Ingots

The claim that travels.

An Ingot is an ERC-20 claim on one Crucible — the pooled position and every fee that has accrued inside it. The capital never leaves the pool. The claim on it is what moves.

One identity, and everything follows from it.

There is no oracle in this, no index, and nothing to trust about the price of an Ingot. It is division. The Crucible holds assets; some number of Ingots exist against them; the ratio is what one Ingot is worth.

value per Ingot = assets held by the Crucible Ingots in circulation
Fees land in the numerator and never touch the denominator, which is the whole mechanism: value per Ingot rises without anything being distributed, and there is no harvest step to remember or to miss.

It also cuts the other way, and the design does not hide it. A concentrated liquidity position can be worth less than the assets put into it once the price has moved — the numerator falls, so the ratio falls. Fees offset that. They do not cap it. Which is why the Assay reports the two separately rather than netting them into one flattering number.

Lifecycle

Four things an Ingot can do.

Only the first and the last touch the Crucible. That is what makes the middle two possible at all.

  1. 01

    Mint

    Deposit lands in the Crucible; Ingots are minted pro rata in the same transaction. The only step that adds assets.

    Touches the Crucible
  2. 02

    Hold

    Fees accrue to the Crucible. Nothing needs claiming, and nothing expires. Value per Ingot moves; your balance does not.

    No interaction
  3. 03

    Move

    Transfer, sell, lend against it, or post it as collateral. The position underneath is undisturbed and keeps earning for whoever holds the claim.

    No interaction
  4. 04

    Redeem

    Burn Ingots, receive your share of the Crucible and everything it earned. Same block, no queue, no keeper in the path.

    Touches the Crucible
Assay

What the yield is actually made of.

An assay is the test that says what a metal really contains, as opposed to what it looks like. A single APR number hides exactly the part a depositor most needs to see, so this reports the components and lets them disagree with each other.

Illustrative 30-day yield decomposition for one Crucible
ComponentWhat it is30-day
Swap feesPaid by traders against the Crucible's range+4.82%
IncentivesThird-party emissions routed to the pool, if any+1.16%
Range driftThe position is worth less than the deposit after a price move−2.94%
Rebalance costGas and slippage of moving the range−0.41%
NetWhat a holder actually kept+2.63%

Illustrative figures. The net is the sum of the four rows above it and nothing else — +4.82 +1.16 −2.94 −0.41 = +2.63. A headline yield that is not the sum of its own components is the number worth distrusting.

Crucibles

Each Crucible is one pair, one range, one rule.

There is no strategy vault here and no manager with discretion. A Crucible is a v4-Hook-managed range plus the two parameters that decide when it moves.

Illustrative Crucible parameters
Crucible Fee tier Band Cooldown Ingot
USDC / ETH0.05%±3.0%6 hANL-USDC/ETH
USDC / cbBTC0.30%±6.5%12 hANL-USDC/cbBTC
ETH / wstETH0.01%±0.4%24 hANL-ETH/wstETH
USDC / EURC0.01%±0.3%24 hANL-USDC/EURC
Scroll for all columns

Illustrative. No Crucible is deployed; the columns show the shape of the parameter set, and the bounds each one is constrained to are on the protocol page.

Cast once, keep the optionality.

Ingots are one half of it. The other half is how an order gets to a venue without announcing itself first.