Fee escrow and payouts
The fee escrow is the contract that holds every fee GAMA collects and records whom each amount belongs to. Nothing is sent out at trade time: fees are credited first, then paid out automatically or claimed. This page explains how that works and what keeps the balances safe.
How fees are credited
When a trade pays a fee, the pair token goes into the escrow and is credited to its owners in the same transaction. Each amount is a credit: a balance that belongs to one account, in one token, from one source. A creator with fees in ETH and in another pair token has two balances.
| Credit | Who it belongs to |
|---|---|
| Creator share of the trading fee, and creator tax | The creator recipient at the moment the fee was charged |
| GAMA's share | Each protocol split destination, in its share |
| Holder fee | The reward token, which shares it among holders; see Holder rewards |
| Payout charges | The payout operations address |
Credits are backed one for one by tokens the escrow holds. A change of creator recipient or of the protocol split only affects fees charged afterwards; amounts already credited keep their owners.
Automatic payouts
GAMA's payout operator pays credits out automatically. It checks every account about every five minutes and pays those that qualify. The current settings for ETH are:
- Whole balance. A payment sends the account's whole balance in that token to the account itself, and to no one else.
- Charge. It deducts a payout charge of 0.000001 ETH or 1% of the payment, whichever is lower.
- Minimum. It pays only when at least 0.0005 ETH is left after the charge.
- Timing. An account is paid at most once every five minutes.
- Failures. A payment that fails leaves the whole balance credited and charges nothing, and the other accounts in the same run are still paid. Each payment gets a fixed amount of gas; a wallet whose code needs more cannot receive automatic payments, but can always claim.
The protocol owner can change these settings, or switch automatic payouts off, but can never set a charge above 1% of a payment. The same operator and settings also pay holder rewards. See Payouts and claims.
Some balances are never paid out automatically:
- GAMA's buyback and burn share. It is only used to buy GAMA and burn it, or forwarded to the treasury. See Buyback and burn.
- The holder fee credited to a reward token. Holders receive it through the token's own payouts and claims.
- Credits of protocol contracts such as pools and routers.
Claiming yourself
Every account can claim its own balance at any time, with no charge and no minimum. You pay only the network gas. When claiming ETH, you can choose to receive it as WETH instead, for example from a wallet contract that cannot receive ETH. Only the owner of a balance can claim it. Claims keep working when automatic payouts are off or the operator has stopped.
What keeps balances safe
- The escrow has no function that lets anyone, including the protocol owner or the payout operator, withdraw or redirect a balance that belongs to someone else.
- An automatic payment always goes to the account that earned the balance. The operator only chooses which accounts to pay and when.
- A payment or claim that cannot be delivered is cancelled as a whole, and the balance stays where it was.
- The fee escrow can never be a launch's creator recipient.