Samsara was built with a specific idea at its core. Markets should be free to move, but value should not disappear simply because sentiment turns or liquidity thins. Samsara markets are made to provide a minimum redeemable value at all times. A floor that keeps ticking up over time.

An idea like this only becomes real when it can survive extreme duress. With that in mind, we created conditions intended to push the system as hard as possible.

On December 4th, we launched a $50,000 bounty to Break the Floor that incentivized participants to sell directly into the market. The intention was to introduce coordinated selling under conditions that were explicitly adversarial. 

The experiment ran in a controlled test environment across five independent markets. Each market followed a similar path and capital entered quickly, with tens of millions flowing in shortly after launch. 

As liquidity accumulated, participants began selling in size, coordinating their activity to push the price all the way down to the minimum value the system was designed to offer. The selling was not tentative or exploratory. Tens of millions of dollars were sold into the system within a few hours after several days of preliminary buying.

Every market reached the minimum value level, and in every case, the system continued to function without deviation, and the floor held.

What stood out was not just that value was honored, but how cleanly everything remained contained. Each market operated independently throughout the process. When one market was sold down to its minimum redeemable floor value, activity in the others continued unaffected. 

Liquidity was available and complete at all times, redemptions cleared as expected, and there was no sense in which pressure in one place weakened the rest of the system. This was not the result of intervention or coordination behind the scenes, it was a consequence of how Samsara markets are constructed.

The minimum value offered by a Samsara market is not a defended price level. No market makers are stepping in, no discretionary actions are taken when conditions become uncomfortable, and no hidden liquidity is waiting to be deployed.

Liquidity at that level is owned by the protocol itself and is continuously available. The markets used in this test were launched without pre-mines, preferential access, or special positioning. Every participant interacted with the same mechanics and faced the same outcomes.

As selling reached the floor value, market behavior began to shift. Once participants no longer faced uncertainty about further downside, the character of the market changed. 

The minimum value stopped behaving like a point of stress and began functioning as a reference. Selling cleared, buyers re-entered naturally, and price discovery resumed above that level without incentives or intervention.

Throughout the test, price continued to move freely above the minimum value. What did not change was the system’s ability to offer that value when it was asked to.

The purpose of this exercise was simple. We wanted to understand whether the system would behave consistently when pressure was deliberate, coordinated, and sustained across multiple markets at once.

Across five markets and tens of millions of dollars in sell pressure, it did. Value remained available without bias, liquidity stayed intact throughout, and each market adjusted and recovered on its own terms.

The most important result was consistency. The system continued to function under extreme stress in the same way it would in calm conditions. There was no need for external intervention or additional liquidity, proving that markets built around assured value don’t have to be defended when pressure arrives.

Our Break the Floor test environment can be found here:
break-samsara.nirvana.finance

Samsara is live, with new market launching over time:
samsara.nirvana.finance 

Enter Samsara.

The Problem Every Crypto Launch Shares

If you've been in crypto for more than a few weeks, you've seen it happen.

A promising project announces a token launch. The community is excited. The technology is solid. The fundamentals look great.

Then, within milliseconds of launch, bots drain the initial liquidity. Early snipers accumulate massive positions at rock-bottom prices. By the time regular participants can even connect their wallets, the price has already pumped 10x. And those same snipers are preparing to dump on everyone who arrived "late", aka actual humans.

This is not an edge case. It's the default outcome. And it's one of the primary reasons crypto launches have become synonymous with extraction rather than value creation.

If left unaddressed, Samsara's derivatives (navTokens) would be especially vulnerable to the sniper problem. Why?

Because, unlike most launches, where price can go up or down, navTokens can only rise from their starting price. The TGE price, denominated in the underlying asset, is always the all-time low, forever. That's because all navTokens have permanently embedded value. They're backed by a mathematically impenetrable floor price (the NAV) that's always solvent and redeemable. The starting price for a navToken is equal to the floor price, offering zero downside risk and untold upside against its underlying asset.

The opportunity to be first is infinitely asymmetric. We needed to come up with a solution, or else snipers would ruin the party for everyone.

Enter the Anti-Sniper Fee: The Great Equalizer

Samsara's navToken launches introduce a mechanism so elegant it almost seems obvious: a temporary, decaying mint fee that makes sniping economically irrational.

Here's how it works:

At launch, the mint fee starts at 99%.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Anyone attempting to mint navTokens the instant they go live would pay a 99% fee, meaning a 100 SOL deposit would only yield 1 SOL worth of navTokens.

Bots may be fast, but they're not stupid. A 99% entry cost makes sniping a losing proposition from the start.

But the fee doesn't stay at 99% for long. It decays exponentially over a two-hour window, creating a natural, human-friendly launch curve:

- 0 minutes after TGE: 99%

- 30 minutes: ~22%

- 60 minutes: ~8%

- 90 minutes: ~1%

- 120 minutes: 0%

After two hours, the anti-sniper fee reaches zero, and the market operates with standard protocol fees (starting at 1%, adjustable via governance).

Why This Changes Everything

1. Bots Lose Their Advantage. The entire bot-sniping strategy relies on being first. Speed is meaningless when being first means paying a 99% fee, eliminating the structural advantage that speed provides. Everyone has the same opportunity to get in at the lowest price.

2. Price Discovery Becomes Real. Traditional launches create artificial price discovery. When bots accumulate at the lowest prices and immediately push markets higher, the "discovered" price reflects extraction rather than genuine demand. With navToken launches, early participants face a tradeoff: enter sooner and pay higher fees, or wait and potentially face higher prices from organic demand. This creates authentic price discovery where the market price reflects actual willingness to pay, not who had the fastest bot. Instead of a race, it becomes a fair game of price prediction.

3. Token Distribution Becomes Truly Fair. navTokens have no insider allocations, no presales, and no airdrops, and because of the anti-sniper fee, they have no snipers hoarding the supply. Every single navToken in supply was bought at a fair price by its owner, with equal opportunity for all.

A subtle but important point that makes navTokens even more fair is that it's impossible to hoard the supply.

Why?

Most tokens rely on scarcity to cement their value proposition, so they have a capped supply. But because navTokens are embedded with permanent value, they don't need to rely on scarcity. They have an infinite supply, and every time a token is minted, the floor price rises.

A recently emerging narrative from creators like @TheWhiteWhaleV2 (on X) is that supply control is desirable. The idea is, "If my diamond-handed insiders and I don't hoard the supply, paper hands will."

Look how that turned out:

Samsara takes a different approach.

It's a system where nobody can hoard the supply, because the supply can always expand, diluting concentration while simultaneously increasing value. That's the benefit of a system based on abundance.

The Math in Action

Let's walk through a concrete example to see how a navToken TGE plays out:

Scenario: navSOL Launch

• Current SOL price: $100

• navSOL launch price: 0.01 SOL (approximately $1)

• Your deposit: 100 SOL

If you mint at different times:

*Excludes baseline, price impact, and previous price movement

• Instant (0 min) — 99% fee → ~99 navSOL

• 10 minutes — ~50% fee→ ~4,900 navSOL

• 30 minutes — ~22% fee → ~7,700 navSOL

• 60 minutes — ~8% fee→ ~9,100 navSOL

• 90 minutes — ~1% fee → ~9,800 navSOL

• 120+ minutes — 0% fee → ~9,900 navSOL

Clearly, patience is rewarded.

But, here's where the game theory gets interesting: if there's a lot of capital waiting until fees are low, then the participants who enter at a higher fee might actually get better prices before organic demand pushes the market higher.

This creates a natural, gradual accumulation pattern rather than a single explosive moment that bots can exploit.

Deterministic Price Impact

Samsara uses a bonding curve to determine navToken prices based on supply. The mechanics are precise:

For every 15,000 tokens minted, the market price increases by the starting price (~$1.00). This means a navToken's price will double from its launch price with approximately $22,500 of net inflows. The curve is deterministic. There's no hidden order book, no market makers, and no sudden liquidity removals. The price impact of any action is calculable before you take it. Everyone plays by the same set of transparent rules.

Based on this price curve, here is a price and market cap cheat sheet based on net inflows into the market, after fees:

The Strategic Implications

For participants, the anti-sniper fee fundamentally changes how you approach a navToken launch:

You don't need to rush.

The two-hour decay window gives you time to prepare properly. Check your wallet. Verify the contract address. Make sure you understand the token you're buying. Do the math on entry costs vs. expected price appreciation.

You can strategize around timing.

A game-theoretic emerges where your optimal entry point depends on your read of overall demand. If you expect massive inflows, entering earlier at higher fees might still be profitable. If you expect gradual accumulation, waiting pays.

You're competing with your prediction skills, not infrastructure.

Without bots dominating the first moments, your edge comes from understanding the asset, the community, and the market, not from owning a faster server or a more sophisticated bot.

Pro tip: You can see the last "effective price" of a navToken by looking at the "price" column of the most recent mint (below the chart).

Revenue Generation for the Ecosystem

The anti-sniper fee naturally generates substantial revenue. Rather than going directly into the pockets of developers, this revenue is circulated throughout the ecosystem:

• 25% goes directly into raising the navToken's floor price, dripping in gradually.

• 25% goes directly to depositors of prANA, Nirvana's governance token, earned exclusively by staking ANA.

• 50% is used to buy ANA, Nirvana's value capture token.

This revenue circulation strengthens the ecosystem, like branches of a tree feeding energy back to its trunk.

A New Standard for Fair Launches

The anti-sniper fee represents something bigger than a single mechanism. It's a statement about what crypto launches should look like. For years, the industry has accepted extraction as inevitable. "That's just how launches work." "The bots always win." "You have to be first, or you're exit liquidity."

navTokens prove this isn't true.

With thoughtful mechanism design, launches can be events that build communities rather than fragment them. They can be moments of collective participation instead of zero-sum extraction games.

The anti-sniper fee doesn't just protect participants from bots, it creates the conditions for genuine price discovery, fair distribution, and sustainable market development. It turns the launch from a sprint into a strategic process—one where humans can actually participate.

And the result?

Getting Ready for a Samsara Launch

This week, navETH and navBTC will launch. Here's your preparation checklist:

1. Understand the underlying asset.

navTokens are derivatives. Their value proposition depends on your thesis about the underlying asset.

2. Calculate your fee/entry price tolerance.

At what fee level does entry make sense, given your expected holding period and price targets?

3. Don't panic about being "late."

Remember: the floor price means you can never lose more than the difference between the market price and the floor (against the underlying asset).

And with the anti-sniper fee, there's no early-bird advantage that makes you "late" by being human. Even if you arrive after the two-hour launch window, you can comfortably buy knowing nobody got in for pennies on the dollar and is waiting to dump on you.

4. Consider the full value proposition.

navTokens aren't just about launch dynamics. They offer structural price asymmetry—magnified upside, mathematically limited downside against the underlying asset—plus interest-free loans with zero liquidation risk.

The launch is just the beginning.

The Fair-Launch Crypto Deserves

The anti-sniper fee is simple: a decaying fee that makes sniping economically irrational. But its implications ripple through the entire launch experience.

It means communities can gather for a launch and actually participate.

It means price discovery reflects genuine demand.

It means the playing field is truly level.

Combined with navToken's foundational properties—fair distribution, deterministic pricing, verifiable floor values—the result is a launch mechanism that feels like what crypto was supposed to be all along: transparent, fair, and accessible to everyone.

The bots had their run.

It's time for a new standard.

If you're ready to jump down the rabbit hole, check out my ultimate guide to the Samsara App: https://paragraph.com/@nirvana-3/samsara-app-walkthrough

docs.nirvana.finance

Thanks for reading.

What are navTokens?

navTokens are a new class of derivatives engineered to outperform their underlying assets. They offer:

• Magnified upside potential against the base asset

• Mathematically limited downside risk—your losses are capped against the base asset

• Interest-free credit with zero liquidation risk

Each navToken is backed by a single-asset reserve. navSOL is backed by SOL, navZEC is backed by bridged ZEC, and so on. This reserve creates the foundation for the floor price mechanism that protects your position and enables borrowing.

The value of a navToken multiplies against its underlying asset as demand comes in. The floor price follows the market price, capping your maximum loss permanently against the underlying asset. Additionally, fees from every buy, sell, and borrow raise the floor.

The Homepage

At the bottom of the Samsara homepage, you'll find all available navTokens displayed with key metrics.

Ascent (The Performance Multiple)

The first number you'll notice—like "10.00x" on navSOL—is the performance multiple. This tracks performance against the base asset since launch. A 10.00x multiple means navSOL has increased 10 times in price relative to its SOL starting price. In other words, if the starting conversion rate was 0.007 navSOL per SOL, a 10x multiple implies that the current conversion rate is now 0.07 SOL.

Price Display

Each navToken shows its price in two formats:

• USD value for easy reference

• Conversion rate to the underlying asset (e.g., how much SOL one navSOL represents)
  

The Floor

The floor is a mathematically verifiable minimum price that is always redeemable. Market price can never fall below it. It offers built-in price protection for navTokens.

The coverage percentage displays the portion of the market price that is protected by the floor. For example, 70% coverage means 70% of navSOL's market value is protected against SOL—the price can't drop more than 30% relative to SOL.

ARP (Average Revenue per prANA)

prANA is Nirvana's governance token, earned exclusively by staking ANA. Depositing prANA into any market earns you a share of that market's revenue. ARP shows the average revenue earned per prANA token deposited in that market.

Quick Navigation

Use the search bar at the top of any page to quickly switch between markets. Each market has dedicated Trade, Earn, and Governance pages accessible from anywhere in the app.

The Trade Page

From the home page, click on any market to view the trade page.

Each navToken has its own dedicated trade page featuring a dual-line chart:

• Top line: Market price

• Bottom line: Floor price

At the top-right of the chart, you can select your timeframe as well as toggle between USD and base asset pricing. When priced in the underlying asset (e.g., SOL), the floor can only increase; by design, it can never decrease, even if all navTokens are redeemed at once. When viewed in USD, the floor will appear to fluctuate with the price movement of the underlying asset.

The primary price metric displayed by default is the performance multiple, which tracks performance since TGE (it always starts at 1x). The top-left of the chart shows the current conversion rate between the navToken and its underlying asset, which always corresponds directly to the multiple.

You can also hover over the chart to see historical data, including price, coverage, and redeemable value (market conversion rate).

Buying navTokens

To buy a navToken:

1. Find the trade panel on the top-right side of the trade page, and select the “Buy” tab.

2. Enter the amount of base asset you want to use (e.g., 0.1 SOL)

3. Click Review Order to see:

• Buy fee

• Fill Price Delta

• Price impact

4. Click the gear icon to adjust slippage and priority fee settings if needed.

5. Click Buy navSOL and approve the transaction in your wallet.

Your navTokens are automatically deposited into the protocol, allowing you to borrow against them immediately. Deposited navTokens can be sold at any time by selecting the “Sell” tab.

Borrowing Against Your navTokens

The floor value of your holdings determines the amount you can borrow. Here's a useful tip: the coverage percentage doubles as your maximum LTV (Loan-to-Value ratio). If coverage is 70%, you can borrow up to 70% of your position's value at the current price.

To borrow:

1. Select the “Borrow” tab in the trading panel.

2. Enter the amount you wish to borrow (or click on the populated figure to max-borrow).

3. Click to review the order and see applicable fees.

4. Confirm the transaction.

All borrowing is interest-free and carries zero liquidation risk. Borrowing locks your navTokens as collateral until your loan is repaid. Loans can be repaid at any time on the “Repay” tab.

Earning Revenue with prANA

The Earn page is where you can deposit prANA to receive a share of each market's revenue.

What is prANA?

prANA is Nirvana's governance token, earned exclusively by staking ANA. The more prANA you accumulate and deposit, the larger your share of revenue.

Depositing prANA

1. Navigate to the Earn page for your chosen market

2. Enter the amount of prANA you want to deposit in the top-right earn panel.

3. Click Deposit and confirm in your wallet

Directly to the left, you can see the number of prANA you deposited and your share of this market’s prANA pool. Below that, you can claim your revenue, paid in the underlying asset.

You can scroll down to see key statistics, including total revenue distributed, current ARP, and total prANA deposited in the pool.

Participating in Governance

In addition to revenue share, your deposited prANA grants voting power to influence market parameters. Governance decisions are tallied weekly and implemented automatically on-chain.

Governable Parameters

Each market has adjustable parameters, including:

• Buy fee

• Sell fee

• Borrow fee

Full explanations of all governable parameters are available in the docs.

How to Vote

1. Navigate to the Governance page

2. Deposit prANA if you haven’t already on the earn page.

3. Click the up or down arrow to choose your direction (default is up).

4. Type the percentage of your voting power you wish to allocate to each parameter.

5. Click “Save Votes” and confirm the transaction

Votes can be changed at any time.

My Portfolio

Navigate to the “My Portfolio” page by clicking the figure in the top-right next to your wallet address. Here, you’ll find a comprehensive breakdown of your holdings across all markets.

Portfolio Overview

Your portfolio displays:

• Deposited navTokens and current prices

• Outstanding debt

• Unclaimed rewards

• Deposited prANA

• Total equity

Click any market to see a detailed breakdown for that specific position.

Claiming All Rewards

The "My Portfolio" page makes it easy to claim all accumulated rewards across markets with a single click. Just click “Claim All” and confirm to collect your revenue share.

Depositing and Withdrawing navTokens

If you purchased navTokens on an external market such as a DEX aggregator, they'll arrive in your wallet. To borrow against them, you’ll need to deposit them into the Samsara app:

1. Navigate to the Trade page

2. Below the trade panel, click “Deposit” and confirm.

To use navTokens in external liquidity pools, use the Withdraw function to move them back to your wallet.

1. Navigate to “My Portfolio”.

2. Select the appropriate market.

3. Select the ellipsis (three dots) in the top-left next to “navTokens Deposited”.

4. Select “Withdraw” and confirm.

Still Have Questions?

Check out our docs here: docs.nirvana.finance

And feel free to reach out to us in Discord, where one of our team or community members will be happy to help: discord.gg/nirvanafi

Happy outperforming!

samsara.nirvana.finance

For months, we have built in silence, refining the mechanisms that will drive the next evolution of decentralized value. Now is the moment to step into the flow.

Ultimately, Samsara is far more than just a marketplace. It represents a living system in which the “floor” serves as the reserve, and the token represents the premium. To protect this sanctuary and ensure a fair genesis for all participants, we are rolling out a staggered, high-security launch sequence.

Here is everything you need to know about the launch of the nav token ecosystem.

The Launch Program and Mechanics

We are initiating the cycle with high-conviction assets.

• Jan 13th: SOL

• BONK

• cbBTC

• ORE

• JLP

• ZEC

• ETH

In addition to the launch schedule, we have also gone to great lengths to engineer a boosted decaying fee mechanism for every launch. The fee mechanism is designed explicitly to neutralize bots, stop any unwanted “doorbuster” behavior, and overall ensure that real buyers get the fair entry they deserve.

The market opens with a dynamic fee on buys only (but not borrows nor sells). This acts as a Dutch Auction, starting high and decaying rapidly to baseline.

• Launch (0 min): 99% Added Fee

• 30 mins: 20% Added Fee

• 60 mins: 5% Added Fee

• 120 mins: 0% Added Fee (Market Normalization)

Therefore, if anyone attempts to snipe at launch, they will pay a premium that is reinvested directly into the protocol to purchase ANA and bolster the ecosystem. The importance of the anti-sniper protection lies in the fact that the launch price of a Samsara token is the lowest price it will ever be.  If it were not for the Dutch Auction, there would be a rush to buy, which gives an unfair advantage to bots.

Whitelist & Exclusive Access

For the SOL launch, we are honoring those who helped us pave the way. Participants of the Temple of the Floor and the Break the Floor campaigns have been whitelisted.

What does this mean?

• Privilege: You have 24-hour exclusive pre-access to the SOL launch.

• Verification: The protocol automatically checks your wallet against our snapshot of Discord IDs and addresses.

Market Parameters

Once the "Dutch Auction" phase ends, the market settles into its permanent abundance parameters. Those parameters are shown below:

Closing

The protocols are set. The floor is waiting. 

Prepare your liquidity for January 13th.

Join our community: discord.com/invite/nirvanafi

The #1 (by a wide margin) being “how can anything guarantee a floor price?”

And then there is the second most common question: “huh - why isn’t this bigger?”

There’s a bewildered frustration at the sad situation we’ve been living with. Once you see a floor price, it’s hard to go back.

It seems so obvious. Like putting wheels on luggage for the first time. Why wasn’t anyone doing this long before? We can have permanent liquidity with absolute transparency plus liquidation-risk-free leverage with mathematical certainty. This model stretches the meaning of “asset” for the better. It combines “asset” with “market” in a powerful grand unification. If regulation ever comes to crypto, and that regulation does not try to torture it into legacy categories, the regulators would probably require crypto-native commodities look a lot like Nirvana. If you want to be classified as a “crypto product,” act like it.

And there we have the reason for Nirvana’s steady trajectory. Rather than rely on artificial racketeering that can give a quick sugar rush to the price chart, the choice has always been to walk in Bitcoin’s footsteps. Allow a core of true conviction to form, establish trust by weathering storms, and then cross the chasm into mass adoption. That time is near.

ANA is not an app that needs new sign-ups to stay operational. It is an instrument for wealth preservation. And while I sometimes wonder whether the inventors of Bitcoin would be happy with what it has become today, the beauty of ANA is that it accomplishes its mission wherever the world takes it. It matters not if ANA becomes the backbone of Solana DeFi, the backend to checking accounts, or gets stockpiled by sovereign wealth. It has one purpose only: to store value. It is a value protocol. Think something as neutral as HTTP.

Over this last year, that proposition has proven itself impressively. Year-to-date, Nirvana has outperformed the larger crypto market. With its present floor price, it doesn’t really have an option not to. In fairness though, lots of assets have outperformed the crypto market. But the way Nirvana stands out from its milieu is impossible to miss.

Proving the soundness of the algorithm is the necessary first step. And as the team enthusiastically rears up for the second, I want to step back to reflect on the past, the present purpose, and the future potential.

Nirvana's thesis

In the beginning, there was the thought: what would an ideal “store-of-value” look like?

Three criteria are key:

1. Portability

2. Credit-worthiness

3. And most importantly - that it actually stores value

The portability of ANA is inherited by using a blockchain. You can send it anywhere on Earth in under 30 seconds. Easy to take for granted these days, yet important to remember. If ANA were entangled with regulated assets like tokenized U.S equities, the red-tape would snare its free transfer.

Credit-worthiness is a finance-speak way to say an asset is useful. Can this be put to use elsewhere? If no one accepts it as a collateral, it hardly qualifies as having value. Giving ANA a floor price makes it as simple a collateral as one could hope for.

But, when you think about it, a floor doesn’t necessarily need to stay up. It could change gradually and still be a high-conviction collateral. In ANA’s case, the floor only moves in one direction. That is what it means “to store” value. Like a black hole, once the value goes in, it never comes out.

As the saying goes, “price is what you pay, value is what you get.” I think there is a deep truth to this adage (and it applies to more than just finance). Though they seem like equal opposites at first glance, there is a profound difference between “buying” and “selling.” Just think of the worst case scenarios in either case. When you sell badly, you miss out on opportunity. But when you buy badly, you lose what you had. The price that you buy at and the value that you sell for hit differently.

Substituting from that expression, a “store of value” is a “store of what you get” when you sell. The ideal way to store value is to keep a promise on what it will be worth if sold. This promise must be kept for all tokens equally, so there must be a protocol that carefully keeps the books. And the only way to keep a promise is to make that bookkeeping absolutely algorithmic.

The thesis is the same as crypto’s: algorithms do not require “trust”, which is exactly why they command it. Bitcoin owes its fame to solving trustless settlement; Nirvana solves trustless value. By holding onto crypto’s original principle while the rest of the sector accelerates away from it, Nirvana will stand out.

Nirvana's mission

It’s not overly reductive to say I just want ANA to work. By “work” I mean I want it to store value.

Frankly, very few things on this planet do. You can count them on two hands. Pockets of real-estate, some hard commodities, and a few currencies are about the only candidates – and even they are prone to slipping double-digit percentages in bursts. Being a large-scale store of value is a rare club to join. And due to this rareness, there has been very little innovation over the last 500 years.

I became obsessed with “value storage” shortly after becoming obsessed with “crypto.” The central idea resonated with me: it is worth the experiment to have fully algorithmic systems that can be freely used. At bottom, that’s all “crypto” is. All this blockchain technology is just an implementation detail for how to actually run a purely algorithmic system.

The flashiest thing about crypto is the price of it. I noticed these things called “tokens” (fungible or otherwise), that people were buying despite ridiculous volatility. But did these people sell them? I observed time and again how my friends and friend-of-friends get devastated from not selling in time. The price they paid was not the value they got.

It shocked me. I had never seen anything like it. And it shocked me all the more to peek behind the curtain and see how un-crypto most “crypto” really was. Yes, the blockchains were performing remarkably well at storing numbers with algorithms, but the thing we call “crypto” was hardly storing value. I wanted to apply crypto’s central idea (be algorithmic, not arbitrary) to the problem most direly in need of it: selling.

And so, inspired by algorithmic settlement systems (blockchains), there emerged an algorithmic value system. We call it the Assured Value Machine (AVM). It is just the result of pushing crypto’s guiding principles into the structure of markets. To the motto “not your keys, not your crypto” we add “not your liquidity, not your value.”

Be the change

The secondary mission is to change the course of crypto’s history itself. In a climate where narratives rise and fall in a matter of months, this is not as wildly ambitious as it sounds. Crypto is having a crisis of motivation at this moment. It is losing touch with what it is for. And, even worse, I’ve heard from countless good actors that they run into headwinds when trying to connect crypto to the outside world because the outside world thinks (rightfully) that “crypto” is latin for “scam.”

The sooner crypto sheds the negative reputation, the better. And I’m calling it now: merging with Wall Street is not the answer. What we need is a healthy “crypto conservatism” – a return to roots, and preserving of the past.

Nirvana is leading by example. It reverses the current playbook, but it is really just what crypto meant to be from the start: algorithmic. You can only have algorithmic value if you have algorithmic liquidity (value is what you get, and all you get is what the market gives). Since the simplest solution is often the best, Nirvana goes all the way on this point: make 100% of an asset’s liquidity and supply algorithmic. Do not print a single token outside the rules of the system.

Algorithms cannot commit fraud. If more crypto projects adopt the algorithmic style, then little by little crypto’s reputation will return to form. The Nirvana protocol is demonstrating that there is another viable path to follow. Now with more new projects voluntarily taking that path, crypto will rehabilitate its image in the public eye.

You could say the goal is to make 2-line price charts common-sense. If they become common-sense, crypto becomes more appealing. It becomes something distinct from conventional finance. Clear out the pollution, and more money will wade into the waters.

Which brings me to the strategy for 2026.

Nirvana's strategy

ANA is the store of value, prANA is the life-blood of the system, and all other projects feed into this nucleus.

There are three challenges with being as novel as Nirvana:

1. Legacy infrastructure does not understand it

2. DeFi users do not believe it

3. Retail customers do not know about it

We are solving all three through empire building. The more projects that use the AVM, the more powerful its influence.

1) Before aggregators and dashboards will support the AVM, they need a good reason to do so. Increasing the number of separate projects and assets at stake helps make the case. If a very popular asset is doing well on, say, Samsara, the team behind that asset might make a phone call to the right person to help Samsara markets get hooked into popular tools. Eventually, aggregator dashboards will create a special category for AVM assets, just as they did for “launchpad” memecoins last year.

2) The expansion of the AVM will also have a trickle-down effect into the DeFi userbase. Mindshare matters. Take for example “perpetuals.” In my informal polling, hardly anyone can explain how a perpetuals exchange works top to bottom, and yet over $50T notional flows through them. Trust builds from consensus. As volume flows through Samsara (and other AVM projects), the incredulity about the math will give way to acceptance as a matter of course.

3) The problem of “distribution” is notoriously thorny in crypto. Other teams are now taking this on themselves. They are building their own products on top of the AVM engine. As each one captures their own slice of the market, in their own way, they lay pavement for more roads leading back to Nirvana.

Not to mention that the revenue collected from this empire all goes back to the Nirvana protocol. Like a good empire, there is a tax to use its infrastructure. And that tax goes to the greater good of the empire itself. Today it’s called “SaaS.”

All of the “platform” revenue from Samsara goes to market buy ANA. That ANA is effectively buried, and further development funded from drawing credit on that ANA. On top of this, all of the tax from 3rd-party expansion projects (for example the next killer launchpad) will also be deployed 100% to buy ANA.

To be personally open: the motivation for using 100% of revenue to buy ANA is not exactly to see ANA pump (though that it is a nice way to catalyze organic demand). The reason is more philosophical. I just do not want to be burdened with a balance sheet, and anxious about managing it in the public eye. Some people want that job and set up treasuries & foundations. I find the doom of crypto projects is when humans take control. I want all of this to be as close to a perfectly autonomous algorithm as possible. Eventually, the crank to collect revenue and buy ANA will be permissionless. It’s the same guiding principle at every level.

On revenue

Speaking of revenue, there will be a greater share to the protocol (token holders). After this year of bootstrapping, it is time to begin transitioning away from being a “startup” and into a “protocol.” Right now 15% of revenue goes to prANA. It will change to 50% to prANA and the floor investment together (governance decides the split). That is an increase in cashflow by 3.33x.

I’d prefer to have all the revenue go to the protocol. I want the protocol to be pure, and not beholden to “a team”. That is where this is heading. The revenue share to the team (to fund audits, engineering, marketing, business development) will be cut in half on a yearly cadence. If things are going well, it will reduce even faster. The highest priority is to make Nirvana successful and self-sustaining. Bitcoin comes to mind as a role model.

This year of bootstrapping had a razor thin budget which would not have sufficed for a less mission-driven, passionate team. I am personally very reluctant to raise private money for Nirvana, because that goes counter to the goal of being a pure protocol. What little money was raised to help get things kickstarted was paid with revenue-share, making the “raise” similar to debt-financing. This decision to DIY has required that the team compensate with sweat and the community with patience. In the long run, I believe it will be for the best to be unencumbered.

A grant would be more aligned than for-profit capital. After all, one of the goals of Nirvana is to improve crypto as a whole. In that spirit, the core team will take over the USDC that remains uncollected from the year-long “restitutions” claim portal. Some background: years ago, a different product was hacked, and millions stolen. In a fortunate turn of events, the United States Court prosecuted the thief (the first such case for them), and as part of the plea deal restored the stolen funds. I thought it most fair to take a snapshot of the Solana blockchain immediately prior to the hack, and return the money to affected users pro-rata based on the dollar-value of their equity at the time of the hack. Additionally, these users received pro-rata shares of perpetual revenue from Nirvana. The claims portal has been open for a year, and now it is most practical to use the remaining money for runway to grow the product, rather than let that capital sit idle.

On retail

We’re in the midst of developing the core protocol. Next comes packaging. There will always be two “layers” to Nirvana: a power-user view into the inner workings of the protocol, and a normal-user frontend optimized for parking wealth and watching it grow.

I see Nirvana evolving into a digital savings account. It is a crypto asset that gives zero-interest credit. This is a very powerful backend for very enticing products. In time, a simple app that allows for simple ACH in and out is what will capture mass adoption.

But in order to be a global-scale multi-trillion dollar reserve asset, you must streamline the offering. The basket of 2021-era DeFi “tokenomics” runs contrary to the goal. And so the immediate next phase will be some spring cleaning of the features in preparation for a simpler pitch.

Nirvana's improvements

The two themes of these improvements are simplification and sustainability. Some things deal with quality-of-life, others for multi-decade scale.

Progress will be iterative, with changes starting to land this December.

Phasing out NIRV

Back when Nirvana was designed, the crypto ethos was a bit more, shall we say, aspirational than it is today. The idea to have a branded “stablecoin” which was going to be used as an eligible collateral all over the world of DeFi was too dazzling to suffer scrutiny. During this era, loads of other projects were creating their own stablecoins which were also really just derivatives of USDC. And then there were higher-level projects that would wrap up these many different stablecoins into one big basket in order to produce . . . yet another stablecoin. Different times.

Suffice it to say, the world needs not another one. And we will gently phase it out. Here’s how:

• Users will be able to borrow USDC directly from the market in just the same way you could borrow NIRV.

• Users will no longer be able to borrow NIRV.

• Users will be able to repay their existing NIRV debt with either USDC or NIRV (after all, NIRV is just wrapped USDC). Repaying either way clears the same debt 1:1. Repaying with NIRV burns the NIRV. Repaying with USDC will replace the NIRV in the market’s liquidity reserve, which also burns that NIRV.

• Shrewd readers will ask: what if there is no NIRV in the market’s liquidity account? Can I still repay my debt with USDC? Yes. The program will simply hold that excess USDC in a spill account. Whenever someone tries to buy ANA with NIRV, the program will intercept that request, burn the NIRV, and complete the purchase with USDC.

• The ability to buy ANA with NIRV will remain intact, as will the ability to sell ANA for NIRV. Although annoying, we must support these operations so that NIRV maintains its 1:1 peg with USDC.

In short, the only feature turned off is the ability to borrow NIRV. So no new NIRV will enter supply. As people repay their debt (either in NIRV or in USDC), NIRV will be burned away. I suspect some dust will always remain as a collector’s item reminding us of times gone by.

To be clear: “phasing out” NIRV does not mean it will lose its peg or cease being supported. It will just stop being created, and so will naturally & gracefully fade away.

Unifying revenue

Revenue will be settled only in USDC tokens. Today, it is settled in ANA & NIRV, which is overly complicated for delivering revenue. Plus, it is inconvenient that people need to perform swaps to exit. I want revenue to feel more like a classic dividend.

The difference will only lie in how fees are handled.

• Today when buying, the fee is taken off the ANA out. With this change, the fee will be taken off the USDC going in.

• Today when selling, the fee is taken off the ANA in. With this change, the fee will be taken off the USDC out.

• Since NIRV borrowing will be turned off, the same fee will just be applied to the USDC borrowed.

• There will be no fee to “unstake” ANA. That feels like hostage-fi to me, and it should go.

Another side note for the shrewd reader (you know who you are): if fee revenues are settled in USDC, how does that work when people trade with NIRV? Yes, that is a wrinkle. The program itself will handle converting NIRV into USDC (essentially swapping it internally in the market) and then paying the USDC out. No one will notice the difference, and internally swapping NIRV for USDC has no effect on the economics of the protocol.

Floor investment

If you’ve been following Nirvana, you know this has been a long time coming. A portion of revenue (in USDC!) will be sent directly into raising the floor. We’re already seeing this behavior in the Samsara devnet demo, and it is fun watching the floor rise even when prices don’t.

The floor raise from fees is mildly throttled, but effectively continuous. It is on the order of raising the floor at most $0.01 every 10 minutes (not exact numbers, but in the vicinity). Why is there a throttle? It is good to have “potential energy” for future raises stored up like a coiled spring. Even if volume is flat for a period of time, the trickling floor raise keeps going.

In practice, the amount of fee revenue dedicated to the floor is far less effective than price appreciation of ANA when it comes to raising it. But over time the fee revenue adds up substantially. In any case, the amount of revenue going to the floor is up to governance (see below).

There are two rules for Nirvana’s floor raise:

1. Raising the floor shall not make the market insolvent. That is, you must always be able to sell 100% of ANA and receive the floor price for the last token out.

2. Raising the floor shall not change the price of ANA.

You can deduce most of the restrictions around the floor raise algorithm from these two rules. One worth underscoring here is that the floor cannot rise if the price is on the floor. That would break Rule #2. So, you won’t see the auto floor raise happen if an extra $0.01 would overtake the current price of ANA. The “potential energy” stays put until ANA moves high enough to give it room.

Scarcer prANA, pricier ANA

File this one again under “Hey 2021 called, and they want their tokenomics back.” There are going to be big changes to prANA to make it more valuable & sustainable. By making prANA harder to get, it makes ANA more valuable as the only way to get it.

The prANA token is about to get a lot more scarce. Think of the preceding year as a protracted “early bird special” where those brave enough to take a risk on Nirvana got a very good deal on their prANA holdings.

The guiding idea of prANA is that it represents ANA multiplied by Time. It is a fungible record of how much ANA you hold and for how long you have held it. Time is incentivized along with size. This is the right goal, but the current implementation is faulty. Here are the fixes:

Bounded prANA emissions

Currently prANA is emitted at a flat rate per ANA. This may seem like dilution (it is!), but the catch is that it does not dilute your “ratio.” There is always a competition to “keep up” with everyone as they earn at the same rate. If you sell your ANA, you end up “left behind” while others keep earning.

That being said, there is a much better system.

Instead of emitting prANA at a flat rate per ANA, it will just be emitted at an independent rate on its own. The amount of new prANA does not depend on the amount of ANA deposited. It is shared out to ANA depositors pro-rata.

With this change, the initial rate of prANA per year will start at roughly half of last year’s. We should keep things somewhat smooth with the past. But right after turning on, it will immediately begin decreasing.

The amount of prANA emitted per year will decay with time, inevitably going near zero in the long run. The supply is effectively capped. The decay rate will start at 15% per year, which is roughly equivalent to cutting the prANA rate in half every 4 years (like Bitcoin’s “halving” schedule). This decay will happen continuously.

The decision to mimic Bitcoin’s decay rate is arbitrary. It is just a place to start. As elsewhere, Nirvana believes in good governance and the governors (who vote with prANA) can change this rate of decay. They can vote to increase the rate of decay or slow it. But they cannot “reverse” the decay (which would increase the rate of prANA emissions). Every time the prANA rate decays, that was the highest it will ever be for the rest of time. If the voters were able to move the decay rate down to 0%, all that means is that the prANA rate stops decaying – until voters raise it and start chipping away at the decay rate again.

Thus, it can’t be predicted what the final supply of prANA will be. But it is guaranteed that its rate of emission will never increase.

Loyalty points

Remember that prANA is meant to reward time. A loyal holder should be rewarded more than someone who buys and quickly sells.

There are myriad ways that crypto projects have tackled this problem of time-based rewards. Nirvana is going to do the simplest and least cumbersome for users. No lock-ups and no penalties on your principal.

While prANA is being emitted continuously, it is shared pro-rata to all the ANA depositors. Your share of the deposited ANA is equal to your share of the emitted prANA. The time reward comes in the form of a boost to your share value. This boost is a flat rate (starting at 100% APR, and this value is governed too!) on the ANA you hold in escrow. As you hold, this boost accumulates with time.

For example: if you have 100 ANA deposited, this amounts to 100 shares of the prANA emissions. With a 100% APR, after 6 months you will have earned a 50 unit “boost” to your share-value. After 1 year, you will have earned 100 boost-shares, raising your total share-value to 200.

Great - but this is happening for everyone else equally, so what difference does it make?

There is a penalty for withdrawing. That penalty is that your boost gets “slashed” proportionately to how much withdrawn. And then you have to start earning that boost all over again.

So, in the previous example you have 100 ANA with a 100 boost you’ve earned over the year. Let’s say another year goes by and you’ve earned another 100 boost, so now your total boost is 200.

If you withdraw 75 ANA (which is 75% of your principle), then your boost gets slashed by 75%. That 200 becomes 50. So now you have 25 + 50 = 75 share power. If you immediately deposit more ANA, it will not bring your boost back. This is the penalty or dis-incentive for withdrawing, which is also the reward for loyalty.

This system is much better than the current. The overall supply of prANA is independent of it all, and yet this method nets the long-term holders more prANA than their peers. There is no extra dilution of prANA, just extra share-power for loyalists.

As a hard policy, the max boost-to-real-ANA ratio one can accumulate is 2.718. There needs to be a ceiling to stop runaway old money.

Burn to earn

The more scarce prANA is, the more valuable. The more valuable prANA is, the more value from holding ANA. The value of prANA pulls up the value of ANA.

If prANA keeps being emitted, how can it be scarce?

We need a prANA incinerator. The prANA incinerator is fueled by revenue.

It is not ok with me that someone can buy ANA, hold it for a while, sell, and keep earning revenue with their prANA tokens in perpetuity. If you do not still hold ANA (and are thus not earning prANA), you should not be collecting revenue.

The solution is that prANA must be spent (i.e. “burned”) to receive the revenue. If someone is not still earning prANA, they will eventually run out of their stash. It seems like such an obvious way to balance token emissions, I do not know why more crypto projects don’t do this.

The way the burn-to-earn works is very simple and ever so slightly game-ified. Over a 1 week cadence, a pot of revenue accumulates from fees. We can all watch it fill up with USDC. During that week, people can burn their prANA to lock in a “share” of that pot. At the end of the epoch, the pot will be split among everyone who bought in, pro rata. For example, if the pot is $100k and there have been 50k prANA burned, that amounts to $2 per prANA.

This model is like a “buy-and-burn” in reverse: a “burn-and-buy.” Rather than the project auto-buying prANA on an open market, it lets the market do this actively. The protocol sets aside revenue, which can only be bought with prANA. The prANA economy decides the value of the token by spending it for that pot of money. The pot of weekly revenue is like “liquidity” for a prANA market to sell into. This is perfectly capital-efficient, where exactly the amount of revenue set aside to buy prANA gets used up completely.

Bear in mind that if you burn your prANA you can’t use it for governance. And that’s the point. Governing and revenue sharing are separate concerns. It is ok for “old money” to use their stockpile of prANA to steer the ship (since they are still incentivized by the revenue their prANA can access). But it is not ok for people with no skin in the game to collect revenue in perpetuity from their prANA.

Anti-bot add-on

Dear shrewd readers, I did not forget about you. There is one subtle issue to address: sniping. As we watch the pool fill, we also see the amount of burned prANA grow. We can weigh the dollars-per-prANA ratio in real time. There is thus a minor “sniping” problem where it would be rational to wait until the last minute before deciding whether the dollars-per-prANA ratio is favorable or not. Of course, sniping is not so easy because other people might have the same ambitions - but it is possible, and so should be dealt with.

Enter the game-ification for revenue collection. There is a minor “boost” to early burns to counteract the value of sniping. At the start of the epoch, 1 burned prANA amounts to 2x the “share value” of the pot’s revenue. You don’t know what the pot will actually be at the culmination of the week, and so get rewarded for this risk. At the end of the epoch, there is no boost, and 1 prANA is exactly 1 share. The decay rate is simply linear during the revenue epoch, which makes sense because your information grows roughly linearly over time. Why is the boost 2x at the beginning? Because the variance of the revenue per week should not be much more than 50%, and so a 2x boost for having 0 information about the week is plenty.

In the end, I doubt most users will notice this bot deterrent. It is such a minor bit of complexity that it does not even need to be on the UI. The thing is just: if something can be botted, it will. And a bot would be very unpleasant to live with. So this minor change helps level the playing field for humans and programs alike, which is worth the few paragraphs it takes to explain.

Governance parameters

Governance also needs a minor overhaul to make it easier to work with.

First of all, we have new items that need governing. The list of governable parameters is:

• Buy fee

• Sell fee

• Borrow fee

• Revenue-split between floor & prANA burners

• Floor raise amount from price appreciation

• Liquidity buffer for floor raising

• Decay rate for prANA emissions

• Rate of loyalty points for ANA depositors

Some of these items deserve a separate article on their own. Suffice it say, governance will be slightly amended to match the new system for revenue share, floor raising, and prANA emissions. It stays with the principled commitment to let token holders guide the protocol through time, adapting it to different market conditions. And it has safety-rails to protect against runaway extreme values.

Another improvement is how governance quantifies the small changes. The step from one value to the next will no longer be by ratio, but instead absolute values. This change in behavior has trade-offs, but I believe it is for the better. Suppose that the buy fee changes by 2 basis points every week. If it starts at 80bps, it would take about 20 weeks to reduce it by 50% to 40bps. But only 10 weeks to reduce it another 50% to 20bps. Unlike ratio-driven changes, the rate of change accelerates near small values and decelerates near large. There is a certain “naturalness” to ratios rather than absolute steps, but I believe this will be more intuitive for users to see clean changes.

In order to incentivize voting with passive income, a small amount of revenue (e.g. 5%) will be dedicated to the voters. If you vote for an epoch, you receive a share of revenue proportional to your number of votes. This 5% figure is taken off of the revenue dedicated to “prANA” (not the floor), and so the burn-to-earn will always have the remaining 95% for the sake of incinerating prANA.

Why is this share of revenue so small? I actually think it’s borderline too large. The point of the revenue share is to burn the prANA, in order to reduce its supply, increase its value, and thereby increase the value of ANA. Giving revenue to governors without burning their prANA goes against this goal. But, a little incentive won’t hurt.

Adaptive curve, lower trigger price

This is a feature I stumbled on when developing Samsara, and cannot believe I did not notice it until now. The upshot is that the “trigger price” (the price of ANA at which the floor can rise) can safely go lower as the price of ANA goes lower.

Without getting into too many technicals, the buy-depth of ANA can remain fixed when ANA sells back, which requires updating the curve. Thickening the buy-depth of ANA implies that newly purchased ANA will add more liquidity to the market. The added liquidity is what allows the floor to rise.

This feature is included in Samsara and the AVM demo (https://avm.nirvana.finance/).

It’s a minor change. But it does mean that if ANA sells back, the trigger price goes down, which is a nice improvement. ANA “heals” as it goes down, making the next floor raise more easily attainable.

One-click leverage

Another feature that was developed for Samsara will be added to Nirvana’s program: one-click leverage. In a single transaction a user can buy ANA, deposit it, borrow USDC, and repeat the cycle.

What is unique about Nirvana is that leverage is free of liquidation risk. That is because the maximum credit is equal to the minimum (floor) price of ANA. What this also means is that the amount of leverage you can take on increases as ANA goes near the floor. If ANA is at the floor, leverage is effectively “infinite” (since equity can be effectively zero), were it not for the fact that purchasing ANA will move it above the floor.

The current price of ANA dictates how much leverage is possible (from repeated buy-deposit-borrow iterations, which approach an asymptotic limit), and a user will be able to open a position easily at any legal leverage value.

The same goes for the reverse. A user can close out a position (withdraw-sell-repay) all in one transaction.

In honesty, I was hesitant for a long time to implement this. My overarching goal is to protect people’s wealth, and I do not want to make it over-easy for everyone to take on extreme risk. But the convenience of one-click edges out my scruples.

Aggregator-friendly internals

If you want to make a Solana DeFi program, I have some free advice: do not pool tokens into 1 master token account. Yes, it is simpler to work with and therefore easier to secure. But the aggregators & dashboards (which are made with mainly meme coins in mind) see this as “concentration of supply” and a red flag.

The program will be altered so that every user gets separate ANA & prANA deposit accounts implemented as separate “SPL token accounts” on the Solana blockchain. After this patch, the ecosystem tooling can actually count how many users there are by counting the token accounts. The team has also made in-roads with Kamino, Titan, and Jupiter to get integrated directly into their aggregators. The Nirvana AMM will be a first-party citizen, discoverable by their routers. These aggregators will be able to “see” the true liquidity inside Nirvana, which is a staggeringly large number for such a young asset.

Liquid "Staked" ANA

One problem with ANA is that leaving it deposited is too much of a good thing. The only way to get prANA is through holding ANA in escrow. For a rational holder, there is not much incentive to move ANA elsewhere.

The prANA emission was never meant to restrict ANA liquidity. Oftentimes, token projects employ bribes in order to reduce circulating supply. The incentive to “stake” makes the token more scarce and hopefully more valuable. Not so here. It was an unforeseen accident that ANA got “stuck” in the protocol. The goal was just to reward people for holding ANA over time.

The simple way to solve this is with a “Liquid Staked Token.” People can deposit ANA, collecting rewards, and still have liquid capital which can be used elsewhere.

One note: I do not like the word “staked” since it’s inappropriate in this context. There is nothing “at stake.” But until further notice that’s what we’ll call it.

The ANA LST will work like most others, which is that it grows in value in terms of ANA. At launch, 1 ANA LST is worth 1 ANA. Over time, it grows in value in terms of ANA. It will be a very nice collateral to use elsewhere. And most importantly: it collects value without tying up capital.

The way it collects value is through a simple, automated, zero-management system:

• There is a pool of ANA backing the LST

• You can mint an LST by depositing an ANA into this pool at the current redemption rate

• Or you can redeem an LST for ANA from the pool at that rate

• The redemption rate is simply the quantity of ANAs in the pool divided by the number of LSTs outstanding.

• The rate goes up as ANA is added to the pool, making the LST more valuable in terms of ANA

• The ANA comes from market-buys

• The cash comes from prANA burn

• All the prANA that the pool earns is immediately burned to earn the revenue for that epoch

The convenience of the ANA LST is that you can earn revenue without locking up your capital. And the simplicity of it is that it does not affect the overall design of the system. The LST is basically a 3rd party application built on top of Nirvana.

Why would you not opt to use the LST? There are two downsides:

1. LST holders do not receive prANA tokens. The LST system automatically and constantly burns the prANA it earns for revenue it uses to market-buy ANA. Certain users may rather want the prANA tokens themselves (to use for governance, Samsara, or elsewhere).

2. The LST does not work with Nirvana’s native credit system. Nirvana does not allow an LST to be collateralized in order to draw USDC credit. Only vanilla ANA can be used for that. This is a design decision, not a technical one, since an LST is worth strictly more than an ANA, and would function fine as a collateral. The reason for this design is that the point of the LST is to leave the confines of Nirvana. If the protocol allowed for depositing the LST it would be getting in the way of its goal. The purpose is that other products will accept the LST for yield and credit opportunities.

And, who knows, maybe someone else will build a more sophisticated LST themselves?

Conclusion

On this one year anniversary I am humbled and proud to witness how Nirvana is growing. This all began as a passion project, with a singular mission. That drive has been amplified by an excellent team who inspire me every day, together with a community of stakeholders who push this project forward with brilliant feedback & energizing encouragement.

It’s a privilege and honor to be part of this paradigm shift in the making.

Author:

Sid 📿

@sid_nirvana_fi

x.com/i/article/2001…

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5:11 PM • Dec 17, 2025

ANA was built to make zero-liquidity impossible by encoding an ever-present bid, a rising floor, and a programmatic flow of value back to itself. This layer establishes a permanent source of liquidity, converting protocol activity into robust, sustained demand for ANA and enabling deeper exit opportunities.

Nirvana explicitly calls this model the Assured Value Machine (AVM): a deterministic market engine that mints, prices, and redeems assets without relying on market makers or oracles.

Buyers deposit reserve assets (e.g., USDC) to mint ANA. When someone is ready to exit, they can always redeem their ANA for the deposited reserve asset. Put another way, the system’s solvency is built into its own code. The protocol truly owns the liquidity.

But what does permanent really mean?

1. A floor that can’t go down – The AVM maintains an on-chain buy-wall large enough to repurchase 100% of supply at the floor price. That floor can mathematically only move upward (through fee accrual and AVM recalibrations) and never reverse. Permanence here is meant literally. Every rise in the floor is locked in when it ratchets upwards.

2. Liquidity that’s protocol-owned – Because mints deposit reserves directly into the AVM, the exit liquidity belongs to the mechanism. There’s no reliance on market makers or other centralized entities. Liquidity is structural.

3. ANA is redeemable and native – ANA is minted by depositing USDC and can be redeemed through the same mechanism at any time. It is born with a verifiable minimum value (i.e., the floor) and the right to exit is encoded, not promised.

What happens when the idea behind ANA is applied to all tokens?

Samsara is Nirvana’s expansion layer, as it lets any project launch an Assured Value Asset (AVA). Each AVA that is created represents a token born with a mathematically enforced floor, embedded yield from activity, and liquidation-free credit.

Each AVA lives in its own market with its own reserves (datSOL backed by SOL, datBONK by BONK, etc.). Value is enforced, not implied. Despite changing market sentiment, the protocol-owned liquidity maintains its absolute buy-wall at the floor price.

Where does all that value go?

Back to ANA. Samsara routes value into a single sink. Fees from trading and borrowing accrue at the protocol level and are used to buy ANA.

prANA stakers receive a governed share of protocol revenue, paid in NIRV and ANA, ensuring participation is compensated without depleting reserves. The net effect is architectural: activity in the periphery deepens the center. Value funnels in. Liquidity thickens. The floor rises.

Everything built on Samsara strengthens ANA

Every market pays upward. Governance sets the exact splits, but the structure remains fixed: revenue flows to prANA stakers, to directly lifting AVA floors, and to platform operations, while Samsara’s aggregate revenue is routed to purchasing ANA. This is the value sink that turns breadth into depth. Build more markets, and ANA becomes stronger.

Stake ANA, earn prANA, and open credit lines in NIRV up to ANA’s floor value. Zero interest. No liquidations. Collateral is bounded by math, not market mood. Borrowing incurs a one-time fee and does not accrue interest. Liquidity becomes productive without adding fragility.

And that leads us to The Flywheel.

This is the function of a permanent liquidity layer: convert motion into mass, noise into structure, participation into a higher, unbreakable base.

ANA does not just survive markets. It organizes them.

Digital Asset Treasuries (DATs) represent one of the most exciting financial innovations of the past cycle. They gave investors a new way to gain exposure to digital assets through public markets, and they even come with built-in downside protection and potential upside amplification.

Companies like MicroStrategy proved the concept at scale. Investors bought into Microstrategy to outperform Bitcoin’s price, taking full advantage of the leveraged management execution, market perception, and treasury strategy that worked to multiply gains in the reserve value underneath the share price.

That’s the magic of a DAT: increased upside and theoretical downside protection. But the word theoretical is the catch.

In practice, DAT stocks can and do trade below their net asset value (NAV). When this happens, the entire system inverts: confidence erodes, treasuries sell reserves to defend the share price, and both the stock and underlying asset spiral downward.

The problem isn’t the idea of the DAT itself; it's the executional fragility. Ultimately, DATs depend on:

1. Dilution to grow treasury size

2. Market confidence to stay above NAV

3. Human discretion to maintain equilibrium

They are promising but precarious because value amplification is based on perception, not necessarily proof.

Samsara: The On-Chain Evolution

Samsara takes everything powerful about DATs and rebuilds it from first principles of being on-chain, algorithmic, and antifragile.

Instead of faith in management, Samsara replaces discretion with mathematics.

Instead of a corporate vault, it creates living, on-chain treasuries that grow automatically through trading and borrowing activity.

Instead of dilution, it mints Assured Value Assets (AVAs) directly with base assets.

Each market inside Samsara, whether datSOL, datBTC, or datETH, operates as a self-sustaining on-chain treasury. Protocol-owned reserves back every asset on Samsara with an enforceable floor value. The floor functions as the NAV, but with one crucial difference: it’s mathematically impossible to go down.

Anytime that the price approaches the floor, Samsara’s Assured Value Machine (AVM) steps in to enforce redemption so that the price never falls below reserve value. Put another way, Samsara transforms the DAT’s theoretical downside protection into legitimate, mathematical certainty.

The Floor as the True NAV

Traditional DATs rely on market perception to maintain a premium above NAV. Samsara has made it possible to replace perception with real proof of value. When the AV Token price approaches its floor, the redemption mechanism activates, ensuring it can never fall further. The “NAV” becomes a hard floor, enforced on-chain by the Assured Value Machine (AVM).

That means:

• No dilution: Supply is always backed 1:1 by reserves (a.k.a. The floor).

• No panic: The price cannot fall below the floor value.

• No management risk: The treasury is algorithmic, not administrative.

Such traits help Samsara create a reinforcing cycle where more activity leads to more reserves, a higher floor, and overall stronger NAV. With NAV strengthened, investors gain greater confidence and more sustainable premiums.

A corporate DAT is a vault. It buys and holds assets, waiting for number-go-up. In contrast, Samsara is alive.

Every market on Samsara continuously channels fees from trading, minting, and borrowing back into the reserve and to ANA stakers, compounding value across the system. Over time, this dynamic increases the floor price of every Samsara asset, expanding both treasury size and individual asset security. And because every Samsara market allows interest-free, liquidation-free credit against the floor, holders can unlock liquidity without risking their base position. Credit is no longer built on liquidation thresholds, but on immutable value.

In many ways, Samsara perfects the DAT model. It keeps the good (reserves, exposure, growth) and removes the bad (dilution, panic, and counterparty risk). It is the crypto-native reincarnation of the Digital Asset Treasury, operating fully on-chain, remaining antifragile, and being self-governing.

The Future of Treasuries Is On-Chain

Samsara doesn’t compete with DATs – it completes them.

It keeps the promise of amplified upside and downside protection while removing the fragility of dilution, discretion, and sentiment. DATs showed us what’s possible. Samsara makes it permanent.

A protocol where markets self-sustain.

Where floors only rise.

And where treasuries live fully on-chain.

Enter Samsara: the home of On-Chain Digital Asset Treasuries.

• Gold is durable but inert, meaning it cannot generate new value

• Fiat is elastic but at extreme risk of debasement

• Most crypto is promising but wildly unstable, collapsing precisely when resilience is required

The consequence of using flawed reserves to maintain financial stability is deep-seated fragility. Systems built on these assets inherit their weaknesses, such as cascading liquidations, forced unwinds, and fragility disguised as strength.

A Reserve Without Compromise

ANA was designed to break the cycle of flawed reserves. It anchors itself to the Floor, a mathematically enforced rising baseline of value, running on the Assured Value Machine (AVM). Unlike other assets, ANA is not at risk of implosion. It cannot collapse to zero. Its floor is immutable, enforced directly by protocol-owned reserves, and its market price always oscillates above certainty.

This transforms ANA into a reserve with permanent assurance:

• Always worth at least its floor value

• Structurally incapable of liquidation

• Continuously compounding as the floor rises over time

In other words, the reserve, known as the floor, supports 100% of the supply at a defined value.

The ANA token itself is minted fairly and transparently. It was not pre-mined, there were no allocations set aside for insiders, and there are no underlying supply gimmicks. Value must enter the system before the tokens exist, ensuring there is an equilibrium between ANA’s supply and its underlying reserves.

What makes ANA singular is that it is not inert like gold. ANA is the engine of Nirvana’s architecture.

The ANA token unlocks recursive loops of leverage and compounding that other DeFi protocols cannot sustain without Nirvana’s coined AVM. Borrowing is capped at the underlying floor value, making systemic collapse mathematically impossible, not just “low-probability.”

These qualities also extend into governance utility. By staking ANA, holders receive prANA, which governs Nirvana & all Samsara markets while earning a share of protocol revenue. In this way, ANA holders not only secure the reserve but steer the direction of the system itself.

The Perfect Reserve Asset

Gold preserves its value, but it’s hard to move.

Fiat is devalued into oblivion.

Crypto innovated but collapsed under volatility.

ANA transcends these trade-offs because it is:

• Immutable to the downside, thanks to the floor

• Dynamic in utility and integrated throughout Nirvana’s architecture

• Honest in new token issuance (it can only be minted with USDC)

• Empowering in governance

In other words, ANA objectively embodies what a perfect reserve asset should be. It cannot be broken, cannot be corrupted, and cannot be drained.

A new partnership will be announced soon, marking our first strategic alignment with a DAO that will invest in our future and establish a position in ANA as a reserve asset

Stay tuned.

Enter ANA

MakerDAO felt it.

Aave felt it.

Solend felt it.

Venus felt it.

ANA closes that fault line forever.

By anchoring credit to ANA’s immutable floor, Nirvana eliminates the forced unwinds, cascading liquidations, and systemic chaos that define legacy DeFi lending. Where other systems punish volatility with liquidation, ANA transforms collateral into a foundation of certainty.

The Problem with DeFi Lending

In today’s protocols, credit is fragile. Borrowers can deposit assets and borrow against them, but they also risk liquidation the moment market prices cross an arbitrary threshold. The design unfortunately creates systemic fragility in DeFi which has repeatedly detonated across protocols:

• MakerDAO Black Thursday (2020): Zero-bid auctions erased ~$8M of user collateral in a single day

• Venus Protocol (2021): Volatility cascaded into ~$200M liquidations and ~$100M of unrecoverable debt

• Solend Whale Crisis (2022): A single account neared liquidation, forcing governance into emergency seizure proposals

• Aave CRV Event (2022): Liquidations spiraled into $1.6M of bad debt despite functioning mechanisms

In every case above, there was a failure of risk management that resulted in substantial liquidations and, consequently, loss of capital for borrowers. It resulted in auctions jamming, oracles slipping, and even governance panic, all at the expense of the common user.

ANA: The End of Liquidations

ANA makes liquidation mathematically impossible.

Because ANA is floor-collateralized, loans are only ever issued against the floor value (which can mathematically never go down) instead of market prices. Since ANA will never be worth less than its floor value, the common fragility risks in DeFi lending (such as cascading liquidations from falling collateral prices) cannot arise with ANA.

That means:

• Even if ANA trades far below its highs, the loan remains fully secured

• There is never a threshold where collateral can be seized or auctioned

• Borrowing costs are fixed at a one-time origination fee

To better understand ANA’s architecture, consider the following scenarios:

During the 2020 ETH price crash, MakerDAO’s liquidation auctions became stuck due to skyrocketing gas fees. Some auctions even cleared at zero bids, wiping out user collateral and resulting in approximately $8M in losses. The system’s reliance on auctions and external actors turned a simple ETH price crash into a complete structural failure.

Another good example is found in 2022, when a large trader used Aave to short CRV by borrowing against it. When the market moved against them, cascading liquidations resulted in $1.6M in bad debt, despite the liquidations functioning as designed.

In contrast to either scenario above, ANA does not expose the protocol to collateral price depreciation from liquidations or bad debt. Because loans are limited to the floor, the debt is always fully collateralized by definition. Regardless of what happens to ANA’s market price, it cannot become insolvent. There is no dependency on keepers, no oracle trigger, and no pathway to zero-bid outcomes.

The key takeaway: where DeFi depends on oracles, keepers, and auctions, Nirvana depends on math. The protocol-owned reserves establish a floor that rises with adoption and remains constant. Credit becomes structural, not situational.

Conclusion: A Safer Form of Leverage

Liquidations define DeFi today. They erase collateral, create cascades, and destabilize protocols, resulting in unwanted taxable events and losses.

Nirvana rewrites this design by rooting credit in an immutable floor.

The result is leverage without forced loss. Borrowing without systemic fragility.

A safer form of credit that is not threatened by potential liquidations.

Enter Nirvana.Finance

Introduction: The Origin of Proof-of-Value

When Nirvana introduced the ANA token, it set a new benchmark for wealth storage. ANA is backed by protocol-owned USDC reserves at its floor price, enabling the protocol to enforce verifiable exit liquidity for every ANA at or above the floor — even in the event of a total bank run. ANA’s floor price is secured through on-chain Proof-of-Value, creating a permanent, transparent, and independently auditable minimum price that rises with demand and protocol activity. This innovation makes ANA a true store of value, capturing appreciation structurally and redefining what digital wealth storage can be. Samsara builds upon this legacy, extending Proof-of-Value to the broader digital asset universe with a new class of derivatives: zenTokens.

A zenToken is purchased with its corresponding base asset, which is stored in the protocol's reserves. For example, an investor can purchase zenSOL with SOL. Each zenToken:

• Has an impenetrable, rising floor price measured in its base asset

• Earns passive yield from market-making and lending fees

• Is unliquidatable collateral for interest-free credit

• Has self-sustaining liquidity, requiring no third-party market makers

• Enables expanded demand and utility for the base asset it represents

Samsara envisions a new era of finance where growth is permanent, yield is intrinsic to ownership, and liquidity is freely accessible without interest or liquidation risk.

zenTokens do more than represent assets — they strengthen them, amplifying their demand and utility. They are not mere derivatives, but paradigm-shifting financial primitives that unlock unprecedented capital efficiency and enable the storage of eternal value for every definition of value.

The Zen Derivative: A New Paradigm for Wealth Storage, Optionality, and Capital Efficiency

Rising Floor Price

Each zenToken operates within its own dedicated market, with protocol-owned liquidity made up of an existing digital asset. For example, zenSOL is minted and backed with SOL, zenBONK with BONK, and so on. When users purchase zenTokens, the base asset is deposited into a protocol-owned reserve pool, which enforces a verifiable minimum redemption value through on-chain Proof-of-Value.

This floor price rises automatically with demand and volume. As the zen derivative appreciates through purchases, the market’s liquidity expands, and the market dynamically reallocates liquidity to raise the floor price for all tokens in supply.

As a result, every zenToken offers limited downside risk and amplified upside potential relative to its underlying asset. In strong market conditions, a zenToken’s market capitalization can even surpass that of its base asset.

Loans without Liquidation or Interest

With zenTokens, users can borrow the base asset up to the floor value without interest charges or liquidation risk. Loans can even be looped back into zenTokens for leverage while maintaining zero liquidation risk. This borrowing model is made possible by the verifiable minimum value of zenToken collateral, enforced on-chain through Proof-of-Value.

For example, holding 100 zenJUP with a floor price of 2 JUP allows you to borrow up to 200 JUP, fully secured by the protocol’s reserve-backed liquidity.

Borrowed funds can be deployed flexibly to leverage, diversify, or access liquidity without sacrificing ownership of a reserve-backed, yield-generating asset. Repayment is required only when users wish to withdraw their zenToken collateral.

By eliminating liquidation risk and interest fees, Samsara transforms credit from a source of systemic fragility into a tool for capital efficiency.

Self-Sustaining Liquidity

zenTokens create and sustain their own liquidity without the need for seed capital, external market makers, or liquidity incentives. Each zenToken begins with zero initial supply and is minted directly in exchange for its base asset. As demand grows, liquidity deepens, and the floor price rises automatically, scaling in proportion to demand. This design ensures that zenToken markets remain transparent, efficient, and sovereign, with liquidity that expands organically alongside adoption.

Built-In Yield Generation

Liquidity is an inherent property of Proof-of-Value tokens. Holding zenTokens implicitly provides liquidity for market-making and lending, and the holders accordingly earn passive revenue from trading and lending origination fees.

But unlike conventional market-making, there is no divergence loss (“impermanent loss”) associated with earning trading fees while holding a zenToken. And since lending is fully secured by the protocol-enforced floor price for assets, there is no risk of bad debt from default.

zenTokens Strengthen Their Base Assets

Each zenToken is exclusively minted using its corresponding base asset. For example, zenBONK can only be minted with BONK, and that BONK is deposited into protocol-owned reserves, creating an incentivized sink for the token. As a result, demand for zenBONK directly translates to demand for BONK itself.

Beyond creating new demand, zenTokens expand the utility of their base assets. By converting BONK into zenBONK, users unlock access to interest-free loans with zero liquidation risk, while simultaneously turning their holdings into a source of passive income.

Unlike traditional derivatives such as futures contracts, which fragment liquidity and increase systemic risk, zenTokens form a symbiotic relationship with their base assets. They deepen liquidity, expand utility, and strengthen the underlying asset without introducing additional vulnerabilities.

How Samsara Markets Work

The Market Driven Mint

At the core of every zenToken is Nirvana’s Market Driven Mint (MDM), a next-generation automated market maker designed to create self-sustaining liquidity and enforce a rising floor price. While the MDM serves a similar role to a traditional liquidity pool by facilitating buying and selling, it introduces structural innovations that give zenTokens their unparalleled properties.

Each zenToken begins with zero supply and is minted on demand. To acquire zenTokens, users deposit the corresponding base asset into the MDM. These base assets are stored in protocol-owned reserves, ensuring transparent, verifiable exit liquidity. In exchange, buyers receive the quoted number of newly minted zenTokens. When users sell zenTokens back to the MDM, the tokens are burned, and sellers receive the corresponding amount of reserve assets.

The MDM uses a dynamic pricing mechanism that adjusts the market price upward as zenTokens are bought and downward as they are sold. Crucially, it also maintains a constant minimum bid price — the floor — which is always enforced regardless of market activity. This ensures that zenTokens offer predictable liquidity and a permanently rising foundation of value.

How a zenToken Floor Price Rises

Each zenToken has a mathematically defined minimum price, enforced through Proof-of-Value. In other words, the MDM always holds enough capital in its reserve pool to buy back all zenTokens for at least the floor price. The reserve pool is always on-chain, transparent, and verifiable.

So, how does the floor price rise? Through two primary mechanisms: protocol fees and rebalancing.

Raising the floor price with protocol fees:

A portion of fees from each Samsara market (including buy, sell, and loan origination fees) will be invested directly into raising the floor price for its corresponding zenToken. This allows the floor to rise steadily with every transaction.

Raising the floor price with rebalancing:

At a certain demand threshold, defined as the trigger price, the MDM automatically reallocates the reserve liquidity to raise the floor price in exchange for decreasing the amount of liquidity above the floor price. This mechanism maintains a conservation of liquidity for the entire market, boosting the minimum price for all zenTokens in supply.

Staking

Staking zenTokens unlocks a dual-value proposition that enables both passive returns and risk-free borrowing.

Karma: Your Ticket to Revenue Share

When you stake zenTokens, you earn market-specific Karma tokens that serve as a claim to that market’s revenue. For instance, staked zenJUP generates JUPkarma, which entitles users to a share of fees from the zenJUP market.

Liquidation-Free Loans

Staking zenTokens allows users to borrow against them, interest-free. Users can borrow the underlying base asset up to the value of the floor price of their tokens. This makes liquidations mathematically impossible, even when loans are looped back into zenTokens to attain leverage. When zenTokens are borrowed against, they become locked until the loan is repaid. Otherwise, staking has no lockup period.

Zero-Interest, Risk-Free Borrowing

Staked zenTokens function as powerful collateral, enabling zero-interest borrowing up to the floor value with zero liquidation risk—even if loans are used for leverage. This dual-purpose mechanism generates protocol revenue through Karma while providing instant liquidity without opportunity costs. Borrowed positions remain locked until repayment, while standard stakes maintain full withdrawal flexibility, offering unmatched capital efficiency in DeFi.

Revenue Sharing

Revenue from Samsara fees is shared among:

• Karma stakers

• prANA stakers

• Directly raising the zenToken floor

• Protocol Operations

The exact split is determined by governance.

Governance

Nirvana’s governance token, prANA controls all Samsara markets and earns a portion of their revenue. prANA can only be earned by staking ANA.

prANA holders earn revenue from Samsara markets by depositing their prANA into market-specific vaults. Your exact share is determined by two factors:

1. The percentage of market fees directed towards prANA stakers

2. The portion of that market’s staked prANA pool that you own

For example, if you own 5% of the staked prANA pool for zenBONK, and prANA stakers receive 10% of that market's revenue, you will earn .5% of zenBONK’s total fees (10% x 5%).

Similarly, your overall vote power for the market is proportional to the total amount of prANA allocated to the market. If you command 5% of the prANA allocated to the market, you have 5% of the governance power.

Every week, prANA stakers vote on various parameters for each Samsara market.

The governable parameters are:

1. Buy fee

2. Sell fee

3. Loan origination fee

4. Karma emissions rate

5. Proportion of revenue to directly raise the floor

6. Proportion of revenue to Karma vs prANA

7. Percentage increase of each floor raise

8. Floor raise cooldown time

9. Liquidity buffer (how much liquidity to reserve above the trigger price)

Vision

Samsara imagines a financial system where value storage depends not on sentiment, but on mathematical proof.

Traditionally, a “store of value” is only as strong as the market’s belief in it. Its price is dictated entirely by sentiment — whatever a buyer is willing to pay. Liquidity is controlled by humans, and is therefore emotional, opportunistic, and unreliable.

Samsara offers a new paradigm.

zenTokens are not backed by belief — they are backed by math. Each one is secured by protocol-owned reserves, which provide verifiable exit liquidity at a floor price that can only rise over time. This isn’t theoretical — the fact of the floor price for every zenToken is enforced through verifiable, on-chain Proof-of-Value.

Samsara’s properties – like Nirvana’s – do not depend on market-makers. They are embedded in the code. Liquidity isn’t incentivized — it’s structural. The result is a true store of value: one that lets investors define “value” on their own terms, with the confidence of transparent, enforced mechanics beneath it.

Samsara is not just a platform. It’s a paradigm shift for financial architecture.

It unlocks capital efficiency and true value storage on top of existing assets like nothing else. Its self-bootstrapping liquidity structure allows Samsara to scale to thousands of markets without capital restrictions.

As we enter the age of tokenized real-world assets, Samsara is positioned to launch zenTokens for every major asset on Earth. Every new zenToken strengthens both Nirvana and the assets it touches, accelerating the transition to a more resilient financial future.

Conclusion

zenTokens are a breakthrough asset class. They merge volatility exposure with principal protection, creating a new on-chain standard:

• Floor price secured

• Yield-bearing

• Interest-free loans with zero liquidation risk

• On-chain governance

• Symbiotic with existing assets

They are self-sustaining, utility-expanding derivatives that transform volatility into mathematically secured gains. With Samsara, value doesn’t just change, it ascends.

By extending Nirvana’s proven architecture into volatile digital assets, Samsara unlocks a new era of capital efficiency and wealth storage. It flips the script from value extraction to value adding, as each new zenToken is a catalyst for strengthening its base asset. And as the Samsara ecosystem grows, it will become a foundational layer for sustainable decentralized finance.

Enter Nirvana.Finance

It began with a simple equation: value in, value out. You mine, you earn. You participate, you own. Nothing was given freely. And because of that, ownership meant something.

But somewhere along the way…

We lost the plot.

Today, most tokens don’t start with value. They start with free allocation: Airdrops, influencer deals, and advisor tokens. Given to those who risk nothing and extract everything. Tokens are created out of thin air, handed to the few, who offload them onto the many.

This isn’t about creating value anymore. It’s engineered exit liquidity.

Extraction at the root

When value is extracted before it’s created, the market becomes hollow.

Pre-minted supply creates an imbalance from day one, where early actors take positions with zero cost basis, and when the token gains traction, they sell into honest demand, siphoning value they never contributed.

The result?

Markets that spiral downward at the first sign of pressure. Not because demand disappeared, but because supply was never earned in the first place.

First Principles Forgotten

Bitcoin had no allocation. No pre-mine. No private sale. Just energy in exchange for value.

This is what first principles look like:

You contribute → you earn

You participate → you gain

But today’s ecosystems aren’t built that way. Even Ethereum had a pre-mine, which was criticized in its early days by those who believed that value should be earned.

And the shift was subtle but profound: From earned ownership to early extraction.

Nirvana Brings the Foundation Back

Nirvana is what happens when we return to structural honesty.

No pre-mines. No insider allocations. No token until value enters. Every ANA in existence was minted through a fair exchange of USDC.

This is what the Assured Value Machine enforces:

• A mathematically rising floor backed by protocol-owned reserves

• Self-repaying loans that don’t punish volatility

• Participation that strengthens the system, not drains it

In Samsara, zenTokens work the same way. No free mints, no cheap allocations, no hidden bags. If you own one, it’s because you contributed.

And because of that, there’s a stronger foundation. Even if they sell, the system limits the fall with a floor that rises.

Markets with a Backbone

This is what value should be:

• Earned, not extracted

• Backed, not borrowed

• Aligned, not gamed

With Nirvana, markets don’t rely on incentives or belief to function. They rely on a structure that is built from the ground up to protect value and reward participation.

This isn’t another mechanism for hype.

It’s a new foundation for value itself.

Enter Nirvana.

Why did “crypto” – and especially Bitcoin – take off in the first place? What about it captured the imagination & conviction of so many?

On the face of it, we’re looking at just another piece of software for managing apps & data. That’s nothing new. We’ve had technology for globally distributed databases & applications for a very long time. And there are very popular & profitable apps that run on it. Despite the success stories, all this other back-office database software hasn’t sparked a revolution or signaled a new zeitgeist. Blockchains have.

Crypto's purpose

So what’s special about “crypto”? I believe the answer is very simple: the unique feature at stake with “crypto” is that it levels the playing field. Everyone gets equal access, everyone gets a fair shot. Other database platforms don’t provide this “decentralization”. But why care about fairness? People aren’t working on “decentralization” just for the sake of an engineering challenge. There’s a problem motivating it. The guiding principle of “crypto” was to solve the problem of “fraud”. You’ll find that problem announced clearly in the first paragraph of the Bitcoin whitepaper. "Fraud" is just a fancy word for lying about facts.

The way to solve fraud is to prevent anyone from having privileged control over facts. The project of crypto is to record facts such that no one can tamper with whatever got recorded, or censor whoever wants to do the recording.

In short: this technology took off because it promises a global record which is tamper-proof & censorship-resistant.

And it’s done a good job keeping that promise. After all, the network gives people equal access to financial apps, without them competing to shave off meters of fiber-optic cable in lower Manhattan. There’s no privileged point of view on the blockchain.

Traditional value

But all this leaves out an important aspect to the crypto industry: the price of tokens. That’s what gets the headlines. The bizarre situation is that the loudest part of crypto is the dollar-value of these tokens, but this part is the least aligned with crypto’s principles.

I caught-on to this situation back in 2021. I won a Solana hackathon, and was flown to Lisbon for the large Solana “Breakpoint” conference. As part of the prize, I even received 10 minutes to talk to. The conversation surprised me: rather than swapping ideas about the future of crypto, all we talked about was the best way to set up foundations and the pitfalls when designing “tokenomics”. Founder to founder, pragmatic house-keeping. This was my first glimpse behind the curtain. And after many meet-and-greets with VCs and eager “market-makers”, the curtain got shred to tatters. So much of what makes crypto assets valuable has nothing to do with crypto’s principles themselves – in fact, the institutions working in the background operate on opposite principles entirely.

When I got back from the conference, I realized there was a bigger problem to solve. The thing people pay the most attention to in crypto is the price, but that’s the thing which has been addressed the least by crypto’s mission.

While more and more people are looking to crypto to be a “store-of-value,” the problem is that a blockchain like Bitcoin is actually just a store-of-facts. It records a tamper-proof ledger, but not tamper-proof value. The real “store-of-value” is the people who buy it and don’t sell – and today that’s especially true for Michael Saylor and other institutions. Special people have special influence on the price.

True store-of-value

Nirvana’s vision is to push out the frontlines of crypto's overhaul and solve the problem of tamper-proof value. Crypto's revolution started by using algorithms to guarantee the state of a global ledger, and Nirvana continues it by guaranteeing the value of a global reserve asset. The goal is to create a massively scalable store-of-value according to crypto’s guiding principles.

How it achieves this goal is by unifying price, liquidity, and yield in a single digital token. Typically, these three components are separate. The price of a token has no relation to how deep is its market. Something can be very expensive, but unable to move at size. Liquidity crises can have disastrous consequences on market stability.

In Nirvana’s case, as the price grows, the liquidity grows automatically. The price & liquidity are connected. For a global reserve asset, scaling matters. The way it scales liquidity with price is by managing it all at the protocol level. The Nirvana protocol is the counterparty to every trade: it sells the token, reserves the cash from the sale, and buys the token using the liquidity it keeps in reserve.

Now we have a different structure for markets: instead of human sellers searching for other human buyers, the Nirvana protocol will always bid to buy the token. And the protocol never panics.

Where this automatic bid becomes most powerful is how Nirvana provides a floor price for the token. This floor price is a protocol-guaranteed minimum exit price for every token in supply. If every token were sold back, the last one out would fetch the floor price.

Since Nirvana manages the floor price, it has the power to raise it. At launch, the floor price was $1, and today it has more than tripled. For those who bought early, the floor price is now above their entry, and their profit has been locked in permanently. And as the price keeps rising, so will the floor.

As an aside, this rising floor solves a pervasive problem with traditional assets: that only the early buyers get rich. Since the floor keeps chasing the price upwards, latecomers have the same opportunity as early adopters. A maximum drawdown from $10 to an $8 floor is the same risk as from $1,000 to an $800 floor.

The key is that the risk is always asymmetric: the downside is limited, but the upside is not. When the token is at its floor price, the asymmetry goes to infinity.

You can see how this follows crypto’s principles. Just as blockchains use clever algorithms to store tamper-proof facts, Nirvana stores tamper-proof value. And just as blockchain users interact directly with the blockchain itself, Nirvana users trade directly with the protocol. Removing the “human-in-the-middle” makes it possible to provide fairness & guarantees that you wouldn’t get with conventional market structures.

Nirvana’s token truly “stores value”. It stores it in the rising floor price. When the token appreciates, this profit gets locked into the floor as permanent property of every token in supply.

And then there is “yield”. Just as blockchains strengthen their network by incentivizing node operators with fees revenue, the Nirvana protocol strengthens its value by incentivizing holders with fee revenue. The fees get routed directly to token holders, as a continuous dividend.

What inspired this project was the question: what would the best crypto-aligned store-of-value look like? The features of this asset would include:

• Scale indefinitely

• Provide permanent liquidity

• Limit downside

• Produce yield

The Nirvana protocol checks these boxes by starting from first principles. It’s a return to crypto’s roots. The value stores is a fact about it, recorded by the Nirvana protocol, just as blockchains store facts about balances & settlement.

Where we’re going next is the Samsara project. This expansion will “Nirvana-fy” all other digital assets by creating reserve-backed rising floor prices for each one. We’re taking this to other blockchain ecosystems, to spread the idea and shift the paradigm for digital markets. The fee revenue from this massive ambition will feed back into automatically buying and raising its floor price.

The hope is that in the future crypto-aligned price charts will have 2 lines: the current market price, and the rising floor price. Assets without a floor will become a thing of the past.

Author: Sid

https://x.com/sid_nirvana_fi

https://x.com/sid_nirvana_fi/status/1942001569601306720

Speculation now dominates over fundamentals, leaving investors navigating constant volatility, shifting narratives, and frequent losses.

The persistence of the extraction market has led to widespread erosion of value. Since 2021, over half of all tokens have failed, leaving behind abandoned projects and disillusioned communities.

The result is visible. Fatigue has set in across altcoin traders and users. Anyone following crypto Twitter has seen the conversation emerge again and again.

Extraction takes many forms.

• Retail and latecomers are exit liquidity for insiders.

• Ponzinomics come with unsustainable yield.

• Token designs with perverse incentives and teams solely focused on price action rather than the product or platform.

• Narrative arbitrage, where popular ideas are simply repackaged.

It’s not all intentional, though. We’re dealing with a young and experimental technology, and that comes with risks. Imagine a scenario where a project is compromised or abandoned. In such an event, what if the community could still depend on a protocol-owned floor value?

Nirvana was built to counteract the extraction market and create assured, structured value.

Nirvana embodies the original ethos of crypto to reduce reliance on trust and speculation, transforming the uncertainty of crypto markets into mathematically assured value.

Ok, but how?

Glad you asked.

Nirvana is built on the revolutionary Assured Value Machine (AVM), where value is not merely promised but mathematically assured.

The AVM is based on the principle of 100% protocol-managed liquidity. Market liquidity is a built-in property of every ANA token. Each new ANA token enters the supply only if someone buys it, and buying ANA results in capital dedicated to market liquidity. Each token represents a concrete, on-chain value that is backed, accounted for, and never inflated.

Regarding inflation, if anyone can mint ANA, what does that imply in terms of inflation? Exactly because ANA is minted with USDC, every token has a dollar value tied to it. Value in = value out. This value is what constitutes the floor, ruling out inflation.

Structured Liquidity

What truly differentiates Nirvana is the permanence and immutability of its structured liquidity. Unlike the current crypto markets, where liquidity can evaporate overnight, the AVM ensures a rising price floor that collects value with every transaction. The protocol-owned liquidity is mathematically assured to remain available, immune to the variety of depletion strategies that characterize extraction markets (as listed above).

Even if a large stakeholder were to sell their entire position, they would never be able to drive the price below the floor itself. This design protects everyone invested, not only the early adopters.  The fact that the floor rises with the market price of ANA locks in permanent gains for all participants.

Value Encoded

This isn’t just a technical leap, it’s a return to crypto’s founding ideals: transparency, immutability, and trustlessness. Through smart contracts and verifiable math, Nirvana doesn’t speculate on value; it encodes it.

The results speak clearly. Nirvana has amassed over $27 million in protocol-owned liquidity, facilitated $80 million in trading volume, and generated $500,000 in protocol revenue. There are no external market-makers and no artificial support.

As the space seeks stability, a path forward is emerging.

Beyond extraction lies a new foundation…

Structured, verifiable, enduring.

This is the future crypto promised.

This is Nirvana.

It is impossible to build trust in a market where extraction bleeds sound value out of honest investors.

This is where Nirvana steps in. Nirvana is built on enduring mathematics rather than fleeting promises, and it found a way to add legitimacy and sustainability to an otherwise untrustworthy market.

Building a Permanent Foundation, aka “The Floor”

At the heart of Nirvana is the Assured Value Mechanism (AVM), a novel architecture designed explicitly to replace speculation with structured confidence. Unlike traditional assets whose values fluctuate unpredictably, assets powered by AVM carry an intrinsic and mathematically assured floor value, which can only ascend.

When people hear this, many will immediately question the idea.

Can a protocol assure a mathematically proven floor value?

In Nirvana’s case, the answer is a definite yes.

How?

The AVM is not theoretical; it is a structural reality enforced through transparent, on-chain reserves.

Can you imagine a cryptocurrency with two lines on the chart?

One line is the traditional, ultravolatile price.

The second line is the foundational price floor, fully backed by protocol-owned reserves.

The floor assures that the price will never fall below a certain threshold. In turn, building trust and credibility.

ANA

Nirvana’s native token, ANA, is minted through the on-chain Market-Driven Mint (MDM) and is backed one-for-one directly by the protocol’s owned reserves. This means that someone, in exchange for USDC, bought every ANA in circulation. There was no pre-sale, no insider issuance, and no one was ever given ANA for free.

Nirvana and ANA harken back to the ethos of the first crypto ever launched, Bitcoin. Just like the first Bitcoin was mined and every one since, each ANA has to be acquired through the protocol.

Not a single ANA will ever be created out of thin air.

In doing so, it ensures that every ANA has a minimum redemption price (i.e., the floor), which can never be lower than the value of the reserves held by the protocol.

Each time ANA is transacted above its floor, a portion of the surplus contributes directly to increasing this baseline value. Thus, the floor mechanism structurally ensures continuous value accumulation, effectively protecting holders from downside risks without limiting upside potential.

Nirvana’s Philosophy in Motion

At its core, Nirvana represents completion, integrity, and balance. Its philosophy is embodied in the symbol of the Orb: a circle that signifies the value that cannot be broken. Nirvana’s philosophy is not new; it's a forgotten principle of crypto that needed to be revived.

As the nascent industry continues its ascent and moves beyond the initial growing pains, enduring foundations are more important than ever.

Nirvana assures value not through empty promises, but through verifiable math, structural reserves, and an assured price floor encoded directly into smart contracts.

Transcend speculation.

Enter Nirvana.finance