Rayls tokenomics: A united TradFi-DeFi economy

Rayls is a blockchain for banks and financial institutions, uniting traditional finance with DeFi to bring $100T in liquidity (1) and 6 billion users (2) on-chain.

The native $RLS token powers the Rayls economy, uniting transaction activity across Rayls’ ecosystem of public and private chains. Transaction fees are pegged to a USD value on the Rayls Public Chain, ensuring gas fee stability, satisfying institutional requirements and accelerating adoption.

The Rayls tokenomics incentivises value to flow from TradFi into DeFi, while sustainably paying institutions, builders, validators, investors and users for their network contributions.

We believe that the two systems (TradFi and DeFi) should continue to co-exist and evolve, but the liquidity and user base should be shared between them in order to create a more efficient and equitable financial system for everyone.

Let’s dive in.

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$RLS Foundations

Rayls will adopt industry standards for $RLS token supply, utility and governance:

• Total / maximum supply: 10 billion, fixed supply
• Symbol: $RLS
• Genesis Network: Ethereum (ERC20) – already minted
• Token utility: Validator staking, gas fees in private chains, and governance
• Governance: Initially Rayls Foundation, in future Rayls Governance DAO
• Allocation:
  
  • Foundation treasury and community (35%)
  • Investors (22%, 4-year vesting)
  • Core team (17%, 4-year vesting)
  • TGE supply (15%)
  • Initial developers (11%, 4-year vesting)

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$RLS token flows

One of the core design principles behind Rayls is that all transaction fees, whether they come from the public chain or private institutional chains, ultimately flow through $RLS, the network's native token. This creates a powerful feedback loop where traditional finance (TradFi) activity directly drives demand and value in the DeFi ecosystem.

By bridging these two worlds, Rayls turns institutional-scale financial activity into a growth engine for the public chain and its community of developers, validators, and DeFi innovators.

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Public chain fees

On the Rayls Public Chain, every user, from global banks to individual developers and retail users, must pay a gas fee to transact. To satisfy institutional requirements of stability and predictability, fees are pegged to USD. Transaction fees are then automatically converted into $RLS.

For every transaction on either Rayls public chain or private chains, 50% of the RLS received by the system is automatically burned. The other non-burned 50% is sent to the Network Security Pool to automatically pay validators for securing the network and support ecosystem development.

The more transaction fees generated on Rayls, on either the public chain or permissioned chains, the more RLS is automatically burned. As supply is fixed at a maximum of 10 billion RLS tokens, this automatic burning mechanism directly links RLS usage with scarcity, creating deflation within the RLS token economy.

The result is straightforward: as public chain activity increases, more $RLS is required to settle fees, steadily building organic demand for $RLS.

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Private chain fees

Transactions fees within Privacy Nodes or across Private Networks are based on usage and must still be paid to the Rayls Foundation in $RLS, creating a direct link between their private network activity and $RLS demand.

This includes transactions that are:

1. Inside their own Privacy Node - for asset issuance, client account transfers and internal workflows
2. Across Private Networks - transacting with other institutions in permissioned networks

If an institution isn’t ready to hold crypto directly, they can pay fiat off-chain to a broker, who then purchases $RLS and pays fees on their behalf. However, this off-chain option comes at a premium, providing a strong incentive for institutions to buy, hold, and use $RLS directly as their transaction volumes grow.

The $RLS paid for transaction fees follows the same 50% burn and 50% distribution approach as fees paid in the Rayls Public Chain, resulting in the same deflationary mechanism.

The key takeaway is that as institutional adoption of Privacy Nodes and Private Networks accelerates, so does direct market demand for $RLS.

As such, the public and private chains have different mechanisms for handling fees, but both ultimately converge on demand for $RLS as the central asset.

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Rayls tokenomics flywheel

Rayls transaction fee distribution has been modelled to create a reinforcing flywheel effect that increases demand for the $RLS token and redistributes value from TradFi into DeFi as institutional usage increases across the Rayls ecosystem.

Flywheel mechanics

1. Institutional and user transactions create demand for RLS, as transaction fees must be settled in RLS
2. RLS is therefore purchased on the open market to settle transaction fees
3. The protocol automatically burns 50% of the RLS fees, and allocates the other 50% to the Network Security Pool to compensate validators and support ecosystem development.
4. Increased validator payments deepen liquidity and network performance
5. More usage → more staking → more demand - reinforcing the cycle.

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Private transaction visibility: Proof of Usage (PoU)

To increase ecosystem transparency, Rayls Proof-of-Usage (PoU) is a mechanism that captures private institutional transaction fee value within Rayls Privacy Nodes and Private Networks and post public records to the Rayls Public Chain. This ensures visibility and verifiability of network usage and value across the entire Rayls ecosystem, instilling trust.

Significant transaction fees are already being processed within Rayls private chains. To see this for yourself, check out the live, public PoU dashboard: Rayls Token (RLS) Payments Dashboard. The dashboard captures payments performed on-chain by institutions using the private chains and in the future it will also show live usage data (e.g. numbers of transaction), which will be sent directly from private nodes to the Rayls public chain, increasing the transparency even further.

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Validators

Rayls Validators secure the Rayls ecosystem by validating transactions and a variety of zero knowledge proofs, ensuring data integrity and reducing counterparty risk. Rayls operates a permissioned validator set, initially comprised of thoroughly vetted, identity-verified and globally distributed financial institutions.

Validators must stake $RLS to participate in the security of the Rayls ecosystem. In return for their work, Validators receive payment in $RLS, with a slashing mechanism to enforce honest behaviour.

Retail users can also be paid in $RLS for securing the network by delegating their stake to permissioned validators. As the network evolves, we plan to further expand the validator pool to become increasingly decentralised and accessible for all users.

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Summary

Rayls tokenomics has been designed to align incentives for all stakeholders in the immediate, medium and long term. Our aim is to build a trustworthy, economically secure and sustainable token economy that lays the foundation for the future of finance.

Each stage in the flow increases market demand for $RLS while locking up or decreasing the fixed supply. As institutions onboard and scale up their operations in both Rayls public and private chains, the tokenomics flywheel drives increasing demand and utility for the $RLS token, deepening the economic security of the Rayls ecosystem and creating value for its users.

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What’s next?

In upcoming posts we will:

1. Walk through the business case and workflows for our top priority use cases
2. Share more about how the Rayls Privacy Node compliantly connects private and public chains, and
3. Dive deep into the differentiated features and technology innovations of our Public Chain

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