GLD protocol documentation
Protocol mechanics, economics, and staking in one continuous reference.
Overview
GLD is a grid-mining protocol built for Arc. Miners commit native USDC to a 25-tile grid. After betting closes, verifiable randomness selects one winning tile. Miners on that tile share USDC payouts and receive GLD according to the round’s reward mode. GLD can be cashed out or locked to earn a share of protocol revenue.
USDC
Used for mining commitments, round winnings, Motherlode payouts, and staking revenue.
GLD
The protocol token. Newly mined GLD enters your in-game rewards balance before you choose to cash out or stake it.
veGLD
A non-transferable lock position backed by escrowed GLD. Its reward weight determines its share of staking revenue; it is not another spendable balance.
Mining rounds and payouts
Each round accepts commitments for 60 seconds. Betting then closes onchain before a future randomness beacon is selected. Resolution takes as long as proof delivery and settlement require; 30 seconds is a retry threshold, not a fixed countdown or guaranteed completion time. The next round opens after settlement.
Choosing tiles
Select one or more of the 25 tiles and review your total deployment before committing. All selects the full grid and changes to Clear. Random chooses between 1 and 25 distinct tiles. These controls change your selection, not the winning-tile odds.
Winning USDC
88% of the settled pot is shared only by miners on the winning tile. Your payout is that winner pool multiplied by your commitment on that tile divided by all commitments on that tile. Deployments on other tiles do not increase your share of its payout.
Payout example
A $1,000.00 settled pot creates an $880.00 winner pool. If you deployed $10.00 of the $100.00 on the winning tile, your base payout is $88.00. This is the gross payout, not profit after your total deployment.
GLD distribution
Each eligible round randomly selects one of two equally likely modes. Proportional mode shares the miner emission by winning-tile commitment. Single-miner mode gives it to one winning-tile miner, with selection probability weighted by commitment. USDC remains proportional in both modes.
Empty winning tile
If nobody committed to the winning tile, the entire pot carries forward. No round fees are allocated, no Motherlode roll occurs, and no miner, team, or growth GLD is issued. Skipped GLD emissions do not accumulate for later rounds.
Results
The results show winning miners, their bets, USDC won, and GLD rewards. Covering every tile gives exposure to whichever tile wins, but does not guarantee a net profit.
Funding and managing an auto plan
Auto mining repeats a saved deployment using the plan’s available USDC. It does not require a separate miner-account deposit. Your initial funding determines the starting number of rounds, while recycled winnings can extend the plan.
Starting a plan
Choose tiles, a deployment amount, and between 1 and 999 funded rounds. At least one funded round is required. Review per-round cost and total plan funding before starting.
Recycling winnings
Claimed USDC winnings return to the active plan balance and can fund more rounds. GLD rewards are kept separate and remain available to cash out or stake; they are not sold to replenish the plan.
Progress and totals
While active, the panel replaces funded-round input with round progress and estimated time remaining. Total Spent tracks deployments, not net loss. Total GLD earned tracks the plan’s GLD rewards.
Estimated duration
The number of rounds and time left are estimates, not promises. Recycled USDC can extend a plan beyond its initial funding, even beyond 999 total rounds. Resolution and keeper timing also affect duration.
Cancel Plan
An active plan cannot be replaced by another bet through the same action. Cancel Plan stops future deployments and returns unused funds. Already committed rounds remain valid and must resolve; their outstanding rewards remain claimable.
Completion
A plan finishes when it cannot fund a full deployment and has no outstanding rounds left to settle.
GLD rewards, dividends, and claims
The mining rewards panel covers in-game rewards only. Manual and auto-mined GLD use one GLD Rewards balance rather than separate stakeable and miner-state balances. Your wallet’s GLD and your staking positions are separate from this panel.
GLD Rewards
Unrefined mined GLD credited to you when winning rounds are claimed or settled through automation. Cash out with a 10% fee or use Burn and Stake with no refining fee.
Dividends
Your share of other miners’ 10% refining fees, paid in GLD. Distribution is proportional to eligible unrefined GLD balances when fees are allocated. Wallet GLD and locked GLD do not earn these refining dividends.
Cash Out
Transfers 90% of your unrefined GLD plus 100% of accrued dividends to your wallet as GLD. This is not a sale into USDC. The fee applies only to mined rewards, not to dividends or USDC winnings.
Cash-out example
With 10 GLD in rewards and 2 GLD in dividends, Cash Out takes a 1 GLD refining fee and transfers 11 GLD to your wallet. Burn and Stake instead locks all 12 GLD without that fee.
Claim dividends only
The arrow beside Dividends claims just that balance without a fee. Your unrefined GLD stays in the rewards panel and continues to participate in future dividend distributions.
Dividend accounting
Cashing out removes the withdrawn unrefined balance before its fee is distributed, so that balance does not receive its own fee back. If no eligible unrefined balance remains, fees wait for a subsequent eligible credit. Accrued dividends remain claimable when you leave.
USDC Rewards
Available to claim is your unclaimed USDC from winning rounds, including any Motherlode share. Rounds available counts claimable rounds. Active auto plans recycle their settled USDC instead of treating it as separately withdrawable winnings.
How the Motherlode grows and pays out
The Motherlode is a shared USDC reserve. Every round with miners on the winning tile has a 1 in 625 chance to hit it. A hit pays 80% of the reserve to that tile’s winners and leaves 20% to seed the next one.
Funding sources
2% of each successful settled pot grows the reserve. Half of converted trading-tax proceeds also funds the Motherlode. The round contribution is added before that round’s potential payout is calculated.
Your share
Motherlode winnings use the same winning-tile commitment share as the ordinary USDC payout. A single-miner GLD reward does not give that miner exclusive rights to the Motherlode.
Example
With a $10,000.00 reserve at the payout calculation, a hit distributes $8,000.00 and retains $2,000.00. A miner with 10% of the winning tile receives $800.00 of that Motherlode payout.
Independent chance
A long run without a hit does not make the next eligible round more likely to win. The 1 in 625 probability is not a schedule. Empty winning tiles do not trigger a payout.
Verifiable randomness
GLD uses drand randomness backed by a cryptographic signature that is verified onchain. Each mining round is bound to one beacon, and its verified randomness determines the winning tile, Motherlode roll, and GLD reward mode.
Close and select
Betting closes onchain first. A trusted keeper then selects and records a future drand beacon. Proof verification establishes beacon authenticity; selecting it while genuinely future relies on the keeper.
Verify and settle
Anyone can relay the authorized beacon and its proof. The contract verifies the drand signature before settling the round. Retries use the same beacon and cannot reroll the result.
Staking and reward weight
Locking GLD creates a non-transferable veGLD position. Active locks divide 8% of every successful round in native USDC. Revenue uses each lock’s weight when it arrives, including time decay. Expired locks earn no new revenue. If no locks are active, revenue accumulates for the first subsequent lock.
Time locks
Choose 1 day starting at 1.01×, 1 week at 1.09×, 1 month at 1.38×, or 4 months at 2.50×. Weight decreases with the remaining time and stops at expiry. GLD can then be withdrawn.
Permanent locks
Receive 4× weight and cannot be withdrawn.
Burn and Stake
Permanently lock in-game GLD rewards and dividends with no refining fee. Tokens remain in escrow; they are not destroyed. An existing permanent position is increased, or a new one is created.
Immediate eligibility
New locks begin earning when they are created, with no waiting period. They do not receive revenue already assigned to other locks. The exception is unallocated revenue accumulated while no locks were active, which goes to the first subsequent lock.
Weight calculation
A time lock has weight equal to its GLD amount multiplied by 1 + 1.5 × remaining days / 120, until expiry. The displayed starting multipliers are rounded. Permanent positions maintain GLD amount × 4. Reward weight is an accounting measure, not an additional token balance.
Revenue example
If your position has 400 reward weight out of 4,000 total active weight, it earns 10% of that distribution. A successful $1,000.00 pot allocates $80.00 to stakers, of which your position receives $8.00.
Claiming
Claim an individual position or use Claim All to collect USDC revenue without changing your locks. Time-lock expiry is displayed in your local timezone. Expired positions retain earlier earned rewards, but earn nothing from later distributions.
APR
APR annualizes recent staking revenue and compares a position’s share with the GLD value locked. It changes with round activity, GLD price, and total active weight. The header uses permanent-lock weight. A high early APR can fall as more GLD is locked; it is not a fixed rate or compounded APY.
Supply and positions
Total locked is escrowed GLD, including locks awaiting withdrawal. Locked supply percentage uses the 500,000 GLD lifetime cap as its denominator. Position count is a count of locks, not unique people.
Flex Position
Create a share card for an individual lock. Salary-style titles describe estimated annual USDC rewards, not guaranteed income. Upload Image, Copy Image, and Download PNG customize and export the 1,200 × 675 card.
Supply and protocol fees
GLD has a lifetime issuance cap of 500,000 tokens, including genesis. Eligible rounds issue a fixed 1 GLD to miners, 0.08 GLD to the team, and 0.04 GLD to growth. Team and growth use separate receivers. Genesis allocations support liquidity and the team and count toward the same lifetime cap.
88%
Returned to winning-square miners.
8%
Distributed to active veGLD positions.
2% + 2%
Directed to Motherlode growth and protocol buybacks.
Lifetime cap
If less than 1.12 GLD of issuance remains, miner, team, and growth emissions are reduced proportionally, with rounding remainder assigned to miners. At the cap, new emissions stop. USDC round settlement continues. Token burns never restore mint capacity.
Trading tax
Buys and sells through registered AMM pairs incur a 5% GLD tax. Ordinary wallet transfers are not taxed. Converted proceeds are split equally between the Motherlode and protocol buybacks. This is separate from both mining fees and the refining fee.
Refining fee
Cash Out takes 10% of unrefined mining rewards in GLD and redistributes it as miner dividends. It does not fund staking revenue or buybacks. Dividends can be claimed without a second refining fee.
Buybacks
Buyback allocations fund purchases of GLD through the configured swap route. Purchased tokens go to the protocol’s immutable graveyard address. An allocation is not the same as an already executed market purchase.
Burn and Stake
Despite the product name, this action transfers GLD into permanent escrow. It does not destroy tokens, reduce total supply, or create additional issuance capacity.
Using the expected-value calculator
The calculator compares Cash Out Now with Hold and Stake, which is selected by default. It is a simplified all-tiles estimate based on proportional participation, not a prediction of an individual round. Rare outcomes, unequal tile competition, and future changes in revenue can make actual results very different.
Editable inputs
Round pot, Motherlode pool, and GLD spot price begin with the app’s available values. You can edit each for a scenario. Current resets just that field to its current source value. Your total commitment is included in, not added to, the entered pot. Review the inputs before using an estimate.
Base assumptions
Expected mined GLD is commitment / pot, assuming the full 1 GLD miner emission. Estimated USDC bleed is 12% of commitment. The model does not adjust emissions for a nearly exhausted lifetime cap and does not model every tile’s separate participant distribution.
Cash Out Now
Values expected mined GLD at the entered spot price, subtracts its 10% refining fee, adds optional Motherlode EV, and subtracts USDC bleed. Spot valuation is not an executed sale; trading tax, slippage, and network costs are not included.
Hold and Stake
Projects one year of USDC revenue from permanently locking the expected GLD at 4× weight. It uses the displayed APR without compounding and applies no refining fee. The calculation uses staking income rather than a sale of the locked GLD.
Motherlode EV
When enabled, adds commitment / pot × Motherlode pool × 80% / 625. This averages the rare payout into an estimate. It is not a payout you receive each round and does not model future reserve changes.
Break-even pot
The estimated pot at which modeled proceeds equal the 12% bleed. Cash Out uses 90% of the spot value of 1 GLD. Hold and Stake uses one year of USDC rewards on 1 GLD at the displayed APR. Add optional Motherlode EV per full pot share, then divide by 12%. The staking threshold holds the displayed APR constant; it is not a forecast of future APR.
Changing APR
The proposed permanent lock is included in reward weight when estimating APR. The estimate can change as the entered pot changes expected GLD, or as protocol revenue, price, and other locks change. No estimate is shown when the required APR data is unavailable.
Reading activity and sharing results
The stats page separates protocol-wide activity from your personal account and positions. Use round details to understand the payout distribution rather than treating aggregate volume or fees as personal earnings.
Mining activity
Mining shows round activity; Motherlode filters to rounds with a Motherlode payout. Page arrows navigate the history. Click a row to expand its winners, bet amounts, USDC won, and GLD rewards.
Protocol totals
Total Volume tracks mining deployment activity. Total Fees covers the mining allocation outside the 88% winner pool. Staking Rewards and Motherlode Rewards describe their respective distributions. Refining Fees is separate and tracks the GLD fee on cashing out mining rewards.
Supply figures
Max Supply is the lifetime issuance limit, not the amount already circulating. Circulating Supply and Market Cap depend on the supply data and spot-price source. They should not be read as the total locked balance or remaining mint capacity.
Verification
Verify opens the configured chain explorer, where you can inspect onchain transactions and contract activity. The link itself is not an in-app proof-verification report.
Your account
The connected-account modal shows your identity, account statistics, and scrollable history. Use the pencil beside your name to edit it. Account and position statistics are separate from the protocol’s aggregate totals.
Share cards
Account Flex, Flex Position, and Flex Stats produce branded cards. Upload Image changes the background with reduced opacity for readability. Copy Image and Download PNG export a 1,200 × 675 image. Cards reflect the displayed data and do not certify future returns.