Core Principle
One of the key architectural elements of the Areal protocol is the yield and reward distribution mechanism for Ownership Token holders. The core feature: you don’t need to stake your tokens. Simply holding Ownership Tokens in your wallet is enough to earn rewards. Areal tracks token balances per fund event and distributes rewards proportionally to each holder’s ownership at the time of that event, vesting per second.No staking, no locking, no special contracts. Hold OTs in your wallet → rewards accumulate automatically → claim them at any time in the Portfolio section on areal.finance.
How It Works
The distribution process flows through several stages — from the project DAO’s decision to the holder’s wallet:DAO decides to distribute
The DAO Ownership Company of a specific project decides — through futarchy governance — to direct a portion of earned revenue to token holders as rewards for holding.
Revenue lands in the OT contract and is split
Approved revenue accumulates in the project’s RevenueAccount (USDC). Once the cooldown and minimum-balance conditions are met, a permissionless crank calls
ownership_token::distribute_revenue. The contract first deducts a 0.25% Areal protocol fee to the Treasury; the remainder is split per the project’s configured destinations:- 70% → per-OT YD Accumulator (USDC), the staging account that funds the merkle reward stream for OT holders
- 20% → the project’s OT Treasury (multi-token PDA wallet, governed by Futarchy)
- 10% → routed into the Liquidity Nexus (USDC lane via a crank-driven
nexus_deposit)
batch_update_destinations; the totals always sum to 100%.USDC is converted to RWT and funded into the reward vault
A permissionless crank calls
yield_distribution::convert_to_rwt on the per-OT distributor. In a single atomic instruction:- The Accumulator’s USDC is swapped into RWT on the Native DEX up to the current NAV price.
- Any USDC remaining is minted into RWT through
rwt_engine::mint_rwtat NAV. - A 0.25% YD protocol fee is deducted in RWT and sent to the Areal Treasury RWT ATA.
- The remaining RWT is deposited into the per-OT reward vault PDA, and the merkle distributor’s vesting state is extended for the new portion.
Rewards vest per second
Each holder’s claimable RWT vests linearly over the configured
vesting_period_secs — default 365 days (1 year). New fund events extend the vesting on the unvested remainder; previously vested amounts are locked and remain immediately claimable.Holders claim anytime — fair-by-construction
Holders claim accumulated RWT at any time via a merkle proof. The off-chain publisher uses a per-deposit snapshot algorithm: every fund event is allocated only to holders who held OT at the slot of that event, eliminating front-running on announced distributions. Holders below the $100 minimum-protocol-holding threshold are not eligible at that snapshot — their share is reallocated to the ARL OtTreasury leaf as protocol revenue.
No-Staking Architecture
Traditional DeFi protocols require users to stake tokens in a contract to earn yield. This creates friction:- Tokens are locked and illiquid
- Users must interact with staking contracts (gas, complexity)
- Composability is reduced — staked tokens can’t be used elsewhere
Hold to earn
Simply keeping Ownership Tokens in your wallet qualifies you for rewards. No staking transactions, no lock-ups.
Per-event tracking
The protocol snapshots holder balances at every fund event, allocating each event proportionally to who held OT at that moment.
Per-second vesting
Rewards vest per second over the distribution period — not daily, not weekly. Your claimable amount grows in real time.
Claim anytime
Accumulated rewards from all your Ownership Tokens are aggregated in the Portfolio section on areal.finance, ready to claim at any time.
Per-Deposit Snapshot Fairness
A naive distribution that snapshots only at publish time would award anyone holding OT at that moment a share of all historical fund events — including events that arrived before they bought OT. This creates a front-running vector around announced distributions. Areal eliminates this by using per-deposit snapshots: at the slot of each fund event (DistributorFunded / StreamConverted), the publisher captures every OT holder balance. Each fund event is then allocated only to holders captured in that event’s snapshot. A late buyer’s first share starts from the next fund event after they acquired OT — never retroactively.
The on-chain contract verifies only the merkle proof and bookkeeping invariants — it does not enforce the snapshot algorithm. This means the publisher’s algorithm can evolve (per-deposit → time-weighted average balance, for example) without any contract redeploy.
See Yield Distribution contract for the full algorithm and publisher infrastructure requirements.
Aggregated Portfolio View
Holders who own multiple Ownership Tokens across different projects see all their rewards aggregated in one place — the Portfolio section on areal.finance:- Total accrued rewards across all OTs
- Per-project breakdown of rewards
- Real-time accrual counter
- One-click claim for all accumulated rewards
Summary
No staking required
Hold OTs in your wallet — rewards vest automatically per second, no locking or contracts needed
DAO-governed distribution
Each project DAO decides how much revenue to distribute to holders through futarchy governance
70 / 20 / 10 split
After the 0.25% Areal fee, project revenue routes 70% to OT-holder rewards, 20% to the project’s OT Treasury, 10% to the Liquidity Nexus
USDC → RWT conversion
A crank atomically swaps the holder share into RWT (DEX swap up to NAV + mint the remainder) and deposits it into the reward vault
Per-second vesting
Rewards vest linearly over the configured distribution period (default 365 days), with new fund events extending the vesting
Front-run-resistant
Per-deposit snapshots ensure each fund event is allocated only to holders who held OT at that event — late buyers cannot capture historical yield