Long-term, the end state is a fully automated, blackholed ecosystem: a fixed max supply (21,000,000 PIKO, hardcoded in “mother”), regular halvings, and a growing set of apps (Dice and Blackjack for now) whose house edge pulls a portion of circulating PIKO into their bankrolls rather than it sitting idle. That’s the actual mechanic: as issuance slows via halvings, the share retained by game bankrolls becomes a larger fraction of what’s circulating, not from manual buybacks or burns, just the house edge compounding on a fixed-supply asset over time.
And yes, there will be a way for users to buy and sell without having to mine ; Roadmap-wise, the logical next steps in order: grow the distinct miner base (16 currently, need a little more), then launch the trading pool on icpswap, blackhole the core canisters (mother/ledger/dice/blackjack) once mainnet behavior is proven out further, and keep shipping new PIKO-denominated applications so the token has more than the current utility surfaces.
Appreciate it! Once there are enough miners, the plan is to list the pool priced roughly at the same ratio the mining fee currently sets (0.25 ICP fee / 600 PIKO reward ≈ 1 ICP : 2400 PIKO), with as much depth in Piko as I can put together by then, and keep adding more over time as real trading activity grows.
Pricing above the mining-cost ratio would make mining-then-selling an instant guaranteed profit for anyone, so staying at that ratio keeps price anchored to actual production cost.
There is no income specifically allocated to me, and this is by design. I’m not making any money from this right now. My only actual economic upside, if any ever materializes, would come from four sources, just as for any other participant or holder:
If PIKO becomes more widely known/valuable, selling some of what I’ve mined myself.
Winning at Dice or Blackjack, same odds as any other player against the house edge.
Once the ICPSwap pool launches, trading fees earned on whatever liquidity I provide there , same as any other liquidity provider would earn on theirs.
I hold ICP, and PIKO mining permanently burns real ICP (80% of every mining fee, locked and unable to be redirected : icpFeeTargetLocked/cyclesFundRatioLocked are both true in the code). That makes ICP scarcer over time, same mechanic bobdotfun uses, and benefits any ICP holder, not just me specifically.
On burn vs. cycles: only 20% of collected fees go to cycles (funding the canisters’ own compute) using an automatic cycles conversion every 15-minute. The Cycles Minting Canister destroys the ICP it receives and mints cycles in exchange at the ICP/XDR rate. The rest is a real ICP burn sent to rrkah-fqaaa-aaaaa-aaaaq-cai, which is the ICP ledger’s actual designated minting/burning account (verifiable yourself by calling icrc1_minting_account directly on the ICP ledger canister ryjl3-tyaaa-aaaaa-aaaba-cai , it returns that exact principal). Any transfer to that account is processed by the ledger itself as a burn.
So the 20%/80% split isn’t burn vs. no-burn, it’s pure burn (80%, no byproduct) vs. burn-with-a-cycles-byproduct (20%, funds the project’s own infrastructure). Net effect: 100% of every collected mining fee permanently leaves ICP’s circulating supply.
Current totals: 125.55 ICP spent for mining, 100.89 burned, 24.648 converted to cycles, all checkable live via getStats().
Since several of you have been asking directly: I’m listing the ICPSwap pool for PIKO soon, this week. Seeding first ~100,000 PIKO priced at the current mining-cost ratio (1 ICP : 2400 PIKO).
I will post here once it’s live.
One thing that’ll take a bit longer: the logo/token listing on ICPSwap itself. That’s a separate step – getting added to their token list requires a governance proposal (a Motion vote on ICPSwap’s SNS), and one of their requirements is showing steady trading for at least 3 days first. So the pool works fine right now, it just won’t show a logo or appear “officially listed” until that proposal goes through in a few days. Will post once it’s submitted.