Later record
A September 2026 session revisited the risks in section 05 in light of AI tooling, extended the testing programme, and placed the launch window under review.
Purpose
Compare Spearmint's current technical and economic direction against patterns used by top-20 crypto
assets — issuance, burns, governance, distribution, transparency. This was a comparison meeting.
No parameter changes were proposed or ratified.
01 Scope and objectives
- Establish a feature-accurate baseline for SPMTC economics and protocol mechanics.
- Map that baseline against top-20 tokenisation patterns: issuance, burns, governance, distribution, transparency.
- Identify modelling questions, attack surfaces, and metrics to track before any decision forum.
02 Transparency and verifiability
- Public by default. Monetary policy, parameter ranges, halving cadence, and block-target rationale are published rather than described.
- On-chain proofs. Timelock-guarded processes where applicable, and a public proof log carrying signed build hashes and acquisition block ranges.
- Versioned changelog for all economics and protocol notes, with timestamped diffs and stated rationale.
- Signed, reproducible releases, plus telemetry dashboards covering supply, difficulty, pool concentration, and reorg/orphan rates.
03 Current direction (baseline for comparison)
Protocol
- consensus
- Proof of work, SHA-256, Bitcoin Core derived
- block target
- 30 s (1,051,200 blocks/year)
- difficulty
- ADR — aggressive per-block retargeting, to contain short-horizon hash spikes
- finality
- DBF — elevated confirmation depth for high-value settlement
- pools
- ckpool-style transparency, exportable telemetry
Monetary policy
- total supply
- ~210,000,000 SPMTC, fixed
- genesis issuance
- 50 SPMTC block reward
- halving
- ~6-month halvings for ≈5 years, then annual (longevity phase)
- pre-launch
- 8% via provable solo mining; details published in the proof log
- fees
- standard PoW transaction fees to miners; no base-fee burn
04 Comparison highlights
| Dimension | SPMTC | Common pattern | Implication |
|---|---|---|---|
| Consensus | PoW (SHA-256) | PoS prevalent; fee burns (EIP-1559 style) | Avoids usage-linked deflation; relies on hash-based security and a fee market. |
| Supply policy | Fixed cap ~210M; accelerated then annual halvings | Mix of caps and burns; some uncapped with burns | Cap provides scarcity; absence of burns trades elasticity for simplicity and auditability. |
| Block cadence | 30 s target; ADR + DBF | Varies; faster L1s usually PoS | Fast PoW requires careful reorg economics; ADR reduces the exploit window. |
| Distribution | 8% pre-launch solo mining; 92% mining emissions | Escrows, treasuries, large airdrops | Proof log and signed artifacts emphasise verifiability over discretionary unlocks. |
| Fee treatment | Fees to miners; no base-fee burn | Burns widely used (ETH, BNB, AVAX) | No usage-driven supply sink; simpler accounting, miner-only accrual. |
| Governance | Code-driven, signed releases; no token-weighted voting | On-chain governance and treasuries | Minimises governance attack surface; fewer levers for monetary discretion. |
05 Risk and attack surface
- Hash-rate volatility. ADR mitigates it, but extreme step-changes can still create reorg pressure.
- Short-range 51% scenarios. DBF raises the economic cost and the time required; monitoring orphan and reorg metrics is essential.
- Pool centralisation. ckpool transparency aids detection; soft incentives for pool dispersion are worth considering.
- Fee-market thinness. Affects miner revenue during low activity; breakeven should be modelled under conservative fee assumptions.
Suggested mitigations
- Adaptive DBF guidance keyed to observed variance bands.
- Alerting on hash-rate deltas, stale-rate spikes, and miner share concentration.
- Economic modelling for reward and fee sufficiency across difficulty regimes.
06 Measurement and monitoring
Core KPIs
- Blocks per day, orphan rate, average reorg depth, variance bands
- Hash-rate delta at 1h, 6h, 24h; pool Gini and Nakamoto coefficient
- Issuance per epoch, cumulative supply, miner revenue split between fees and subsidy
Dashboards
- Real-time supply and halving countdowns
- Difficulty and ADR response visualisations
- Pool share and centralisation monitors
07 Open questions
To be modelled before any decision is taken.
- Which ADR parameters minimise oscillation while remaining attack-responsive?
- What DBF confirmation thresholds suit each value tier, from retail payments to exchange settlement?
- Where are miner breakeven curves across fee environments and energy costs?
- Which telemetry thresholds should trigger an incident disclosure?
08 Next steps
- Run adversarial simulations for ADR and DBF under volatile hash inputs.
- Publish the initial proof-log structure: hashes, acquisition block ranges, build artifacts.
- Draft the public dashboard schema and data sources.
- Prepare a decision-oriented brief once modelling results are available.
Reminder
This document records a comparison meeting only. It does not enact parameter changes.