ATON is a public blockchain for payments. It is still being built. Its coin is also called ATON. You mine it with an ordinary graphics card, using one memory-hard proof of work. Blocks can be made at the same time, and a GHOSTDAG-style rule puts them into one agreed order. There is a hard cap of one billion ATON, paid to miners through a long emission that slows into a small tail.
Nothing has launched yet. This article is about how it will launch, and what we commit to telling you before the first block exists.
What a fair launch means here
A fair launch is a simple idea. Nobody gets coins before the chain starts. There is no premine, where a team mints coins for itself at block zero. There is no sale, where early buyers get coins for money before anyone can mine.
For ATON that means the coins come out of mining. A block is made, the miner who made it is paid, and that is where new ATON comes from. The supply grows block by block, under the hard cap, along the emission curve.
It also means the site sells nothing. We take no orders and make no offers. If you ever see ATON offered for sale as part of the launch, it is not from us.
The one planned exception
We want to be plain about this. There is one planned exception to the rule that every coin comes from mining: a team allocation.
Two things about it are not decided yet. Its size is not decided. Its vesting, the schedule on which it unlocks over time, is not decided. We are not going to guess at numbers here, because a guessed number has a way of becoming a promise.
What is decided is when you will know. Both the size and the vesting will be published before the first block. Not after launch, not once mining has started. Before.
We say this now, while the numbers are open, so that nobody can later claim it was slipped in. If you are thinking about mining ATON, you will be able to read the allocation and the vesting first, and then decide.
What is fixed and what is still open
It helps to separate what is settled from what is not.
Table: The launch rules, as they stand today
| Rule | Status |
|---|---|
| No premine | Fixed |
| No sale | Fixed |
| Hard cap of one billion ATON | Fixed |
| Mining with an ordinary graphics card, one memory-hard proof of work | Fixed |
| Long emission that slows into a small tail | Fixed in shape, curve not specified yet |
| Team allocation size | Not decided, published before the first block |
| Team allocation vesting | Not decided, published before the first block |
The emission curve deserves one more line. The chain cannot pay a block reward without a curve, so the curve has to be set before the first block is made. Its shape is known: a long emission that slows into a small tail, under the hard cap. The exact numbers are not specified yet. When they are, they will be on the site.
Why publish before, not after
The reason is simple. A fair launch is only fair if the people who show up on day one know the rules on day one.
If we published the team allocation a month after launch, early miners would have been working under rules they could not read. If we published the emission curve late, nobody could tell how much a block would pay next year. Publishing before the first block removes that gap. The rules are set, written down, and then the chain starts.
It also keeps us honest. Once a number is published and the first block is mined under it, we do not get to quietly revise it.
What a fair launch does not promise
A fair launch is about how coins are distributed. It is not a claim about anything else.
- It does not say what ATON is worth, or the predicted worth. We never say that.
- It does not guarantee the project succeeds. The chain is still being built.
- It does not make mining free. A graphics card uses electricity and your time.
- It does not remove the team allocation. It only guarantees you will see its size and vesting before the first block.
If someone tells you a fair launch means something more than this, they are not speaking for us.
What to do now
There is nothing to buy and nothing to send. The useful thing you can do is read what is published and come back when the rest is.
Before the first block, we will publish the size of the team allocation, its vesting, and the emission numbers. Until then, the honest answer to any question about those figures is that they are not decided yet. We would rather tell you that than fill the gap with something we would have to take back.
Shawn Wilson, Founder and CEO
