SAUCE is a transferable representation of utility functions in the protocol’s code:
- Governance. SAUCE and xSAUCE carry voting power in the SaucerSwap DAO — see Governance.
- Liquidity incentives. The Masterchef contract mints SAUCE to reward V1 farms and V2 LARI positions.
- Staking. Staking SAUCE for xSAUCE earns a share of protocol revenue and tiered V3 fee discounts — see Single-sided staking.
Supply structure
At genesis (August 2022), 500 million SAUCE were minted: 200 million entered circulation immediately, and 300 million were locked in non-upgradable vesting contracts owned by the SaucerSwap DAO. The remaining 500 million are minted by the Masterchef contract on a predefined emission schedule.
SAUCE max supply by allocation category.
Initial supply (distributed at genesis)
A total of 200 million SAUCE was released at genesis. The Liquidity, Marketing, and Operations categories fell under DAO ownership; the Community category was distributed to 729 eligible community members.- Liquidity: converted to SAUCE/HBAR LP tokens and locked for one year.
- Community: airdropped to holders of Planck Epoch Collectible (PEC) NFTs by type and count (Gravity 3,000 SAUCE; Electromagnetic 5,000; Weak Nuclear 14,000; Strong Nuclear 30,000).
- Marketing and Operations: sent to DAO-controlled multisigs.
Genesis vesting schedule (completed)
The DAO deployed non-upgradeable vesting contracts holding 300 million SAUCE. The three-year linear vesting schedule ended on July 16, 2025.The end of a vesting schedule does not guarantee that every vested token has been withdrawn. Checked July 29, 2026: Core Development, Operations, and Advisor held 0 SAUCE; Marketing held 199,961.736852 SAUCE.
Masterchef emissions
The Masterchef contract holds SAUCE’s supply key and mints the remaining emission allocation. Phase 1 of the SAUCE emission reduction and Unified BrewSaucer proposal, ratified in election 6360, reduces its base emission rate by 50%: from 2.113984 to 1.056992 SAUCE/sec, or from 126.83904 to 63.41952 SAUCE/min. The additive devcut remains 10% of the base rate. Gross issuance therefore also falls by 50%. SAUCE’s maximum supply remains one billion tokens.
Annualized amounts use a 365-day year at the configured rate.
The proposal estimates that the lower rate extends the Masterchef rewards runway by roughly 14 months, from mid-September 2027 to early November 2028. These are modeled terminal periods; later changes to the emission rate can change the endpoint.
Phase 1 allocation
Masterchef distributes the base rewards through 5,000 allocation points. The devcut is additional to these rewards and does not consume allocation points.
Phase 1 Masterchef emissions, allocation points, and the separate devcut.
- V1 farms distribute rewards to LP token stakers according to farm allocation points.
- The Liquidity-Aligned Reward Initiative (LARI) funds V2 liquidity rewards, with per-pool allocations published for each epoch.
- The DAO allocation supports governance-approved liquidity and treasury uses.
Phase 2 is not active. The proposal reserves a later reallocation for the HBAR/USD perpetuals launch, after the market and its supporting contracts, including GMRewardVault, are deployed, audited, and ready. Until that activation, use the Phase 1 allocation above; see the proposal’s activation conditions for the pending changes.
Devcut and additional burn
Masterchef sends its additive devcut to a SaucePaymentSplitter. Phase 1 redirects the 30% tranche previously sent to Mothership/xSAUCE to the protocol burn destination. The other 70% retains its existing non-staking distribution.
The redirected SAUCE is newly minted and then sent to burn. This offsets issuance; it is not a market buyback and does not extend the configured emission schedule. This burns approximately one million additional SAUCE per year, alongside the separate revenue-funded burn described below.
Unified BrewSaucer: buybacks and burn
Unified BrewSaucer applies one downstream allocation to eligible protocol revenue. Each product first resolves its own liquidity-provider compensation, rebates, and discounts; only its eligible protocol share funds SAUCE buybacks.
Purchased SAUCE is distributed as follows:
The reserve continues to support HBAR rewards for the V2 SAUCE/HBAR and USDC/HBAR pools at a 50/50 pool-level split. The reward amount varies with the funded budget and is separate from SAUCE LARI allocation points. V3 continues to use maker rebates rather than SAUCE emission incentives.
The 10% BrewSaucer burn uses SAUCE purchased on the market. The additional devcut burn uses newly minted SAUCE; the two streams must be counted separately. Buyback amounts depend on protocol revenue and SAUCE’s market price, while the lower emission rate reduces how much new SAUCE enters circulation alongside those buybacks.
Historical appendix: the original (pre-V2) model
Original genesis tokenomics, superseded August 8, 2023
Original genesis tokenomics, superseded August 8, 2023
The original model released 20% of max supply at genesis — categorized at the time as liquidity (2%), airdrops (14%), faucet and giveaways (2%), and DAO treasury (2%) — and emitted the remaining 80% linearly over three years at a constant combined rate of approximately 507.36 SAUCE per minute across vesting and Masterchef streams.Because Hedera has no block concept, emissions were defined per minute (Hedera maps
block.timestamp to the transaction consensus timestamp).From genesis to V2 launch, pool rewards were approximately 317.10 SAUCE per minute, with an additive 10% devcut. The Tokenomics V2 proposal (approved August 8, 2023) reduced the pool-reward rate to 126.83904 SAUCE per minute at V2 launch and changed the allocation model.
Next steps
Single-sided staking
Where buyback revenue compounds for SAUCE stakers.
V3 fees and rebates
The order book fee flow behind buybacks and burns.
Governance
How the DAO adjusts emissions and treasury flows.
LARI weights
Current per-epoch reward allocations.