Each credit is $1 of prepaid inference, backed one for one by USDC in a public reserve.

Backed by USDC. Credits are minted only when USDC arrives in the credit reserve: your top-up (a USDC deposit, or a card payment once it has cleared) or the USDC the protocol lock earns, for $XINF holders ($XINF is paired with USDC, so the lock is paid in USDC). The reserve always holds at least the credit supply.
Non-transferable. Credits are recorded as a non-transferable token on Solana (1 credit = $1). They cannot be sent, sold or cashed out; they are spent on models.
Metered live, settled hourly. Your balance updates on every request. Settled usage is burned in hourly batches, each tied to the head of our hash-chained usage log.
The burn split. When credits burn, the USDC behind them pays the inference cost, then your own buyback ($XINF or your token, out of the margin). What is left of our margin: 50% goes to $XAVA stakers in USDC and 50% buys $XINF into the protocol lock, locked forever. No team share. An affiliate's cut (10% of margin in USDC, or 20% as credits) comes out of the $XINF half.
Holder credits. $XINF holders earn credits from the protocol lock's earnings each hour if their average balance over the hour is at least 1,337 $XINF; eligible wallets share the pool pro rata by that time-weighted balance. Top-up credits need no $XINF: anyone can buy them.
Claim within 30 days. Holder credits not claimed within 30 days of their weekly list are burned; with no inference cost, their full USDC goes 50% to $XAVA stakers and 50% to $XINF buybacks.
Expiry. Earned and promotional credits expire after 365 days unused; credits you buy don't expire. By default this covers claimed holder credits, affiliate credits and promotional credits (CREDIT_EXPIRY_SOURCES = holder_claim,affiliate,promo; CREDIT_EXPIRY_DAYS = 365). Purchased credits never expire (the credits program exempts them); the per-source switch only narrows the expiry further. Every arrival of credits is a lot with its date; Requests spend your expiring credits first, oldest first, so they rarely go unused; credits you buy are used after them. Within each group the oldest lot goes first, and a refund takes back the newest lot first. What is left of an expiring lot after 365 days is burned, and its full USDC goes through the same 50% / 50% split. Your dashboard shows "$X expires on <date>" 30, 7 and 1 days before. Expiry runs as one published batch per UTC day, listed with the other burns on the reserves page; its canonical text is at /api/credits/burns/n:<day ms>.txt with its SHA-256 in the x-sha256 header.
This week's deals. Promotions add an extra price cut on some models for a week, for $XAVA stakers only (an account with a linked Avalaunch staking wallet holding stake; a new stake counts within about 10 to 15 minutes), paid out of our margin and never larger than it.
Proof. Credit supply, reserve USDC and every burn batch with its hash are on the reserves section of the proof page. Until the credits program is live these show dashes; the burn batches are published as dry runs.
Programs. The credits program is our own small open-source Solana program, independently audited before mainnet. The protocol lock runs no code of ours: it is a sealed Squads v4 vault that no key can govern, whose only way out is USDC to the credit reserve. Nothing runs on mainnet without the owner's approval.

Credits & reserves