# Chainflip Chain Expenses Methodology

## 1. Overview

The total cost incurred by Chainflip Chain to operate its business is measured by the Expenses metric. Token incentives paid to validators and liquidity providers in the form of FLIP emissions are included in this calculation. These expenses are determined by tracking the emission and minting of the native FLIP asset over time. All calculated values are converted to USD using end-of-day price feeds.

## 2. Data sources

- **Blockchain events**: `FlipMinted` events from `flip` contracts, covering Chainflip Chain
- **Off-chain data**: Historical epoch emission rates, covering Chainflip Chain
- **External data**: End-of-day price feeds for the native FLIP asset

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Historical authority emissions (Pre-October 2025)

- **Purpose**: Historical emissions prior to the introduction of the `FlipMinted` event are reconstructed.
- **Logic**: Epoch emission rates are extracted from historical records. The authority emission rate per block is normalized and multiplied by the number of blocks in each epoch to calculate the total FLIP minted per epoch. These epoch-level emissions are then daily-apportioned based on the overlap between each calendar day and the epoch's start and end timestamps.

### Component B: On-chain mint tracking (Post-October 2025)

- **Purpose**: Real-time FLIP minting events on-chain are captured.
- **Logic**: `FlipMinted` events from `flip` contracts are parsed. Raw mint amounts are extracted and aggregated by day.

### Component C: USD conversion and final aggregation

- **Purpose**: Historical and real-time emissions are combined, normalized by decimal precision, and converted to USD to calculate total expenses.
- **Logic**: Historical daily emissions and real-time daily mints are combined into a single daily time series. Aggregated FLIP amounts are normalized by decimal precision and multiplied by end-of-day asset prices to determine the USD value. The final expenses metric is generated by mapping these token incentives directly to expenses, with missing days zero-filled.

*This methodology was automatically generated by Token Terminal's methodology analyzer.*

Total project operating and incentive expenses.

Expenses

Blockchains (L1)

Chainflip operates a decentralized network of 150 validators that collectively control multi-chain vaults using threshold signature schemes (TSS). The protocol uses a Just-In-Time (JIT) AMM where liquidity providers compete to fill swap orders at the moment of execution, enabling capital-efficient cross-chain swaps. A portion of each swap fee is used to buy and burn FLIP tokens.

Chainflip is a decentralized cross-chain swap protocol that enables native asset exchanges across blockchains including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana without wrapped tokens or traditional bridges. It was launched in 2023 by Chainflip Labs and uses a JIT AMM model combined with MPC-based vault technology to provide competitive pricing on cross-chain trades.

Chainflip is governed by its validator set and FLIP tokenholders. Validators stake FLIP to participate in the network and earn fees from swaps. The protocol is developed and maintained by Chainflip Labs.

Chainflip Chain

Expenses

Expenses

Chain breakdown