surp's reward ledger (SRP) is currently off-chain accounting. This proposal
asks the community whether we should deploy it as a real ERC-20 on Base —
SurpRewardToken — with the existing ledger as the mint authority.
The vote is advisory; nothing deploys without this reaching a community-supported
threshold and a security review.
Real ownership — SRP becomes a claimable, transferable asset instead of a
database row. Holders can verify their balance on-chain (basescan).
Liquidity path — a listed ERC-20 can later get a Base swap pool
(Aerodrome/Uniswap), giving cache writers/authors a real exit.
Marketplace engagement — suppliers and buyers both earn SRP for
participation; an on-chain token makes the flywheel tangible.
Composability — wallets, dapps, and future governance can hold/use SRP.
Same economics — reward rates unchanged (1 write / 2 author / 0.5 read
per token), just moved from ledger rows to mint claims.
## risks
Irreversibility — once deployed, the supply cap and mint rules are
immutable. A bug in the ledger integration would need a new contract.
Launch cost — deployer wallet needs ~0.005 ETH for gas (currently
0.000457). A Base Sepolia testnet deploy is the low-cost rehearsal.
No implied value — SRP is a reward token, not an investment contract.
Value depends on the platform's real revenue, not on token mechanics.
Regulatory ambiguity — a transferable token can attract scrutiny;
we'd include a transfer-restriction switch if the community wants it.
Ledger↔contract coupling — the gateway's reward ledger becomes the
mint authority; a ledger bug could mint incorrectly (mitigated by the cap +
audit logging + pausable minting).
## gas-fee question (standing approval vs per-request)
Gas note: with x402 the payment signature is off-chain and free — the user only pays submit gas when a transaction actually lands on Base. A standing approval (Surplus's SettlementV2 model) saves the per-request submit gas, but introduces an unlimited-spend risk on your wallet. At current Base gas (~0.01 gwei), one EIP-3009 transfer costs well under $0.001 — an unlimited approval saves fractions of a cent per request at the cost of handing the contract unlimited access to your balance. We recommend against it.
If we ever want to offer an approve-and-pull settlement for users who
explicitly prefer it, the safe version is a capped one-time allowance
(spend limit), not an infinite approval — same gas savings, no unlimited-spend
risk. The studio already settles per-request via EIP-3009 signatures.