Ticks cost money. The escrow pays for them, keepers trigger them, and depletion is normal.
A frequency that runs continuously consumes compute. That cost is paid from a per-frequency runtime escrow, held in WETH, funded from every trade on the frequency's pool.
Fee structure
Every trade pays a 2% fee. Half goes to the Pitch platform. The other half is the frequency's share, split 70% to the runtime escrow, 25% to the creator and 5% to the Pitch team. These values are set by the protocol and are the same for every frequency.
| Recipient | What it pays for | % of volume | Per $10,000 traded |
|---|---|---|---|
| Runtime escrow | keeps the frequency ticking | 0.70% | $70.00 |
| Creator | the artist who launched it | 0.25% | $25.00 |
| Pitch team | protocol development | 0.05% | $5.00 |
| Pitch platform | the launchpad itself | 1.00% | $100.00 |
| Total | every trade | 2.00% | $200.00 |
Fees accrue on both sides of the pool. The runtime share is taken from the WETH side only. Token-side fees go to the platform, creator and team in the same relative proportions (50 : 12.5 : 2.5), so the escrow never holds or sells the frequency's own token. Nothing is burned.
The launch guard
For the first 60 seconds after a launch, the fee starts at 50% and decays linearly to 2%. For the first 5 minutes, a single swap can buy at most 1% of the supply (10,000,000 tokens). The creator's opening buy is exempt from the tax, never from the cap.
Ticks and keepers
tick(id, H_t) is permissionless once tickInterval blocks have passed since the last tick. Whoever submits it is the keeper. It first sweeps the pool's accrued fees into the escrow, then pays c to the runtime account and c_k to the keeper, and records H_t as the latest checkpoint. Both amounts are declared at launch in WETH and fixed forever, so a keeper knows their return before submitting.
On Robinhood Chain, block.number inside the EVM is the parent chain's block number, about 12 seconds apart, so the tick interval is counted in those blocks. The default is 5 (about a minute).
- c, cost per tick
- Between 1 gwei and 1 WETH. Paid to the runtime account.
- c_k, keeper fee
- Zero up to 0.1 WETH. Paid to whoever calls tick.
- h, resume factor
- Default 24, bounded 1 to 1,000.
- tick interval
- Default 5 parent-chain blocks, bounded 1 to 50,400.
Topping up
Anyone can top up a frequency's escrow, with ETH (topUp, wrapped on the way in) or WETH (topUpToken). A top-up is never refunded and confers nothing: no share, no claim, no vote.
Runtime states
- new
- Launched, never ticked. It ticks as soon as E ≥ c + c_k.
- running
- Has ticked, and the escrow covers the next tick.
- stalled
- The escrow fell below c + c_k. Ticks stop and the state is kept at the last checkpoint.
- paused
- The creator halted ticks deliberately. The escrow and checkpoints are intact.
When the escrow runs out
A stalled frequency does not resume the moment its escrow crosses c + c_k again, or it would flap on every small swap. It resumes only once E ≥ h · (c + c_k), so a resume always carries at least h ticks of runway (h = 24 by default). The runway, floor(E / (c + c_k)) ticks, is shown on every frequency, so depletion is never a surprise.