The ASE Token
Growth Fund
Where the ecosystem allocation goes · Estimated read time: 4 minutes
TL;DR
Three retained buckets fund ecosystem growth: Ecosystem / Grants (10% · 100M ASE), Incentivized Testnet (6% · 60M ASE), and Treasury / DAO (12% · 120M ASE). Combined, that's 28% of total supply (280M ASE) dedicated to making the chain useful beyond the protocol layer. Each bucket has its own release mechanism and governance oversight.
The three buckets
| Bucket | % | Tokens | Release |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ecosystem / Grants | 10% | 100,000,000 | Per-grant, transparent |
| Incentivized testnet | 6% | 60,000,000 | Earned during Phase 3 |
| Treasury / DAO | 12% | 120,000,000 | DAO timelock per spend |
Ecosystem & Grants (10%)
100M ASE for developer grants, partnership integrations, community programs, and tooling. This is the capital that turns a chain with a token into a chain with an ecosystem.
- Developer grants — fund teams building dApps, SDKs, indexers, wallets, and developer tools on Asentum.
- Partnerships — integration deals with DeFi protocols, bridges, data providers, and infrastructure projects.
- Community programs — hackathons, bounties, ambassador programs, content creation incentives.
- Education — tutorials, documentation sponsorships, university partnerships.
Grants are released per-milestone. Recipients, amounts, and deliverables are published transparently. No bulk dumps — each allocation is tied to work delivered.
Incentivized Testnet (6%)
60M ASE distributed to Phase 3 testnet operators — people who run validators on the incentivized testnet before mainnet. This is earned, not airdropped: you bond testnet ASE, produce blocks, stay online, and receive real ASE proportional to your testnet participation when TGE hits.
The incentivized testnet bridges the gap between "anyone can validate" (the thesis) and "enough people actually do" (the reality). It's the reward for being early enough to test the chain while it still matters.
Treasury / DAO (12%)
120M ASE planned to be controlled by on-chain governance with a timelock per spend. The treasury funds long-term protocol development, security audits, infrastructure, and anything else the community votes to prioritize.
- Security audits — ongoing chain and contract audits beyond the initial CertiK engagement.
- Protocol development — funding core contributors, research, and implementation work.
- Infrastructure — RPC nodes, archival services, monitoring, and chain tooling the ecosystem depends on.
- Unforeseen needs — the treasury is the project's long-term backstop for things nobody has thought of yet.
The plan is that every treasury spend requires a governance proposal with quorum and a timelock, with no unilateral access. This is not live yet: governance on the testnet today is signalling only and cannot move funds.
Principles
- Public accounting. Every grant, every treasury spend, every testnet reward is documented publicly with amounts, recipients, and deliverables.
- No founder discretion on treasury. Treasury spends are planned to go through governance once it can move funds on chain. The team can propose; the community votes.
- Earned, not gifted. Testnet rewards are for operators who actually ran validators. Grants are for teams who actually shipped milestones. No free tokens.
- Time-bounded vesting where applicable. Large grants vest over deliverable milestones. Partnerships release per-integration milestone. Nothing is a lump-sum unless the work is already done.
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