> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://whitepaper.silencio.network/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://whitepaper.silencio.network/tokenomics/the-usdslc-token.md).
# The $SLC Token
$SLC is the economic engine of Silencio. Where the previous sections describe a real business, millions of contributors, thousands of languages, paying customers among frontier labs and Fortune 100 companies, this section describes who captures the value: **the token, and the people who hold it.** $SLC is not a points system attached to an app. It is the settlement, reward, and ownership layer of the network itself.
### Demand: every dataset settles through the token
$SLC is the native currency of access to Silencio's data. Enterprises, labs, and researchers license the network's catalogue, off-the-shelf datasets, on-demand collection, transcription and validation, with **$SLC as the backbone of exchange and settlement.** Traditional buyers never need to touch crypto: fiat payments are converted to $SLC in the background, which means **every sale creates token demand regardless of how the customer chooses to pay.** As the data business grows, settlement volume grows with it, structurally, not speculatively.
### Supply: revenue buys the token back, and burns it
The mechanics are precise and conservative by design. **Silencio uses 75% of all platform revenue to buy back $SLC from the open market.** Of total platform revenue, **50% is burned permanently**, removing those tokens from supply forever, **25% is redirected to the Silencio Treasury** to fund long-term operations, grants, and liquidity initiatives, and **25% is retained by the company to fund operations.**
Every revenue stream feeds the engine: data sales of every kind, premium subscriptions, in-app advertising, marketplace purchases, and every future monetization channel the network adds. **Every dollar the ecosystem earns, from any source, strengthens the token.**
The program runs under one safeguard: **buybacks and burns execute as long as the company holds above 1 million USDC in cash reserves**, with everything above that threshold divided per the split. This floor exists so the deflationary engine can never compromise the solvency of the business that powers it. A burn program is only as valuable as the company's ability to sustain it, and this one is built to run **permanently, through every market condition, funded by real revenue rather than promises.**
Beyond the revenue loop, the network burns $SLC through its own mechanics: **unclaimed community tokens after raffle windows close, unstaking fees from early exits, early unlock penalties, and network fees** from in-app and on-chain activity. These burns reduce idle accumulation and reward committed participation, with their parameters subject to review by the Silencio team and any changes announced in advance.
Burns are executed by the BlockSound Foundation on a **monthly schedule, during the first week of each month.** Every buyback and every burn, historical and live, is publicly verifiable: the network's open analytics dashboard lives at and the burner wallet itself can be inspected directly on-chain at . Predictability and transparency are part of the design: **holders never have to wonder whether the engine is running. They can watch it.**
### Rewards: stable pay first, upside on top
Contributors earn **USDC base pay** for accepted work, real, withdrawable value with no volatility exposure. $SLC sits above it as the upside layer: contributions earn entries into **monthly raffles and bounties** that distribute $SLC in proportion to real participation, rewarding the network's most active members with ownership in the system they power. Pay makes the network reliable. **Ownership makes it loyal.**
### Staking: two paths, one network
$SLC holders can stake two ways. **In-app staking** boosts monthly rewards and raffle weight, built for contributors inside the product. **On-chain staking** delivers classic yield for long-term holders outside the app. Both paths lock supply, deepen alignment, and let every profile of holder, contributor or investor, support the network in the way that fits them.
### Access and governance
$SLC increasingly unlocks the ecosystem's premium layer: advanced analytics, deeper historical datasets, in-app benefits, and marketplace advantages. And as the network matures, $SLC becomes its **governance asset**, with holders voting on platform direction, token economics, and data priorities under a progressive decentralization model that hands control to the people who built the value.
### Why value accrues
Put the pieces together and the design is simple to state: **token demand is created by data sales, token supply is reduced by data sales, and token ownership is earned by the people who make data sales possible.** Usage creates revenue, revenue funds buybacks, buybacks fund burns, and burns concentrate the value of everything the network goes on to earn. A growing business tightens the float and widens the holder base at the same time. $SLC holders are not betting on attention. **They hold a claim on the scarcest input in AI, collected by a network only Silencio has.**
### Community Referral Program
To reward grassroots sales efforts, Silencio offers one of the most generous community referral structures in the Web3 data space:
* If a community member introduces a data buyer, and a sale is successfully executed within 3 months of the introduction, the referring member receives 25% of all revenue from that client during the first year.
* No commission is paid from the second year onward
* This applies to sales of any dataset commercialized by Silencio - noise, mobility, venue data, and future expansions
This system empowers Silencians to be not just contributors, but also ecosystem ambassadors and co-sellers, tapping into new data verticals and industry connections.
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