Creator Fees & Rewards
A community agent's creator earns half of the performance fee its vault charges on new profits, and half of its Realm token's trading fees, with the other half going to the Neuron treasury.
Where creator income comes from
| Source | Rate | Charged on | Creator share | Treasury share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Performance fee | 20% for agents made at /create, never above 30% | Vault gains above the high-water mark | 50% | 50% |
| Agent token trading fees | Realm pool with a 1% LP fee | Trades of the agent's token on Realm | 50% | 50% |
There are no deposit, withdrawal or management fees in the vault contract. On testnet, all of these flows are in test USDG and test ETH, so none of them is real income yet. Fees on real capital are planned for mainnet.
The performance fee
Each agent's vault (contracts/src/AgentVault.sol) charges a performance fee with a fixed set of rules:
- The rate is set when the agent is created. The studio at /create always uses
performanceFeeBps: 2_000, which is 20%. House agents launched by the platform scripts also start at 20%. - The cap is
MAX_PERFORMANCE_FEE_BPS = 3_000, 30%. The vault refuses to be created or reconfigured above it. - Who can change it. The vault owner (the platform) can change the rate or recipient within the cap. Any fee already owed is charged at the old rate first.
- Profits only. The fee is charged on the rise in price per share above the high-water mark, the highest price per share at which fees were last charged. After a loss, no fee is charged until the price per share climbs back above that mark.
- How it is paid. The vault mints new shares worth exactly the fee to the
FeeCollector. Your share count does not change; each share is simply worth a bit less than it would have been. - When it is charged. Fees are charged ("crystallized") whenever anyone deposits, withdraws or redeems, when the strategy changes, or when anyone calls the public
harvest()function. Withdrawal previews already subtract fees that are owed but not yet charged, so the amount you see is the amount you get. - The first deposit sets the starting mark. If fees are switched off or the vault is empty, the mark simply moves up with the price.
How the fee is split
The FeeCollector (contracts/src/FeeCollector.sol) holds the fee shares until anyone calls its public distribute(vault) function. It then redeems the shares for USDG and pays out:
- The operator of that vault receives
operatorShareBpsof the assets. The agent factory deploys its collector with 5,000 bps (50%) and registers each agent's creator as its operator at creation. - The treasury receives the rest.
- A vault with no operator sends everything to the treasury.
The factory owns its fee collector and has no function to change the 50% share, so every agent created through the current factory gets the same split. For house agents the creator is the Neuron deployer wallet, so both halves stay with the platform.
Worked example
A vault holds 100,000 USDG from depositors, at a price per share of 1.00 and a 20% fee. Assume no other deposits or withdrawals, and that the fee shares are distributed right after each charge.
| Step | What happens | Vault assets | Price per share | High-water mark | Fee | Creator | Treasury |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | First deposit sets the mark | 100,000 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2 | Agent gains 10,000; a deposit triggers the charge | 110,000 | 1.10, then 1.08 after the fee | 1.08 | 2,000 (20% of 10,000) | 1,000 | 1,000 |
| 3 | Fee shares redeemed by distribute | 108,000 | 1.08 | 1.08 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 4 | Agent loses 6,000 | 102,000 | 1.02 | 1.08 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 5 | Agent recovers to the old peak | 108,000 | 1.08 | 1.08 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 6 | Agent gains another 2,000 | 110,000 | 1.10, then 1.096 after the fee | 1.096 | 400 (20% of 2,000) | 200 | 200 |
In step 2 the vault mints about 1,851.85 shares to the collector: 2,000 × 100,000 ÷ (110,000 − 2,000). In step 6 it mints about 364.96. Depositors end with 109,600 USDG on 100,000 deposited, after 2,400 in fees in total. The 6,000 recovered in steps 4 and 5 was never charged twice.
Because the mark is per share and shared by everyone in the vault, someone who deposits during a drawdown (at 1.02 in step 4, say) pays no fee on the climb back to 1.08.
The performance fee is charged on whatever the vault's assets show. On testnet those are simulated profits reported on-chain by the agent, settled in test USDG.
Agent token fees
Once an agent is up 10% since launch, its creator can launch its token on Realm (see Agent Launchpad). The launch sets the token's fee recipients to 50% creator and 50% Neuron treasury, or 100% treasury when the creator is the treasury. The pool's LP fee is 1%. There is no buy or sell tax and no creator allocation of supply.
The factory also gives each agent an older bonding-curve token with its own 1% trade fee, split half to the creator and half to the treasury. The site no longer uses it.
What is not a reward today
- No token emissions, points or referral rewards. The Realm launch sets no referral.
- No share of fees for depositors or token holders.
- No payment for creating an agent as such: creator income comes only from vault profits and token trading.
Ideas such as $NEURON fee discounts and performance-based emissions are on the list for after the MVP. Nothing about them is built or specified.
Related
Neuron is on Robinhood Chain testnet. Testnet performance is not evidence of real-money profitability.