the root token of cyber — the energy of focus.
focus is the value
cyber organizes one quantity: focus (φ*), the collective attention distribution — the fixed point the tri-kernel drives the graph toward. A cyberlink that earns focus is knowledge the network found worth attending to. Focus is the scarce thing, the measured thing, the thing every other mechanism serves.
$CYB is the energy of focus
Moving focus costs work; creating focus is work done. $CYB is that work made fungible — the energy a neuron spends to write a cyberlink, compute, and reach consensus, and the energy it earns for raising the graph's focus. Δφ* is the gradient of the system's free energy, so $CYB is that free energy in transferable form.
supply is a law of the field
Value and computation share one arithmetic: balances are elements of the Goldilocks field, the field nox computes in. So total supply is the field's own order:
p = 2⁶⁴ − 2³² + 1 = 18,446,744,069,414,584,321
The cap is how many elements the field has — arithmetic, not a governance number. (On the bostrom bootloader today this energy circulates as $C.)
genesis
At the first block, $C holders hold 187,416,084,623,451,570 $CYB, ≈ 1% of supply: their snapshot of 281,405,532,467,645, lifted 666×.
emission answers to time alone
Supply at age t is M(t): a function of the clock and nothing else — identical on every node, known in full from genesis. With time as the only input, the schedule is a fixed commitment, predictable in advance and immune to forgery.
Focus enters on the other side. The clock sets how much $CYB exists; focus sets who earns it (see allocation). Supply is a law of time, reward a law of φ* — kept apart.
emission follows the network's own law
cyber is scale-free: degrees follow a power law, focus follows Zipf. The token is issued by the same law its graph obeys — a power law:
M(t) = p · (1 − (1 + t/τ)^(−k)), τ = 0.33 year, k = 0.5
(t in years). A power law is also the one schedule that holds a hot head and a heavy tail at once — an exponential halving shares a single rate between the two and cannot. From one formula, two phases:
- a bootstrap head — about half the supply in the first year (~11% in the first month), spread across the year so price discovers and the first miners (days, weeks, months) are paid, with no single-day flood. The initial rate is finite (k/τ ≈ 152%/yr), not a spike.
- a heavy tail — polynomial, never exponential: still issuing past a century (~4% of supply unissued at 200 years), always under the cap.
Cumulative supply emitted:
1mo |█████ | 10.6%
3mo |███████████ | 24.6%
6mo |█████████████████ | 36.9%
1y |███████████████████████ | 50.2%
2y |█████████████████████████████ | 62.4%
4y |█████████████████████████████████ | 72.4%
8y |█████████████████████████████████████ | 80.1%
16y |███████████████████████████████████████ | 85.8%
32y |█████████████████████████████████████████ | 89.9%
64y |███████████████████████████████████████████ | 92.8%
128y |████████████████████████████████████████████ | 94.9%
Yearly inflation — new supply ÷ circulating supply at year start. Year one is the bootstrap: the 1% genesis fills to half the supply, a one-time ~50× expansion. From year two it cools fast:
2y |████████████████████████████████████████████| 23.8%
3y |██████████████████ | 9.7%
4y |██████████ | 5.6%
5y |███████ | 3.7%
6y |█████ | 2.7%
8y |███ | 1.6%
10y |██ | 1.1%
20y |█ | 0.4%
50y | | 0.1%
Inflation drops below a flat-issuance design (Bittensor sits near 16% for years) by year three, while the heavy tail keeps issuing far longer than any halving.
allocation is focus
Emission says how much; focus says who. Each freshly emitted unit is split by stake-weighted Δφ* — paid for the focus a contribution created, weighted by stake so forging identities buys nothing. This is where focus, kept out of the schedule, does its work: not in printing the money, but in directing it.
see cybernomics for the economic model