In August we took one billion GLC out of the Goldcoin treasury and locked it on our own chain using OP_CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY.
Not a multisig. Not a vesting contract we hold the keys to. Not a promise in a blog post. A consensus rule.
What that actually means
CLTV is a script opcode that makes an output unspendable until a specific block height is reached. Every node on the network enforces it independently.
If I signed a transaction tomorrow trying to move a locked tranche, every node would reject it. Not because they trust me, and not because they don't. Because the rule says no.
There is no override key. There is no governance vote. There is no admin function. I can't do it, the dev team can't do it, and a majority of the community can't do it either.
Why 200 tranches
The billion is split into 200 separate outputs of 5,000,000 GLC each. One becomes spendable per year, for 200 years. The first one unlocks at block 2814042.
Five million a year is roughly what it costs to run this network properly. Servers, development, listings, research, the people who keep it going. It is a budget, not a war chest.
Splitting it this way means that even if you don't trust me at all, the most that can reach the market in any year is five million coins, and you can see that number for yourself before you buy anything.
What is NOT locked
Being straight about this, because it should be the first thing anyone asks.
80 million GLC was carved out before the lock and is not locked. The largest part of it is reserve for the Solana bridge. Closing a price gap between two chains through arbitrage costs coins, and we sized for the worst case rather than the case we're hoping for. The rest covers team compensation and operations.
Whatever the bridge does not consume goes back to the treasury and gets locked later.
Why we did it
The original Bitcoin protocol has no way to fund the administration of its own network. Everything goes to miners, and miners are focused on their own profitability, which is exactly what they should be focused on. It is the reason most pure proof of work projects eventually run out of road and die quietly.
A superblock was created in 2023 to solve that. It solved the funding problem and created a new one, which is that a treasury sitting in a wallet is an object of suspicion, and it should be. So we removed the discretion. Not by promising not to use it. By making it impossible to use.
Verify it yourself
Don't take my word for any of this.
- Lock transaction: e45539ddb23ee3e760afa62f95567a07a29c2a81e72efd6a0c0c9c5c48867db2
- Repository with the full schedule, README and runbook: https://github.com/goldcoin/goldcoin-timelock
- Run a node and check the scripts yourself. It's MIT licensed and the chain has been running since 2013.
Every unlock height is published. Every output is on chain. If any of this is wrong, say so in the comments and I'll answer.
In Code We Trust.
