Whitepaper v. 0.9.7 “Instrumentality of mankind”
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Unlike traditional blockchains, Humanode breaks from capital-weighted models to establish a validator economy grounded in human equality, real-world operating costs, and measurable contribution. Validator rewards, fee logic, and resource incentives are derived not from token holdings or compute power, but from biometric identity, Proof-of-Time (PoT), and Proof-of-Devotion (PoD).
In capital-based systems such as Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS), validation power is dictated by financial weight - be it computational hardware or locked capital. These systems, while decentralized in theory, often concentrate power in the hands of capital holders or specialized hardware operators. As a result, such systems remain vulnerable to capital-based attacks and centralization creep.
By contrast, Humanode implements a biometric Sybil-resistance mechanism where each real, living human can deploy only one node. This strict invariant - one human, one node - creates a fundamentally egalitarian architecture where consensus power is uniformly distributed, regardless of wealth or geography.
Humanode applies a cost-based fee system, where transaction fees are pegged to real-world operating costs incurred by human nodes. This approach stabilizes network fees over time, de-links fee volatility from speculative token fluctuations, and aligns validator incentives with sustainability.
Fees are composed of two core components:
Computation Fees: Based on the actual cost of processing a transaction, calculated using the average expenses of running validator nodes.
Storage Fees: Based on the time-based cost of storing data across all participating nodes.
To determine these costs, the protocol utilizes oracle-checked APIs that gather real-time pricing data from major cloud infrastructure providers (e.g., AWS, GCP, Hetzner). These USD-denominated costs are translated into HMND using decentralized exchange oracles and internal gas references to ensure stability.
Since storage persists beyond a single transaction’s execution, the protocol also calculates the perpetual cost of data storage, adjusting for the historical trend of decreasing storage prices (~30.57% annually). The cumulative cost is represented as:
Where:
P_store = total perpetual cost of storage
P_GBH[i] = cost of storing 1 GB per hour at time i
Datasize = transaction size in GB
This ensures that transaction fees include the total burden of long-term data storage and incentivize long-term node operation.
Humanode implements a Liquid Validator Fee Set (LVS) rather than a static payout to all active validators. Validators are ranked by Proof-of-Time (PoT) and Proof-of-Devotion (PoD) to determine the order in which costs are covered. Once a validator’s costs are reimbursed, the protocol moves to the next in the ranking until all collected fees are distributed.
PoT reflects uptime, longevity, and participation in governance.
PoD reflects contributions to the network - such as development work, accepted proposals, and ecosystem participation.
This model ensures that validators who have committed significant time and effort are prioritized, especially when fees are scarce. As more fees accumulate, the LVS expands, dynamically increasing validator inclusion. Despite this dynamic hierarchy for cost recovery, all human nodes retain equal validation and voting power.
Validators are compensated in proportion to real operating costs, not stake or hardware.
All fees are distributed equally among included validators, with no extra weight or slashing mechanisms.
The number of validators included in a fee cycle is fluid, depending on total network fees and the rankings of PoT/PoD.
This approach minimizes speculative pressures, prevents validator oligopolies, and aligns economic reward with equal human participation.
During the early stages of network growth, Humanode employs a bootstrapping fund that simulates fee distribution for the first 1000 human nodes. Validators with strong uptime and ecosystem participation (as measured by PoT/PoD) are included in the fund, which is progressively expanded as the network matures. Each validator receives fee compensation based on the number of epochs (one being equal to 4 hours) they were bioauthorized and active during a two-week period.
This phase serves to simulate network saturation and test fee economics before full adoption of open, cost-based logic.
For now, those who have a PoD will always have a higher positioning of getting into the validator fee set.
The uptime is calculated by counting the epochs in which a validator was bio-authorized. Every two weeks the protocol queries the data about the Human nodes that show the number of epochs every node has been bioauthorized, producing blocks and participating in finalization. One epoch in Humanode equals four hours. There is a maximum of 84 epochs throughout two weeks that human nodes can be bioauthorized in. The more Epochs you were bioauthorized in, the higher your stance and the more likely you are to receive fees.
