Status: Proposed, 12 September 2026. Not decided. Awaits product and finance (blueprint B01). What is measured is measured on a fork of Ethereum with both real components and is dated by its block; what is not measured is left as a variable, and no dollar figure here is a price or a quote. The revenue side is the mechanism's §16 and is not repeated: a fee-free pilot, and no fee logic in the contract before demand is shown.
The baseline
The baseline the blueprint asks the product to beat is the two tokens in a wallet: a holder who already has wAAPLx and AAPLon and simply keeps them. Against that, a Curb position costs whatever it costs to form and to unwind, in gas and in the issuers' own fees, and gives in return one receipt with a recorded composition, per-component exit rights, and the evidence beneath it.
Measured: execution gas, both components real
From contracts/evidence/apple-s1.fork.json (see the series page for the block). Execution gas by gasleft() deltas inside one call with warm storage; a real transaction pays cold storage access, the 21,000 base and its calldata on top, so these are lower bounds for a first-time interaction and closer to true for a repeat one.
| Operation | Gas (execution, warm) | Who pays | Baseline equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Transfer of the wrapper (holding A directly) | 13,587 | the holder | this is the baseline for moving A |
| Transfer of AAPLon (holding B directly) | 68,533 | the holder | this is the baseline for moving B |
| Approve A, approve B | not measured here (a standard ERC-20 approval each, ~46,000 cold) | the holder, once per series | none |
| Mint 3 lots (both deposits, the receipt) | 168,789 | the holder | none: the baseline forms nothing |
| Allocate 3 lots for exit (no token moves) | 90,695 | the holder | none |
| Claim A (the real wrapper moves out) | 62,080 | the holder | a transfer of A, 13,587 |
| Claim B (real AAPLon moves out) | 65,104 | the holder | a transfer of B, 68,533 |
So a full round trip — approve twice, mint, allocate, claim twice — costs on the order of 480,000 gas of execution for three lots against roughly 82,000 to move the two tokens once each. Per lot the mint and the exit are the same size whatever the lot count; the claims scale with nothing but the token's own transfer cost.
The method, with the variables left as variables
Cost in money = Σ (gas per operation) × (gas price at the time) × (price of ETH at the time), plus the issuers' own fees where an issuer is used:
- —Gas price and ETH price are not read by this desk for Ethereum and are not applied. The desk's price feeds are Robinhood Chain's. When a pilot exists, both are read at the time and dated like every other figure; until then the table stays in gas.
- —Issuer fees are not part of forming or unwinding a Curb position, because the series moves tokens only. They apply when a holder goes further: xStocks documents up to 0.50% on issuance and redemption and a $5,000 minimum through the issuer; Ondo documents a $1 minimum and settlement in USDon with a USDC swapper. Those are the holder's costs of *leaving the tokens*, the same with or without the Curb.
- —The Curb's own fee is zero in the pilot (the operator policy has no fee lever, and the contract has no fee logic).
An illustration, labelled as such and not a price: at a gas price of 1 gwei and ETH at $3,000, 480,000 gas is about $1.44; at 30 gwei it is about $43. The number that matters is the holder's own, at their own time.
What the comparison cannot yet say
- —Whether the position's benefit — one receipt, recorded rights, per-component exit — is worth a round trip's gas to anyone. That is R04 and B02: interviews and comprehension tests, not measurement.
- —What the wrapper's size does to the baseline: at the block read, the current wrapper held about ten raw tokens in all, so a lot of ten wrapper shares would be the whole wrapper and the market offer for it is a question the fork cannot answer.
- —Anything about volume, AUM or revenue. The mechanism's §16 says why those are kept apart.
What exists today
The gas table is written by npm run test:fork in contracts/ and shown on the series page; the formula above is not implemented anywhere, on purpose, until there is a dated gas price to put in it.