What is BURST?

BURST is a monetary protocol whose participants can change two central rules: how quickly personal income grows, and how long money created from that income can be used. These are its economic parameters. People choose them through voting instead of leaving them permanently fixed by the developer.

That describes the mechanism, but why build it? The motivation is to give people more room to take part in an economy. Someone with savings can afford to learn, care for a relative or try an idea. Someone without that cushion may not have the same choice. An income available to everyone could help, while payments would still let people earn by doing things others value.

You do not have to believe that one particular income rate or currency lifetime is right to understand the design. BURST makes those choices explicit and lets the community revise them. A positive income rate gives people ongoing income; a zero rate stops new income. Currency can have a limited or effectively unlimited lifetime.

The current defaults use ongoing income and a limited currency lifetime. Let's follow a payment under those settings, then look at the problems that this creates and how BURST tries to address them.

An income of your own

Once your account is verified, your personal balance grows over time. It is called BRN, from burn. At the default rate, each account that qualifies for income gains about 1 BRN per hour. You can save it until you need it; unused BRN has no expiry date.

Nobody has to send you an hourly payment. Your wallet calculates your income from how long your account qualified, which rates applied, and what you have already spent. The network can check the same calculation. This avoids making every hour of income a separate transaction for every person.

Calling it income does not guarantee that it will cover someone's needs. BRN only becomes useful purchasing power when people are willing to accept payments for things others want.

Something worth paying for

Suppose Alice has saved 50 BRN. Bob has made something she wants, and they agree on a price of 50. Alice spends her BRN, which is permanently used up, or burned. That creates 50 TRST, from trust, for Bob to accept. The two names together give BURST its name.

01Alice signs the payment50 BRN spentHer BRN is burned. This creates an equal amount of TRST for Bob.02The payment waits50 TRST pendingBob has not accepted it yet. Neither person can spend this pending payment.03Bob signs to accept50 TRST receivedOnce confirmed, Bob can use this TRST to pay someone else.

Bob can pay Carol with that TRST, and she can pass it on again. These later payments move the same money; they do not create another 50 TRST each time. Alice and Bob continue to gain their own BRN while they qualify for income. Earning TRST does not take away Bob's personal allowance.

Why have two balances? They let the community treat unspent personal income and circulating money differently. Alice can keep her unused BRN. Once she spends it, the TRST has a creation date and a history, so the network can apply a currency lifetime or trace money created through a false identity. These are real differences in the rules, not two names for the same balance.

Why would someone accept TRST?

Bob accepts because he expects to be able to use the payment himself. The software cannot make that expectation true. It cannot supply the goods, choose Bob's price or force another shop to accept TRST. Those depend on the people participating in the economy.

Expiry is another choice people may disagree about. A limited lifetime lets the community decide how long earlier payments can keep circulating while new income continues to grow. But it also gives the recipient a deadline for using the money. With the default 70-year lifetime, Alice's payment expires at that age, even if it has changed hands many times. Passing it on cannot restart the clock. A year here means 365 days. (Yes, we know leap years exist.)

The community can choose a different lifetime, including effectively unlimited, with consequences it must weigh. No setting promises stable prices or equal wealth.

One income for each person

If Alice could create ten accounts and claim ten incomes, the equal-income rule would mean very little. That is why participation needs more than a new key. It also matters for voting: additional false identities could gain extra votes.

Under ordinary enrollment, applicants get endorsements from verified participants. Endorsers burn some of their own BRN to support the application. A small group of verifiers then examines it, chosen by a random draw from volunteers who meet the verification requirements.

The applicant cannot pick their judges. The network agrees the candidate list before the random result is known, and nodes can check the draw using the same public result. This prevents hand-picking or changing the list to fit the result. It does not guarantee that the people chosen are honest or correct.

Verification has to remain open to challenge. If a fraud challenge succeeds, the account loses its verified rights and the TRST created from its BRN can become invalid, even after changing hands. Otherwise, a false identity could leave its earlier income circulating after it was caught.

That choice can hurt an honest recipient. Bob might already have delivered goods when some of his payment becomes invalid. The network cannot recover those goods for him. Random selection, stakes and appeals are attempts to improve the judgments; they do not remove this risk. The verification guide explains the process and its current restrictions.

Who checks the payments?

Your wallet signs actions with your account's key. Computers called nodes check those signatures and whether the actions follow the rules. A signature proves that the key authorized a payment; it cannot make an overspend valid.

If someone signs conflicting payments, representatives vote on which block to confirm. Each verified person can give one equal unit of voting weight to a representative. More money does not give that person more weight. This is a separate job from the verifiers who judge whether an applicant is a unique person.

The distinction matters: selecting people fairly for identity checks and agreeing which payments happened solve different problems. The consensus guide explains the latter.

Rules people choose together

The community can propose changes to the income rate, currency lifetime and other supported settings. Proposals need enough participation and support to pass. An ordinary approved change then waits before taking effect, so participants can see what is coming. Choosing a representative to confirm payments does not automatically give that representative your vote on these proposals.

Voting gives people a say; it does not guarantee they will agree or choose well. A new income rate applies from then on, leaving previously earned BRN intact. A new currency lifetime can affect money people already hold. The governance guide explains those consequences and the creator's temporary powers while a network is starting.

The first community needs help getting started. During bootstrap, the creator can help verify participants and veto an approved rule change, but cannot pass one alone. Approved changes proceed unless explicitly vetoed. These powers end permanently at 50 verified people, including the creator, or earlier; they cannot return if participation falls. The creator then follows the same rules as everyone else. Bootstrap permissions explains how the protocol enforces this.

The whitepaper develops the broader argument. To see the accounting in detail, continue with balances and units. Before using or building on the software, read limits and assumptions: some of the mechanisms described here are currently enabled only on experimental networks, and their economic and social assumptions remain open to scrutiny.