The CANARY token
CANARY is Canary's token. Its supply is fixed, all of it went to one public launch, and the protocol's share of every settlement fee buys CANARY on the market and burns it.
| Ticker | CANARY |
| Supply | 1,000,000,000, fixed: no mint authority, nothing minted later |
| Launch | 100 % to one public launch on equal terms |
| Allocations | None: no presale, team, investor, airdrop or reserved pools, no vesting |
| Burn | The protocol's 70 % of every settlement fee buys CANARY on the market and burns it |
Where the buyback comes from
Canary charges one fee, 1.0 % of winning redemptions in its markets (Fees and settlement). Every fee splits two ways:
| Share | Goes to |
|---|---|
| 70 % | The buyback vault, whose USDC buys CANARY on the market and burns it |
| 30 % | The bounty vaults, split across rungs by the open interest their markets carried |
The protocol's share is swept from the markets in USDC by the permissionless sweep_treasury instruction into the buyback vault, a USDC account owned by the markets program itself. USDC leaves the vault only through a buyback: one Solana transaction in three steps.
| Step | Instruction | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | buyback_begin(amount, min_out) | Checks that a matching buyback_finish follows in the same transaction, then advances amount USDC from the vault to the buyback key |
| 2 | A Jupiter swap | Swaps exactly that USDC for CANARY, delivered to the markets program's own CANARY account |
| 3 | buyback_finish() | Checks that the buyback key spent all of the USDC and that at least min_out CANARY arrived, then burns every CANARY in the account |
If any check fails, the whole transaction fails, the swap included, and the USDC stays in the vault. The crank sends a buyback whenever the vault holds at least 100 USDC, spending all of it, with min_out taken from Jupiter's quote at 1 % slippage. Each burn shows on chain as a lower supply of the CANARY mint, and the markets program counts the USDC spent and the CANARY burned; /v1/programs reports both. The more markets settle, the more CANARY is burned. Minting and merging pairs, sponsorship and Q-Vaults carry no fee and burn nothing.
For example, when NO holders of a market redeem 2,000,000 USDC, the settlement fee is 20,000 USDC: 6,000 USDC goes to the bounty vaults and 14,000 USDC buys CANARY, which is burned.
What CANARY is not
The trigger has to stay neutral, so CANARY has no say over it:
| CANARY is never | Because |
|---|---|
| Collateral | Markets and bounties settle in USDC: a rung falling would move crypto prices exactly when payouts come due |
| A resolution input | A market resolves from RungState and the clock alone |
| A vote on rungs, resolution or vault rules | The rungs program becomes immutable once audited; nothing about a rung can be voted on |
| A payout backstop | Bounties pay from their vaults and markets from their collateral, both in USDC |
Holding CANARY gives no special access in the app: bounties, markets, Q-Vaults and RungState work the same with or without it.