Staking mechanics

4.6 Staking rail

The Vision Paper publishes the staking allocation and the tier table (lock period, weight, indicative APR range). This section describes the mechanism.

Tier structure

A user who stakes INT chooses a lock period from a fixed set of tiers. Each tier carries a relative weight. Rewards accrue against the stake at a rate proportional to that weight, drawn from the staking pool defined in the Vision Paper's allocation.

The tier table is part of the published Vision Paper. The exact APR a tier yields at any moment is a function of pool_apr × tier_weight, where pool_apr itself is a function of annual_staking_pool / total_staked_supply. As the network's staked supply grows, the per-stake APR compresses; this is expected behaviour and frames the indicative APRs in the Vision Paper as weights rather than fixed promises.

Accrual

Rewards accrue continuously and can be claimed at any time while the principal stays locked. Principal becomes withdrawable after the lock period expires. This split between reward-claim and principal-unlock is what makes long locks economically rational: a 90-day staker gets a higher weight while their reward flow remains liquid.

Early-unlock behaviour

A staker can request early unlock before the lock expires. Early-unlock terms are policy and are governed under the operational controls in 4.8. The terms are designed to absorb future-volatility scenarios; a staker initiating an early unlock will see the applicable terms in the unlock transaction preview.

4.7 Launch timing

Staking activates one week after the Token Generation Event so that the initial price-discovery window completes before the demand side activates. This is published in the Vision Paper.

4.8 Operational controls

The staking program uses user-controlled custody: the user's INT remains in their wallet or in an associated stake account controlled by their key.

Reward distributions and tier-table parameter changes are governed under the treasury controls described in 4.9. Changes follow the same multisig + timelock cadence as buy-back-and-burn execution, with announcement preceding the timelock window.