The KULA Paper

The public economic spec for the PRANA / KULA economy.

1 · The see-saw compute model

PRANA is an Ethash/Etchash-style EVM chain (core-geth fork), fair-launch, no premine. Beyond block reward and a sealed-at-genesis 2.00% protocol fee, its security budget comes from a useful-work settlement pot split across two lanes that draw from one fixed per-epoch pot, pro-rata across all verified work-shares:

• HASH lane — ordinary proof-of-work hashing, deliberately thin: enough to anchor the chain's ordering and liveness, not the whole reward. Credited by HashLaneCreditor.
• TASK / AI-work lane — verified, redundantly-recomputed AI and compute jobs, credited only after passing a verification gate (TaskVerificationGate) that guards against fabricated work. Credited by TaskLaneCreditor.

Both lanes write shares into one ledger (UnifiedSharesLedger) that pays the pot pro-rata. Because they share one pot, they see-saw: early on, hash-shares dominate; as real AI-work arrives, task-shares grow and catch up — pulling reward toward useful work with no re-minting and no schedule change. Hashing is the thin security floor; useful work is the intended long-run majority. Attesters who sign off on bad work are slashed; the cheapest way to earn the pot is to do the work.

2 · KULA — the reward / DeFi token

KULA (0x32255D0138f5D645894FA89b5D5B5a68cF9Aa631) is the token the DeFi economy revolves around — the MasterChef/ve pattern, honestly parameterised.

• Emission-only. No premine, no treasury allocation. KULA is minted only by the EmissionScheduler (sole MINTER_ROLE); the deployer holds no minter role. Admin is the DAO Timelock (2-day delay); the deployer renounced admin.
• Supply. ~1,000,000 KULA in year one, decaying −10% per year. That geometric series sums to roughly 10M lifetime; the contract enforces a hard cap of 11M the schedule never reaches. A faucet with a decay, not a tap a person can open wider.
• The split. Each emission is divided 45% miners / 35% LPs / 10% lottery / 10% stakers. An hourly keeper computes what is due, applies the decay, routes each slice to its sink, and defers rather than dumping when all sinks are empty.

KULA is also the CDP collateral (§6) and the asset locked for veKULA boost + votes (§5). The off-chain model that tunes these parameters before they are pinned on-chain lives in kulaswap/kula-farm.mjs.

3 · MWALI — the proof-of-liquidity token

MWALI (0x36C6921e2CECe9DEc7a5AAC42bC6738011F2a1c9) is the liquidity token — KULA is not. It rewards and measures the liquidity that backs KULA.

• Minted only by the gauge. MWALI's sole MINTER_ROLE holder is the LiquidityGauge_KULA_WPRANA, which mints MWALI to liquidity providers of the KULA/WPRANA pair — the Kula-Ring pairing that ties MWALI issuance to real, on-chain liquidity depth.
• Emission-only, no human minter. The deployer holds no MINTER_ROLE; admin is the DAO Timelock; the deployer renounced admin. MWALI cannot be printed by a person.
• Why a separate token. Proof-of-Liquidity (Berachain's idea, adapted) separates the reward for providing liquidity (MWALI) from the reward token itself (KULA), so liquidity is a first-class, measurable, governance-relevant position rather than a side effect.

4 · APIS — the MELEK-Engine fee token

APIS is the fee/utility token of MELEK-Engine, the Hive-Engine-style side-token layer for the MELEK Graphene chain (the "BEE" analogue) — burned to create tokens and pay engine resource fees. You earn it by the WorkerBee mechanic, re-mapped:

1. Forever-lock wMELEK. Wrapped MELEK, once bridged to PRANA, can be forever-locked (no unstake) into the mine.
2. Soulbound APIS-Hash. A forever-lock mints APIS-Hash, a non-transferable mining-power unit — the staked-WORKERBEE equivalent.
3. Mine APIS. APIS-Hash drips APIS forever at your stake-weighted share of emission. It is not a loan: no debt, no liquidation, no cycle risk.

The canonical off-chain mechanics live in kulaswap/apis-workerbee.mjs; the engine layer in engine/README.md.

5 · veKULA — lock for boost + governance

Locking KULA into the VoteEscrow (max lock 4 years) mints veKULA, the Curve-style vote-escrow position, which grants a yield boost (up to ~2.5×), vote weight to steer gauge emissions via the GaugeController, and dividend eligibility for the staker slice. veKULA decays as the lock ages, so voting power reflects ongoing commitment.

6 · CDP — lock KULA, borrow mMELEK

The CDPVault lets a KULA holder lock KULA and borrow a synthetic MelekBorrowNote ("mMELEK") at 50% LTV, priced by a SimplePriceOracle. Two safety choices: (1) mMELEK is not the bridge wMELEK — the CDP mints its own synthetic so the bridge invariant (wMELEK supply == MELEK locked) is never touched by borrowing; (2) MelekBorrowNote's sole minter is the vault, admin is the DAO Timelock, deployer renounced admin.

7 · Sinks — lottery, burn-mine, dividends

Every emission is paired with a sink so the faucet can run indefinitely:

• No-loss lottery (NoLossLotto) — PoolTogether model: principal stays safe, yield plus the 10% KULA slice and a cut of fees funds prizes. Upside without risking capital.
• BurnMine — burn proof-of-liquidity into KULA at a fixed ratio, plus a burn-to-enter raffle variant; a curated BurnMineHub hosts many burn contracts, each minting a curated output; the hub itself never mints.
• Dividends (DividendDistributor, stakers + miners) — stake KULA, receive a pro-rata share of real fee yield.

The design rule is explicit (MintSinkGuard in the contract set): every emission has a paired sink. That is what keeps a reward token from becoming a pure inflation machine.

8 · The bridge

MELEK (Graphene L1) connects to PRANA (EVM) through the GrapheneDepositBridge. MELEK locked on the Graphene side mints wMELEK on PRANA; burning wMELEK releases MELEK. A federated validator set (5 validators, 3-of-5 threshold) authorises mints. The core invariant is wMELEK supply == MELEK locked — exactly why the CDP mints a separate synthetic instead of more wMELEK. The same wrapper pattern extends to wVKBT and wCURE.

9 · The arcade — non-cashable PLAY

The KULA Arcade runs on a non-cashable PLAY token. This is a hard compliance line, not a marketing choice: arcade play is a free, provably-fair, non-cashable play-token surface — never a wager, never a cash-out, geofenced, behind an education layer. Real-money mechanics are out of scope and stay behind counsel. Gambling education (house edge, RTP, −EV, responsible-gambling help on every page) is a separate surface.

10 · Governance & custody posture

• No human minter. KULA, MWALI, and MelekBorrowNote are all emission-only; their minter roles belong to contracts (EmissionScheduler, the gauge, the CDP vault), never to a person.
• DAO Timelock. Admin over the token set is the DAO Timelock with a 2-day delay; the deployer renounced admin on each token.
• Keys. The emission keeper fetches its signing key just-in-time and never writes it to disk. No key material appears in this repo or on any public surface.
• Source, verifiable. The mainnet contracts are being verified on the PRANA block explorer (Blockscout) so any third party can read the exact source behind every address below.

11 · Canonical mainnet addresses (PRANA, chainId 712217)