for that period and (b) the gas fees available for that period.
• All gas fees in excess of the amount directed to the Staking Contract are routed to the Foundation Treasury.

In periods when aggregate gas fees are below the 2%-annualised target, all available fees are directed to the Staking Contract and the Foundation Treasury receives no fee inflow. In periods when aggregate gas fees meet or exceed the target, the Staking Contract receives the target amount and the Foundation Treasury receives the remainder. Routing executes automatically at block finalisation and is not subject to discretion by any party, including AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd.

5.3 Treatment of AERX Ownership

The Protocol Does Not:

• Pay yield, dividend, or revenue share to passive AERX holders on the basis of AERX ownership alone
• Redistribute fees to AERX holders who have not actively staked their tokens under the Staking Incentive Program described in Section 8
• Create any entitlement for passive holders to fee revenue, Foundation Treasury assets, Community Pool assets, or Staking Incentive Pool assets
• Treat passive AERX ownership as a basis for economic distribution of any kind

Passive AERX holders benefit from the AEREDIUM Blockchain only by using it. Passive ownership confers no yield, dividend, fee share, or economic distribution of any kind.

The Staking Incentive Program described in Section 8 is a distinct, time-bounded bootstrap mechanism. It is not a yield product. It is available only to holders who actively stake their AERX under the program's lock and forfeiture terms, requires ongoing commitment through the 3-month lock period, and will terminate when the 100M Staking Incentive Pool is exhausted. Rewards from the program are not guaranteed as to quantum: the fixed 2% annualised component ceases when the pool is depleted, and the variable fee-based component floats with network activity and is capped at 2% annualised per staker. The program is described in this document as a participation incentive, not as an investment return.

Because AERX is the required unit of payment for gas, its secondary-market price is anticipated to correlate with demand for AEREDIUM Blockchain usage. As on-chain activity grows, demand for the AERX required to settle gas fees grows with it; as activity contracts, that demand contracts. Price will therefore fluctuate with network demand. This correlation is a characteristic of utility-token markets — not a projection, undertaking, or inducement by AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd, AEREDIUM Digital Ltd, or any affiliate.

6. Treasury, Community Pool, and Staking Incentive Pool Framework

6.1 On-Chain Pool Structure

The AEREDIUM Blockchain maintains three protocol-defined on-chain pools:

• The Foundation Treasury, which receives the Foundation Treasury allocation (100M AERX; 60M unlocked at TGE and 40M released on a 12-month-lock plus 24-month-linear schedule), the Strategic Reserve (50M AERX; 5M unlocked at TGE and 45M released linearly over 10 months), and any gas fees collected in excess of the 2% staker fee-reward target described in Section 5.2.
• The Community Pool, which holds the Community allocation (288M AERX) at genesis. The Foundation board of AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd issues grants from the pool at its discretion. The pool is not itself subject to a pool-level vesting schedule; per-grant vesting is applied when each grant is provided (see Section 4.2). The Community Pool is not held in, and its disbursements are not routed through, the Foundation Treasury.
• The Staking Incentive Pool, which holds the Staking allocation (100M AERX) at genesis and is locked to the AEREDIUM staking contract under the program terms described in Section 8. The pool emits rewards at 2% annualised on total staked AERX and terminates at exhaustion. The Staking Incentive Pool is not held in, and its balances are not available to, the Foundation Treasury or the Community Pool.

There are no sub-treasuries, no category-routed pools within the Foundation Treasury, and no parallel reserve wallets beyond the three described above. All published references to 'Operations', 'Ecosystem', or 'Contingency' sub-treasuries in prior versions are superseded by this structure.

6.2 Role of Each Pool

The Foundation Treasury is a protocol-aligned resource pool designed to support network functionality, security, and maintenance. It funds infrastructure costs, security audits, developer support, documentation, regulatory compliance, technology upgrades, and contingency response.

The Community Pool is a protocol-aligned resource pool designed to support community growth and ecosystem participation. It funds community grants, developer bounties, integration partnerships, gas-credit programmes, airdrop distributions, and community incentive programmes.

The Staking Incentive Pool is a time-bounded bootstrap resource designed solely to fund the fixed 2% annualised reward component of the Staking Incentive Program. It exists to seed active participation during the network's bootstrap phase and to transition, via natural depletion, to pure fee-based staker rewards. It is not operated to generate returns, influence AERX token value, or manage economic outcomes for token holders.

None of the three pools is operated for the purpose of generating returns, influencing AERX token value, or managing economic outcomes for AERX holders who are not active participants in the relevant programme. None of the pools' resources are deployed to produce economic outcomes for passive AERX holders.

6.3 Pool Constraints

AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd Does Not:

• Conduct AERX token buybacks from the Foundation Treasury, the Community Pool, or the Staking Incentive Pool
• Engage in price support activities of any kind
• Trade AERX for speculative purposes or market timing
• Manage AERX supply with the intent to influence market price
• Pay dividends, yields, or revenue shares from Foundation Treasury or Community Pool assets to AERX holders who have not actively staked under the Staking Incentive Program
• Distribute Foundation Treasury or Community Pool assets to AERX holders on any basis other than the documented operational and community purposes of those pools
• Withdraw, reassign, or redirect the Staking Incentive Pool for any purpose other than emission to active stakers under the terms encoded in the staking contract at deployment
• Top up the Staking Incentive Pool after its initial allocation at genesis

These constraints are not aspirational policy. They are the operating mandate of all three pools and are reflected in their disbursement policies, in quarterly public reporting, and in the scope of permitted activity published by AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd.

6.4 Administration

The Foundation board of AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd administers the Foundation Treasury and the Community Pool. The Staking Incentive Pool is administered by the staking contract under immutable program terms set at deployment; no party, including the Foundation board, can modify the pool's emission rate, eligibility criteria, or settlement logic after deployment without invoking the protocol upgrade lifecycle described in Section 7.2. Each pool maintains its own on-chain contract and its own disbursement records. All activity is public; all disbursements are on-chain.

Grants from the Community Pool are recorded on-chain under one of two grant contract types: a standard vesting contract (3-month lock + 12-month linear vesting from grant date) for all ordinary grants, and a gas-fee programme contract (immediate usability, restricted to gas-fee payment) for grants specifically designated by the Foundation board as gas-fee programmes. This distinction is enforced by the grant contract type and is visible on-chain for every disbursement.

AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd publishes quarterly reports detailing disbursements, recipient categories, grant contract types for Community Pool disbursements, Staking Incentive Pool emissions and remaining balance, and Foundation Treasury balance. These reports are advisory disclosure only; they do not constitute financial statements and create no entitlement in any party.

7. Protocol Assurance Model

The AEREDIUM Blockchain does not rely on human validators, economic staking mechanisms, or discretionary governance processes. Network integrity is assured through deterministic protocol rules enforced at the consensus layer and verified through TEE attestation.

7.1 Absence of Validator Staking

The AEREDIUM Blockchain contains no validator staking mechanism. Validators are not selected by economic stake, are not rewarded through inflationary issuance, and are not subject to slashing. A validator's authority to participate in consensus derives entirely from its ability to produce a valid TEE attestation certifying that its enclave is executing the canonical AEREDIUM Blockchain binary.

This eliminates an entire category of economic activity that regulators have, in other contexts, scrutinised as potentially investment-contract-like at the consensus layer. Validators are not compensated for block production; their authority derives solely from TEE attestation, and their role is the deterministic execution of the canonical protocol binary rather than the exercise of economic or managerial judgement.

Validator infrastructure is operated directly by AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd, funded from the Foundation Treasury. No AERX disbursements are made to validators as compensation for consensus participation. No third-party node operator class is compensated through Foundation Treasury, Community Pool, or Staking Incentive Pool disbursements or any other protocol mechanism.

The Staking Incentive Program described in Section 8 is a distinct mechanism operating at the token-holder layer, not the consensus layer. Active stakers under that program are holders of AERX who elect to lock their tokens in the staking contract. Stakers perform no consensus role, receive no validator privileges, and have no ability to influence transaction ordering, validation, or settlement. The program is described in this document as a time-bounded bootstrap incentive, not as a validator incentive.

7.2 Protocol Upgrades

Protocol upgrades on AEREDIUM are governed by architecture, not politics. Every validator runs inside a Trusted Execution Environment — a hardware-sealed enclave that cryptographically attests to the exact code executing inside it — and the network is designed to run across any cloud that supports production-grade confidential computing. Upgrades follow a fixed five-phase lifecycle: Develop → Announce → Canary → Transition → Enforce. A new release is first proven on a canary subset of validators, then enters a transition window during which both the old and new code hashes are accepted in parallel, and only after that window closes is the old hash retired. There are no governance tokens, no whale votes, no backroom swaps — the network's list of approved code hashes is public, every validator's TEE independently attests against it, and any participant can verify that the binary running is the binary that was published. This is decentralization that does not depend on counting validators: the mechanism holds identically whether the network has three nodes or three hundred, because trust is anchored in silicon, not in a show of hands.

AERX holders do not vote on protocol upgrades. AERX holders do not vote on Foundation Treasury or Community Pool disbursements. AERX holders do not vote on Foundation decisions. There is no token-weighted voting mechanism, no delegated governance, and no on-chain proposal system. Protocol evolution proceeds through the five-phase upgrade lifecycle set out above — a matter of software release under architectural constraint, not collective action by holders.

This design choice is deliberate. Token-based governance systems have been a focal point of regulatory scrutiny because they create a form of collective investment that depends on the managerial efforts of a governance participant class. By omitting token-based governance, the AEREDIUM Blockchain avoids this category entirely.

7.3 Foundation Role

AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd:

• Maintains and publishes the canonical protocol software
• Coordinates security audits and discloses vulnerabilities
• Supports ecosystem development through grants and documentation
• Administers the Foundation Treasury and the Community Pool through its Foundation board, within the constraints set out in Section 6
• Serves as legal contracting entity for institutional partners

AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd does not control transaction validation. AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd does not control transaction ordering. AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd does not control settlement outcomes. AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd cannot censor transactions, cannot freeze addresses, cannot reverse finalised state, and cannot unilaterally modify the AERX supply within the running chain. Any change to consensus-layer parameters, including the supply cap, can only occur through the protocol upgrade lifecycle described in Section 7.2, which requires every participating validator's TEE to independently attest the new binary against the public list of approved code hashes.

7.4 Protocol-Enforced Constraints

The following constraints are enforced at the consensus layer and hold for the running binary. Any change to these constraints requires a new canonical binary to be released and successfully complete the protocol upgrade lifecycle described in Section 7.2:

• Maximum supply of 1,000,000,000 AERX
• Gas fee routing through the Fee Router to the staking contract (up to the 2% annualised per-staker cap) and the Foundation Treasury (excess) at block finalisation
• Vesting schedules for Founder, Contributor, Private Sale, KIMA Conversion, Foundation Treasury, Strategic Reserve, and Public Liquidity allocations
• Community Pool structural separation from the Foundation Treasury, and the per-grant 3-month lock + 12-month linear vesting applied to every grant issued from the Community Pool, with the defined exception for grants designated as gas-fee programmes (immediately usable, restricted to gas-fee payment)
• Staking Incentive Pool emission rate (2% annualised on total staked AERX), the 2% annualised per-staker cap on variable fee-based rewards, the 3-month lock-up from each stake deposit, and the forfeiture of all accrued rewards upon early unstake
• TEE attestation requirement for validator participation

8. Staking Incentive Program

The Staking Incentive Program (SIP) is a time-bounded bootstrap mechanism designed to seed active participation during the AEREDIUM network's launch phase and to transition the network, via natural pool depletion, to purely fee-driven staker rewards. It is not a yield product, not a guaranteed return, and not an investment contract. It is presented in this document as a participation incentive available to AERX holders who elect to lock their tokens in the staking contract under the terms set out below.

8.1 Program Parameters

Total allocation: 100,000,000 AERX held in the Staking Incentive Pool at genesis. The pool is locked to the staking contract; no party may withdraw, reassign, or top up the pool.

Program duration: Continues until the 100,000,000 AERX Staking Incentive Pool is exhausted. On exhaustion, the fixed reward component ends permanently and staker rewards consist solely of the variable fee-based component described below.

Target reward: Up to 4% annualised on the staker's locked AERX, composed of two components: a fixed 2% annualised component emitted from the Staking Incentive Pool, and a variable component drawn from gas fees and capped at 2% annualised per staker. Neither component is guaranteed in absolute terms; the pool component ends with pool exhaustion, and the fee component floats with network activity and with total AERX staked.

Lock-up: 3 months (90 days) from each stake deposit. Any additional deposit to the same stake resets the lock on the full stake to a new 90-day period from the date of the latest deposit. This is a deliberate anti-gaming measure.

Early-exit forfeiture: If a staker unstakes before the 90-day lock has elapsed on their current stake, the staker receives back their principal only and forfeits the entirety of accrued rewards on that position. Forfeited pool-emission rewards return to the Staking Incentive Pool; forfeited fee-based rewards re-enter the fee-distribution cycle for the remaining stakers.

Custody: Non-custodial. Stakers retain on-chain ownership of their staked AERX at all times; the staking contract holds the position under an immutable rule set and cannot be directed by any administrator to release, seize, or redirect staked funds.

8.2 Reward Mechanics

Rewards accrue continuously (per block) in proportion to each staker's share of total AERX actively staked at that moment. There are no epoch boundaries, snapshot windows, or weekly claim periods that could be gamed by timing deposits.

Fixed component:

• The staking contract emits rewards from the Staking Incentive Pool at a fixed rate of 2% annualised on the total AERX actively staked at any given time. Emission applies only to actively staked tokens; passive AERX ownership earns no pool emission.
• Emission is distributed pro rata across all active stakers by stake size.
• When the Staking Incentive Pool is exhausted, pool emission ceases and cannot be restarted.

Variable fee component:

• At each block finalisation, the Fee Router computes a period-scaled target equal to 2% annualised on the total AERX actively staked in the staking contract. Up to that target is routed from collected gas fees to the staking contract and distributed pro rata to active stakers.
• Any fees collected in excess of the period-scaled 2% staker target are routed to the Foundation Treasury at the same block finalisation.
• If collected fees during a period are below the target, all collected fees in that period are routed to the staking contract and the realised fee-based reward floats below 2% annualised. No top-up or guarantee applies.
• The maximum fee-based reward per staker is therefore 2% annualised on their staked AERX; the minimum is 0%. Total program APY for a staker is therefore bounded between 0% (after pool exhaustion, in a period of zero gas fees) and 4% (during the program, in a period of fees exceeding the 2% staker target).

8.3 Participation Terms

• The Staking Incentive Program is open to any AERX holder. No accredited-investor, KYC, or jurisdictional gating is imposed by the staking contract itself; users are responsible for determining whether participation is consistent with their local law.
• Participation is purely elective. No AERX holder is required to stake in order to hold AERX, transfer AERX, use AERX for gas payments, or interact with the AEREDIUM Blockchain in any other capacity.
• No staker receives any consensus role, validator privilege, or governance vote by virtue of staking. The AEREDIUM Blockchain's consensus is TEE-attested (Section 7.1); staker participation is strictly at the token-holder layer and does not affect transaction ordering, validation, or settlement.
• Rewards are settled in AERX and are tradable, transferable, or re-stakable at the staker's election after the 3-month lock period has elapsed on the relevant position.

8.4 Programme Termination

The Staking Incentive Pool is a one-time 100,000,000 AERX allocation. When the pool reaches zero, the fixed reward component ends permanently and the pool cannot be replenished under the immutable program terms. From that point forward, stakers who continue to participate earn only the variable fee-based component (up to 2% annualised per staker, floating below in periods of low fee generation).

This termination is deliberate. The program is designed to bootstrap network participation during the launch phase and, through natural depletion, transition staker rewards to a purely fee-driven model. Pool exhaustion is a disclosed feature of the program's economic design, not a risk to be mitigated.

8.5 Smart Contract Properties

• The staking contract is deployed at genesis as the immutable core of the program. Critical parameters — the 2% pool emission rate, the 2% staker fee-reward cap, the 3-month lock period, the forfeiture rule, and the Staking Incentive Pool balance — are fixed at deployment and cannot be modified by any administrator.
• Any change to these parameters would require deployment of a replacement staking contract through the protocol upgrade lifecycle described in Section 7.2, with the existing contract continuing to honour its terms for existing stakers during the transition window.
• The staking contract is non-custodial; stakers retain on-chain ownership of their locked AERX. The contract cannot transfer staked AERX to any address other than the original staker (on unstake) or the designated reward source (on reward settlement).
• The contract publishes real-time metrics — total staked, pool remaining, projected program lifetime at current staking levels, and realised per-staker reward rates — through public view functions. These are readable by any participant and by any third-party dashboard.

9. Circulating Supply Schedule

The circulating supply of AERX at any point is the sum of two components: (i) a deterministic component driven by the genesis vesting contracts for all allocations other than ordinary Community Pool grants and Staking Incentive Pool emissions, and (ii) a non-deterministic component driven by the Foundation board's issuance of grants from the Community Pool and by the level of staking participation in the Staking Incentive Program. The pace of the non-deterministic components is a matter of protocol administration and voluntary participation, not a protocol-enforced schedule.

9.1 Deterministic Component (632,000,000 AERX)

The following table illustrates the deterministic portion of circulating supply. It covers all allocations whose vesting schedules are fixed at genesis: Founders, Contributors, Private Sale, KIMA Conversion, Foundation Treasury, Strategic Reserve, Public Liquidity, and the 20,000,000 AERX Airdrop pre-allocated from the Community Pool. These allocations together total 632,000,000 AERX and reach full vesting at Month 48.

Key observations on the deterministic component:

• At TGE (Month 0) the deterministic circulating supply is 100,000,000 AERX (10.00%): Foundation Treasury 60M + Public Liquidity 20M + Strategic Reserve 5M + Private Sale 13M + Community Airdrop 2M.
• During months 1–12, deterministic circulation grows through the continuous vesting of the Private Sale balance (3-month cliff, then linear to full at M6), Public Liquidity (fully vested at M6), the Strategic Reserve (fully vested at M10), and the Airdrop (fully vested at M15). Founders, Contributors, KIMA, and the Foundation Treasury 40M tranche remain in cliff or lock during this window.
• From month 13, Founder (4.17M/mo), Contributor (2.78M/mo), KIMA (1.17M/mo), and the Foundation Treasury 40M tranche (~1.67M/mo) begin vesting.
• At Month 6, the Private Sale is fully vested. At Month 36, the Foundation Treasury is fully vested. At Month 48, Founders, Contributors, and KIMA are fully vested. From Month 48 onward the deterministic component is static at 632,000,000 AERX (63.20% of the 1B hard cap).

9.2 Community Pool Grants (up to 268,000,000 AERX)

The 268,000,000 AERX non-Airdrop portion of the Community Pool is not subject to a pool-level vesting schedule. It enters circulation through grants issued by the Foundation board at its discretion, with two protocol-recognised grant contract types:

• Standard grants — each grant is subject to a 3-month lock from the grant date followed by 12-month linear vesting, reaching full vesting fifteen months after the grant date.
• Gas-fee programme grants — each grant is immediately usable by the recipient to pay gas fees on the AEREDIUM Blockchain, with no lock and no vesting.

The pace at which the Community Pool enters circulation therefore depends on the Foundation board's grant-issuance cadence and the mix of standard and gas-fee programme grants issued. Because this pace is a matter of administration rather than a protocol-enforced schedule, no deterministic trajectory is set out here for the 268M non-Airdrop portion. As indicative, non-binding guidance for institutional buyers and listing venues modelling full-dilution horizons, the Foundation board currently intends the 268,000,000 AERX non-Airdrop portion of the Community Pool to be issued as grants over approximately 48–60 months from TGE, at a pace responsive to ecosystem demand. This is a stated intent, not a protocol commitment; actual issuance will vary with grant applications received and network needs. Quarterly Community Pool Reports published by AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd disclose grants issued during each reporting period, with contract type and remaining pool balance.

9.3 Staking Incentive Pool Emissions (up to 100,000,000 AERX)

The 100,000,000 AERX Staking Incentive Pool emits rewards at 2% annualised on the total AERX actively staked in the staking contract. Emissions enter circulation as they are earned by stakers whose positions have passed the 3-month lock and as those stakers claim or unstake their positions. The pace of pool emission depends on the level of staking participation:

• At a steady-state total-staked figure of 100M AERX, the pool emits at approximately 2M AERX per year and supports the program for approximately 50 years.
• At a steady-state total-staked figure of 250M AERX, the pool emits at approximately 5M AERX per year and supports the program for approximately 20 years.
• At a steady-state total-staked figure of 500M AERX, the pool emits at approximately 10M AERX per year and supports the program for approximately 10 years.

Because staking participation is voluntary and varies over time, the realised pool-lifetime is a function of actual staker behaviour, not a fixed schedule. Quarterly reports published by AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd disclose total AERX staked, pool emissions during the period, and the Staking Incentive Pool remaining balance.

Total circulating supply reaches the 1,000,000,000 AERX hard cap when (i) the deterministic component has fully vested (Month 48); (ii) every standard Community Pool grant issued has passed its 15-month vesting window; (iii) all 268,000,000 AERX of the non-Airdrop portion of the Community Pool has been issued as grants; and (iv) all 100,000,000 AERX of the Staking Incentive Pool has been emitted to stakers and those emissions have cleared their respective 3-month locks. Conditions (i) and the 3-month locks in (iv) are bounded by protocol rules; conditions (ii), (iii), and the pace of (iv) are functions of Foundation administration and voluntary participation.

10. Positioning Statement

AERX is a utility token required to access and operate within the AEREDIUM Blockchain. The AEREDIUM Blockchain operates through deterministic, TEE-attested execution without reliance on validators as economic actors, staking for consensus, or discretionary governance. Network fees are programmatically split between the staking contract (up to a 2% annualised per-staker cap, as part of a time-bounded Staking Incentive Program) and the Foundation Treasury (excess). Community and ecosystem programmes are funded from a separate Community Pool. AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd acts as the steward of the ecosystem; it does not manage the token for investment purposes or price outcomes, and the Staking Incentive Program is disclosed as a time-bounded participation incentive rather than a guaranteed yield.

This positioning is not marketing language. It is the accurate technical and legal description of how the AEREDIUM Blockchain operates. Every element of this statement is backed by a corresponding protocol-layer mechanism or Foundation constraint documented in the preceding sections of this document.

11. Risk Factors

Participation in the AEREDIUM Blockchain involves significant risk. The following factors are not exhaustive but represent material considerations for any participant.

Technical Risk

Blockchain protocols are complex software systems. The AEREDIUM Blockchain's assurance model is materially dependent on the continued security and availability of the Trusted Execution Environment technologies on which its validators operate. A hardware-layer vulnerability, a flaw in the attestation protocol, a compromise of the attestation verification chain, a revocation of attestation keys by a TEE provider, or the discontinuation of a TEE product line could each, individually or in combination, degrade the security guarantees of the network. Operating across multiple independent TEE platforms diversifies but does not eliminate this exposure. Vulnerabilities in consensus logic, cryptographic libraries (including Ed25519 USIG key material and the AEGISKey threshold-signing scheme), or enclave attestation could likewise compromise network integrity. AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd maintains an audit and vulnerability-disclosure programme but does not warrant against technical failure and has no capacity to reverse losses arising from a successful exploit.

Regulatory Risk

The regulatory treatment of blockchain protocols and digital tokens is evolving across jurisdictions. Future regulation may restrict the use of AERX, the operation of AEREDIUM Blockchain infrastructure, or the permissible scope of AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd activities. Holders and users are responsible for understanding and complying with applicable regulation in their jurisdiction.

Market Risk

AERX trades on secondary markets. Market prices are determined by supply and demand dynamics that AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd does not and cannot control. AERX may trade at any price, including prices substantially below any level that a participant may have paid or anticipated, and may at any time become illiquid. AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd provides no price support and no undertaking with respect to market value.

Operational Risk

The AEREDIUM Blockchain depends on continued operation of validator infrastructure, confidential-computing platforms, and supporting services. Disruption to these dependencies could impair network availability. AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd operates some initial infrastructure but has no obligation to indefinitely maintain network services at any specified level.

Staking Incentive Program Risk

The Staking Incentive Program described in Section 8 is a time-bounded bootstrap mechanism with inherent risk to participants. The 100,000,000 AERX Staking Incentive Pool will be exhausted through ongoing emissions at an unpredictable date determined by actual staking participation; on exhaustion, the fixed reward component ends permanently and is not replaced. The variable fee-based component is capped at 2% annualised per staker and may be materially lower — including zero — in periods of low network activity. Early unstake results in full forfeiture of accrued rewards on the relevant position. The 3-month lock limits a staker's ability to respond to market conditions. Smart-contract vulnerabilities in the staking contract could impair recovery of staked principal in extreme cases. Participation is elective; each participant is responsible for evaluating whether the program is appropriate for them under their local law and personal circumstances.

Regulatory Classification Risk (Staking)

Participation in staking programmes has been subject to scrutiny by regulators in various jurisdictions, including in certain cases where staking arrangements have been characterised as investment contracts or unregistered securities. The Staking Incentive Program is described in this document as a participation incentive, not as a yield product; rewards are not guaranteed as to quantum, the program is time-bounded by pool depletion, and rewards are paid only to active stakers who accept the lock and forfeiture terms. Notwithstanding this framing, future regulatory action may impose restrictions on the program, on AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd's ability to operate the program, or on holder ability to participate. Holders and prospective stakers are responsible for evaluating the legal treatment of staking in their jurisdiction before participating.

Jurisdictional Risk

AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd is established in the Cayman Islands. AEREDIUM Digital Ltd is incorporated in the British Virgin Islands. The AEREDIUM Blockchain is accessed globally. Participants from jurisdictions with restrictive digital-asset regulation may face legal constraints on use of the AEREDIUM Blockchain or holding of AERX.

12. Appendix — Document Governance

Amendment Process

This document is a descriptive record of the AEREDIUM Blockchain's economic design. Substantive amendments to economic parameters (allocations, fee routing, pool rules) require deployment of a new canonical protocol binary through the protocol upgrade lifecycle described in Section 7.2. That lifecycle — Develop → Announce → Canary → Transition → Enforce — requires the new binary to be proven on a canary subset of validators, accepted in parallel with the existing binary during a transition window, and independently attested by every validator's TEE against the public list of approved code hashes before the old hash is retired. Editorial amendments (clarifications, corrections, formatting) may be published by AEREDIUM Foundation Ltd with changelog disclosure.