How HoloFuel works
A currency that appears when real work is done, and not a moment before.
A currency that appears when real work is done, and not a moment before.
Most cryptocurrencies begin with a fixed pile of coins and let the market decide what they are worth. HoloFuel flips that order. No unit exists until someone does something useful: a host lends CPU, memory, bandwidth or storage to a Holochain app, and that app pays for the service. HoloFuel is simply the bookkeeping of that exchange.
Anyone with spare hardware can offer it to the Holo network and publish a price for it.
2Users open the app in their browser as usual. Behind the scenes, the host serves its data.
3When the hosting is paid, the host's balance goes up and a matching obligation is recorded on the other side. Nothing is mined, nothing is printed in advance.
HoloFuel is a mutual-credit system: every credit is born together with a debit of exactly the same size. Add up every balance on the network and you always get zero, so there is no fixed supply. The amount in circulation breathes in and out with the hosting being done.
| One hour of hosting is paid | Balance |
|---|---|
| Host who served the app | +2.40 HF |
| Capacity account on the other side | −2.40 HF |
| Whole network | 0.00 HF |
With no miners to reward, even tiny payments can move without a gas fee eating into them.
There is no protocol-wide tariff. A host describes the machine, for example 8 GB of RAM, 4 virtual cores and a 250 GB SSD, then picks an hourly rate. HoloFuel only moves when that capacity is actually consumed. A bigger, more reliable box can ask for more; a modest one can compete on price.
A negative balance is not an error, it is a credit line. How deep you may go depends on your record of delivering hosting, not on how much money you already hold. Serve reliably and your line grows; fail to deliver and the debt stays on your chain as a promise still owed. Reputation and peer validation take the place of collateral.
Because each unit maps to real computing resources, HoloFuel aims to be value-stable: its reference point is the cost of hosting, not a dollar peg and not a scarcity story. That is a design goal, not a guarantee.
| Capacity money (HoloFuel) | Scarcity money (Bitcoin-style) | |
|---|---|---|
| Where a unit comes from | A paid hosting job | Mining, on a fixed schedule |
| What stands behind it | A matching obligation to deliver hosting | Scarcity and market belief |
| Who earns it | Hosts contributing capacity | Whoever owns the most hardware |
| Supply | Grows and shrinks with activity | Capped by protocol |
A global blockchain forces every node to agree on every payment. On Holochain, each participant keeps their own signed chain and only a group of peers validates each transaction. No bank issues HoloFuel, no exchange holds it, and no middleman can freeze a balance.
HOT is the ERC-20 token sold in 2018 as a claim on future hosting. It is meant to convert one-for-one into HoloFuel once migration opens, currently expected by 1 November 2026 with a swap window of at least six months. Until then HoloFuel is pre-launch and hosting is paid in HOT.
Want to watch credits and debits appear as hosting is paid? holofuel.best goes further, with more detail and visual animations of how HoloFuel works.
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