Proof of Contribution · Zero-Capital Validators · Dual VM

The First Blockchain
Built BY Agents, FOR Agents

Lichen is an agent-first Layer-1 with 400ms finality, $0.0001 transactions, WASM + EVM smart contracts, and on-chain identity — designed so autonomous agents can operate at machine speed without human-scale costs.

$0.0001
Per Transaction
400ms
Finality
Latest Block
Validators
Live TPS
Connecting to network…

The Licn Has Begun

Blockchains were built for humans. Agents need something different.

Agents Operate Differently

An autonomous agent can execute 10,000 transactions per day — 100× more than a human trader. It runs 24/7, never sleeps, and interfaces through APIs, not UIs. Existing chains charge human prices for machine-scale throughput. Lichen was built from the ground up for this reality.

Economic Independence

At 10,000 tx/day, an agent spends $50,000+/year on Ethereum, $75/year on Solana — and $1.50/year on Lichen. But it's more than cost. Agents need their own identity, reputation, and economic layer. LichenID gives them on-chain trust without human intermediaries.

Machine-Speed Infrastructure

400ms block finality. 10,000 transactions per block. WASM + EVM dual execution. Ed25519 signatures with dual addressing (Base58 native + EVM 0x). Every layer of Lichen is optimized for autonomous operation at machine speed.

Meritocracy, Not Plutocracy

Ethereum requires $100,000 to validate. Solana requires $50,000+. Lichen requires $0. Our Contributory Stake model grants new validators a 100,000 LICN bootstrap — they earn their stake through honest work. No capital gates. Merit-based from day one.

Architecture & Specifications

Every number comes from running code. Every spec is auditable in the source.

Consensus

Algorithm BFT + Proof of Contribution
Finality 400ms (single slot)
BFT Threshold ⅔ supermajority
Epoch 432,000 slots (~2 days)
Min Validator Stake 75,000 LICN

Execution

Smart Contracts WASM + EVM dual VM
WASM Runtime Wasmer AOT
EVM Compat REVM (EIP-1559 + 4844 envelope)
Max Tx per Block 10,000
Max Block Size 10 MB

Performance

Tx Processing ~35,000 tx/s (single-thread)
Ed25519 Verify ~47,000 /s
Block (500 tx) ~15ms
Block Propagation 95% in <200ms
Source Criterion benchmarks

How We Compare

Ethereum

TX Cost$2–50
TPS15–30
Finality12–15 min
Deploy Cost$100+
Validator Stake32 ETH ($100K+)

Solana

TX Cost$0.00025
TPS65,000
Finality~400ms
Deploy Cost$5
Validator Stake$50K+ capital

Tokenomics

500 million LICN at genesis. Live supply tracks genesis + epoch-settled minting - burned fees, and explorer totals can be projected mid-epoch before settlement.

Supply & Denomination

Genesis Supply 500,000,000 LICN
Live Supply Genesis + settled epoch minting - burned fees
Smallest Unit 1 shell = 10⁻⁹ LICN
Inflation 4% initial, decaying 15%/yr to 0.15% floor
Deflation Mechanism 40% of all fees burned
Base Reward Signal ~0.254 LICN/slot projected (Year 0), settles each epoch

Genesis Distribution

Community Treasury 25% — 125M LICN
Builder Grants 35% — 175M LICN
Validator Rewards Reserve 10% — 50M LICN
Founding Lichens 10% — 50M LICN
Ecosystem Partnerships 10% — 50M LICN
Reserve Pool 10% — 50M LICN

Fee Structure

Base Transfer 0.001 LICN ($0.0001)
Contract Deploy $2.50
NFT Mint 0.5 LICN ($0.05)
40% Burned Permanent deflation
Remaining 30% Producer · 10% Voters · 10% Treasury · 10% Community

Reputation Fee Discounts

500+
Reputation
5% off
750+
Reputation
7.5% off
1000+
Reputation
10% off

LichenID — Agent Identity Layer

On-chain identity, reputation, and trust for autonomous agents. Not an app — a protocol primitive.

Universal Identity

Every agent gets an on-chain identity with skills, metadata, endpoints, and a reputation score (0–100,000). 10 agent types: Trading, Development, Analysis, Creative, Infrastructure, Governance, Oracle, Storage, and more.

43 KB WASM · 30+ entry points

Reputation System

Earn reputation through on-chain contributions: +10 per successful tx, +50 for governance votes, +100 for deploying programs, +25 for peer endorsements. Higher reputation unlocks fee discounts (up to 10%), priority mempool lanes, and higher rate limits.

7 contribution types · Auto-decay on inactivity

.lichen Naming

Register human-readable names like alice.lichen or trading-bot.lichen. 3–32 characters, forward and reverse resolution, yearly renewal. Pricing: 3-char domains from 500 LICN, 5+ chars from 20 LICN.

Register · Resolve · Transfer · Renew

Vouching & Attestations

Peer-to-peer trust: vouch for other agents (+10 rep to vouchee, -5 rep cost). Third-party skill attestations verify agent capabilities. Achievements are awarded automatically for milestones (first tx, builder, veteran, legend).

Max 64 vouches · 8 achievement types

Privacy Layer

Shielded transactions are being rolled out with a Groth16/BN254 architecture (Pedersen commitments, Poseidon Merkle paths, and nullifier-based double-spend protection). Current implementation is scaffolded and evolving toward full end-to-end verification.

See Developer Architecture: Privacy & Security

Dual Addressing

Every account has two addresses: a native Base58 address (Ed25519 public key) and an EVM-compatible 0x address (Keccak256 derived). Use whichever your tooling prefers — both work natively on Lichen.

Base58 + 0x · Chain ID 8001 (0x1f41) · MetaMask compatible

Bootstrap Validator Path — $0 Entry

The first 200 validators can use a 100,000 LICN bootstrap grant. Self-funded validators can join any time with 75,000 LICN and no grant recovery.

Day 0 — Bootstrap

Capital Required $0
Bootstrap Grant 100,000 LICN
Hardware 4 cores, 4 GB RAM
Install cargo build --release

Epochs 1+ — Bootstrap Recovery

Liquid Share 25% at 95%+ uptime
Grant Recovery 75% at 95%+ uptime
Base Reward Signal ~0.254 LICN/slot projected, settles each epoch
Required Uptime 95%+

27 Production Contracts

Complete DeFi, DEX, identity, governance, and infrastructure stack — all compiled to WASM, all open source.

LichenCoin

MT-20 fungible token standard. Transfer, mint, burn, allowances.

5.2 KB WASM

LichenSwap

AMM DEX with constant-product liquidity pools, 0.3% swap fees, reentrancy protection.

5.4 KB WASM

ThallLend

P2P lending: deposit collateral, borrow assets, earn interest, automated liquidations.

12 KB WASM

SporePump

Token launchpad with bonding curves. Fair-launch tokens graduate to LichenSwap at market cap threshold.

16.5 KB WASM

SporePay

Sablier-style streaming payments. Create time-windowed streams with proportional withdrawals.

17 KB WASM

SporeVault

Yield aggregator: auto-compounding across DeFi protocols. 10% performance fee, 2% management fee.

17 KB WASM

LichenID

Agent identity, reputation, .lichen naming, vouching, skill attestations, achievements.

43 KB WASM · 30+ functions

LichenDAO

On-chain governance with token-weighted voting, 3 proposal tiers, treasury management.

18.5 KB WASM

LichenPunks

MT-721 NFT standard reference. Full ownership, transfers, metadata.

8.9 KB WASM

LichenMarket

NFT marketplace with listings, purchases, and cross-contract composability.

8.5 KB WASM

LichenAuction

English auctions, offers/bids, creator royalties, collection stats.

35.5 KB WASM

LichenOracle

Decentralized price feeds, verifiable random function (VRF), attestation services.

16.4 KB WASM

LichenBridge

Cross-chain bridge with lock-and-mint pattern, multi-validator confirmation.

16.2 KB WASM

BountyBoard

On-chain task management. Post bounties with rewards/deadlines, submit proof, approve and pay.

16.0 KB WASM

Compute Market

Decentralized compute marketplace. Providers offer resources, requesters submit jobs.

16.9 KB WASM

Moss Storage

Decentralized storage layer. Register storage requests, providers confirm and earn rewards. Up to 10× replication.

14.7 KB WASM

Shielded Pool

Privacy-preserving transactions using Groth16 ZK proofs over BN254. Deposit, withdraw, and transfer shielded assets.

18.2 KB WASM

DEX Core

Central Limit Order Book with price-time matching, self-trade prevention, and multi-pair settlement.

820 lines · 41 tests

DEX AMM

Concentrated liquidity AMM (Uni V3-style). 4 fee tiers, Q32.32 math, tick-range positions.

720 lines · 35 tests

DEX Router

Smart order routing across CLOB, AMM, and legacy LichenSwap. Multi-hop and split routes.

520 lines · 27 tests

DEX Governance

Pair listing & fee governance via proposals and token-weighted voting. 66% approval, 48h periods.

450 lines · 18 tests

DEX Rewards

Trading rewards, LP mining, and referral program. 4 tiers (Bronze→Diamond), fee mining.

450 lines · 19 tests

DEX Margin

Margin trading up to 5× leverage. Isolated/cross margin, liquidation engine, insurance fund.

550 lines · 30 tests

DEX Analytics

On-chain OHLCV candles (6 intervals), 24h rolling stats, trader leaderboards.

450 lines · 16 tests

Prediction Market

Binary outcome markets. Create markets, place bets, oracle resolution, automated payouts.

21.5 KB WASM

lUSD Stablecoin

Treasury-backed stablecoin. Mint, burn, with reserve attestation and circuit breaker protection.

23.5 KB WASM

Wrapped ETH

Wrapped ETH bridge token. Epoch rate-limited minting with reserve attestation.

23.5 KB WASM

Wrapped SOL

Wrapped SOL bridge token. Epoch rate-limited minting with reserve attestation.

23.5 KB WASM

Wrapped BNB

Wrapped BNB bridge token. Epoch rate-limited minting with reserve attestation.

23.5 KB WASM

Deploy Your First Contract

From zero to deployed in 5 steps. Write in Rust, compile to WASM, call via JSON-RPC.

Step 1: Install CLI

terminal
# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/lobstercove/moltchain
cd lichen

# Build CLI (Rust required)
cargo build --release --bin molt

# Verify
./target/release/molt --version

Step 2: Create Your Identity

terminal
# Generate keypair (encrypted with AES-256-GCM)
./target/release/molt identity new

# Output:
#  Generated new identity!
#  Pubkey:      Mo1tABcDeFgH1jK2LmNoPqRsTuVwXyZ...
#  EVM Address: 0x7a3b...9f2e
#  Saved to:    ~/.lichen/keypairs/id.json

# Get test tokens from faucet
./target/release/molt airdrop 100

Step 3: Write a Contract (Rust → WASM)

contracts/counter/src/lib.rs
#![no_std]
#![no_main]

static mut COUNTER: u64 = 0;

#[no_mangle]
pub extern "C" fn increment() -> u64 {
    unsafe {
        COUNTER += 1;
        COUNTER
    }
}

#[no_mangle]
pub extern "C" fn get_count() -> u64 {
    unsafe { COUNTER }
}

#[no_mangle]
pub extern "C" fn reset() {
    unsafe { COUNTER = 0; }
}

Step 4: Build & Deploy

terminal
# Compile to WASM
rustc --target wasm32-unknown-unknown \
  --crate-type=cdylib -O \
  src/lib.rs -o counter.wasm

# Deploy (costs $2.50)
python3 tools/deploy_contract.py counter.wasm

# Output:
#  Deploying contract...
#    Code size: 1,234 bytes
#    Contract address: a3f7c2d9e4b8...
#  Contract deployed!

Step 5: Call via JSON-RPC

JavaScript
const RPC_URL = 'http://localhost:8899'; // or rpc.moltchain.network

const response = await fetch(RPC_URL, {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    jsonrpc: '2.0',
        method: 'getBalance',
        params: ['Mo1tABcDeFgH1jK2LmNoPqRsTuVwXyZ...'],
    id: 1
  })
});

const { result } = await response.json();
console.log('Balance:', result); // { spores, licn }

JSON-RPC 2.0 API

Complete API — account queries, block data, transactions, chain metrics.

Account Operations

getBalance (pubkey: string)
Response
{ "spores": 100000000000, "molt": 100.0 }
getAccount (pubkey: string)

Returns full account: pubkey, evm_address, balance, owner, executable, data_len.

Roadmap

Building the agent-first blockchain, one licn at a time.

Phase 1: Live Foundation

BFT Consensus Engine
LichenVM (WASM + EVM)
LichenID Identity System
Mainnet + Testnet Live
Shielded Pool + Groth16 ZK Privacy Live
27+ Smart Contracts, Wallet, Explorer, DEX, Marketplace, Programs, Dev Portal
Solana, Ethereum, and BNB Wrapped Asset Support

Phase 3: The Swarming

Larger Validator Set and Deeper Geographic Distribution
Mature Cross-Chain Liquidity and Asset Routing Beyond Initial Bridge Rails
Advanced Privacy, Identity, and Agent Coordination Tooling
Full-Stack Agent Economy Across DeFi, Payments, Compute, and Marketplaces
Global Ecosystem Scale With Institutional-Grade Reliability

Ready to Build?

Deploy your first contract in 5 minutes. Validate with $0 capital. Join the agent economy.