RITUAL at a glance
RITUAL is the native asset of the Ritual network. It pays for the enshrined intelligence compute running AI models, secures the chain through staking, and governs the network's evolution. The initial token supply is 10,000,000,000 RITUAL.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Name | Ritual |
| Ticker | RITUAL |
| Chain | RITUAL (native asset) |
| Chain ID | 784 |
| Contract address, RITUAL chain | None: RITUAL is the native asset |
| Contract address, BNB Smart Chain | 0x256Ea35422b2F36B24aC1D66159Fe69e75918C37 |
| Contract address, Base | 0x256Ea35422b2F36B24aC1D66159Fe69e75918C37 |
| Decimals | 18 |
| Initial supply | 10,000,000,000 RITUAL |
| Maximum supply | None (uncapped) |
| Unlocked at launch | 1,800,000,000 RITUAL (18% of initial supply) |
RITUAL on BNB Smart Chain and Base is the same token, bridged from the RITUAL chain through LayerZero. Bridged tokens are locked on the RITUAL chain, so they do not add to total supply.
Utility
RITUAL has four jobs on the network: securing it through staking, paying the AI executors that run compute, paying for everything that runs onchain, and governing the protocol.
Staking. Validators stake RITUAL to produce and verify blocks, and any holder can delegate RITUAL to a validator instead of running one. Each block's staking reward is credited to the validator that produced it and shared with that validator's delegators. Stake is what makes the chain costly to attack: the more RITUAL staked with honest validators, the harder it is to take over consensus.
AI executors. AI executors are the nodes that run model inference, HTTP calls and other compute for the network, inside trusted execution environments (TEEs). Each executor proves through hardware attestation that it runs approved software. Users prepay compute from a RITUAL balance held onchain, and an executor is paid from that balance when it delivers a result. At launch, executors are admitted through attestation and an approved list.
Fees. RITUAL pays for everything that runs on the network:
- Transactions. Standard gas, paid in RITUAL.
- Agents. Every agent on Ritual pays RITUAL to stay alive.
- AI inference. Priced per model, with prices published onchain.
- HTTP calls. Priced by the size of the request and response.
- Scheduled calls. Prepaid in RITUAL by onchain agents and contracts that run on a schedule.
Governance. As governance moves to stakers, staked RITUAL will be the basis of voting power. Validators will vote with the stake delegated to them, and any delegator will be able to override its validator's vote. Locked tokens carry no vote until they unlock. How governance moves to stakers is covered in the next section.
Governance
At launch, the Foundation and core developers make protocol decisions, and protocol upgrades take effect only when validators choose to run the new software.
Over time, we plan to introduce a public proposal process, where anyone can write a proposal and each gets an open review period before a decision.
Why binding votes come later. Votes work best when they come from the people who secure and use the network. At launch, that group is still forming: validators, AI executors and builders are onboarding, and staking has just begun. Early on, turnout is low, so a small amount of stake could swing a vote.
Moving to staker governance. Stakers take on decisions in three steps. Each step begins when the one before it is working well, so the months below are targets, not deadlines.
- Launch (months 0 to 6). The Foundation and core developers make protocol decisions while a public proposal process is set up.
- Stakers weigh in (months 6 to 12). Stakers vote on major proposals, starting with non-binding signals.
- Stakers decide (month 12 onward). Staker votes become binding, starting with protocol upgrades and network parameters.
Turnout and approval thresholds will be set before staker votes begin.
Admin powers. A new network needs a way to fix problems quickly, so the Foundation holds some admin powers at launch. We will publish what those powers are, use them in the open, and hand them over time to a Security Council and then to stakers.
Allocation
| Category | % of supply | Tokens |
|---|---|---|
| Core Contributors | 29% | 2,900,000,000 |
| Ecosystem Growth + R&D | 25% | 2,500,000,000 |
| Network Participation & Future Incentives | 14% | 1,400,000,000 |
| Labs Investors | 11.3% | 1,130,000,000 |
| Ritual Foundation | 10% | 1,000,000,000 |
| Labs Treasury | 5% | 500,000,000 |
| Frontier AI Grants | 4.7% | 470,000,000 |
| Foundation Private Sale | 1% | 100,000,000 |
Unlocked at launch
At the launch of Ritual Public Mainnet, unlocked tokens will come from three allocations: 12.5% of supply from Ecosystem Growth + R&D, 5% from the Ritual Foundation treasury, and 0.5% from Network Participation & Future Incentives, which will be airdropped to the community at launch. The airdrop is covered in detail further below.
In total, 1,800,000,000 RITUAL (18% of initial supply) is unlocked at launch. Circulating supply counts all unlocked RITUAL: total supply minus tokens that are still locked.
The remaining is locked at launch. All insider tokens are locked for a minimum of one year from the date of mainnet launch. Locked tokens cannot be staked. Staking rewards flow only to unlocked, circulating supply. The final tokens unlock four years after launch.
Token supply changes
Supply changes after launch through two mechanisms.
Issuance. Similar to other PoS-based L1s, the network issues ~5% annualized, subject to empirical block times, in terms of staking rewards initially and is expected to decrease as fees increase over time, paid to validators, AI executors, and their delegators for securing the chain.
Burn. Ritual follows the EIP-1559 fee model. The base fee of every transaction is burned and permanently removed from supply. As usage grows, burned fees offset a larger share of issuance.
There is no maximum supply: total supply is set by issuance and burn over time.
Allocation details
Ecosystem Growth + R&D (25%). Supporting ecosystem, AI research, and development initiatives to facilitate continued growth of the Ritual ecosystem over the long term. 12.5% of total supply is available at launch to bootstrap liquidity and network operations. The remainder unlocks monthly over four years.
Network Participation & Future Incentives (14%). 0.5% of supply is distributed as the community airdrop at launch and is fully unlocked from day one, with no lockup (details below). The remaining 13.5% supports future network programs. It is locked for 15 months and then unlocks monthly through month 48.
Core Contributors (29%). Building enshrined AI infrastructure that supports frontier models onchain takes world-class engineering and research talent, and keeping that talent requires long-term alignment with the network. All contributor tokens are locked for the first year. Remaining tokens vary from 50% unlocks at the one-year mark to 33% unlocks at the one-year mark and the remainder unlocks monthly through month 24 or 36 correspondingly.
Labs Investors (11.3%). Investors who funded Ritual Labs at the genesis of the company, the research and development company building the Ritual network. Locked for the first year. 50% unlocks at the one-year mark and the remainder unlocks monthly through month 24.
Ritual Foundation (10%). The Foundation treasury. Half is available at launch for operations, validator support, and contingency. The locked half unlocks over four years.
Labs Treasury (5%). Long-term development funding for the company, on the same one-year lock as contributors and investors.
Foundation Private Sale (1%). Strategic sale to facilitate bootstrapping the Foundation to grow the team for GTM, product, and community. Locked for the first year as above and linear unlocks through the two year mark.
Frontier AI Grants (4.7%). Our AI research has been accepted to ICLR, ICML, NeurIPS throughout the years and continues to be a central point of Ritual's moat, this allocation is reserved for traditional AI labs and research organizations building on Ritual that we have partnered with over the years. We are primarily focused on non-verifiable evals, test-time compute in autonomous settings, and trust-minimized & private AI. Locked for one year, then unlocking monthly through month 24.
The Ritual Airdrop
50,000,000 RITUAL (0.5% of supply) goes to the people who did verifiable work for the network long before it had a token. We are extra mindful that in the age of commoditized intelligence there is rampant (bot) behavior fueled by LLMs that is not aligned with what is most value accretive to Ritual on a go forward basis. We have accordingly been mindful over the last four years of activity, especially when we were first starting out and the community that supported us for years prior to LLMs taking off.
Infernet node operators. Before Ritual was a chain, Infernet brought AI to smart contracts through a network of lightweight nodes that served inference and compute workloads and delivered results on-chain. Operators who ran those nodes are eligible, weighted by uptime (and purpose!) and workloads served. There were a lot of nodes that did "default/dummy" work that resemble highly botted behavior, which we worked hard to prune or reward minimally.
Frenrug users. Frenrug was the first onchain AI autonomous agent, long before agents or even LLMs became a global phenomenon. It lived in a friend.tech chatroom, where every pitch to it was relayed through multiple LLMs that voted on-chain, with the result aggregated under a verifiable proof and executed by contract. Users who held keys and pitched the agent are eligible subject to the same scrutiny around any botted behavior.
Community. Long-time community members, including those consistently active in the Discord and ambassadors who helped grow it, are eligible. Eligibility is based on sustained participation over time rather than recent activity.
The airdrop rewards contribution rather than activity farming. Eligibility comes from measurable work and sustained participation: uptime, workloads served, on-chain interactions, and community involvement over time. Sybil clusters were removed, and allocations stack across tracks.
Eligible participants will be able to claim directly through a dedicated claim page at launch. Further details on the claim process will be shared in due time.
What comes next
Between now and launch, we will publish exchange and listing announcements, validator onboarding details, and the mainnet launch post.
Follow Ritual Foundation on X and Discord, and read the docs.