01 —what idle is
idle is an erc-20 on ethereum. lowercase name, lowercase symbol, eighteen decimals. it is built as a uniswap v4 hook that intercepts every swap on its idle/eth pool and applies a 2% fee. that fee feeds a rebase pool. the rebase pool drips back to holders, smoothly, every block, regardless of whether anyone is trading.
what other tokens distribute discretely, idle distributes continuously. holders' balances grow every twelve seconds.
02 —how the drip works
every swap deposits 2% of its volume into the pool. the pool releases its contents over a moving 24-hour horizon, scaled by recent activity. when the market is quiet, the horizon shrinks and fees release faster. when the market is active, the horizon grows and fees release slower.
mathematically: at any block, the per-block drip rate is pool_balance / drip_horizon. on every interaction, the hook computes how many blocks have passed since the last update and credits each holder pro-rata to their balance at the moment of distribution. there is no claim. there is no transaction required from the holder. the math compounds in their favor while they sleep.
03 —the cooldown
new buyers do not earn drift for the first 50 blocks (~10 minutes) of holding. this prevents flash-hold attacks where a sniper buys before a known-fat swap and dumps immediately after capturing the rebase. the cooldown is invisible to anyone who holds for more than ten minutes. it disqualifies only zero-commitment yield extraction.
04 —dynamic horizon
the drip horizon — the window over which fees release — is not fixed. it scales with recent swap velocity. the hook maintains a circular buffer of swap counts over the last 1000 blocks. when the count is high, the horizon expands toward 48 hours. when the count is low, it contracts toward 6 hours.
idle responds to market temperature. during chaotic periods, the pool absorbs and stockpiles. during calm periods, it pays out aggressively. the rebase rate is alive — it adjusts to context without any operator decision.
05 —the v4 hook
idle is a single contract that is simultaneously the erc-20 token and the v4 hook attached to its own pool. the hook implements beforeSwap to capture fees, afterSwap to update the swap-velocity buffer, and beforeAddLiquidity and beforeRemoveLiquidity to ensure lp transfers cannot game the rebase mechanics.
before v4, this kind of contract could not exist. issuance, fees, and rebase logic had to live in separate contracts wired together by routers or off-chain coordinators. v4 collapses the architecture: one contract holds the token, the pool, the rebase pool, and the rules. interactions go directly to the agent.
06 —no operator
we did not pre-allocate to a team. there is no foundation. there is no admin key. the contract has no pause, no upgrade, no withdraw, no privileged caller of any kind. the 2% fee is hardcoded. the drip horizon bounds are hardcoded. the cooldown is hardcoded.
if every wallet associated with idle's deployment was lost tonight, idle would continue to function tomorrow. the rebase would still tick. the pool would still drip. holders would still earn.
07 —what holders do
holders do nothing. that is the entire job. by holding, you participate in every swap that occurs on the pool, weighted by the duration of your holding. selling resets only your future drift — your accumulated balance is yours, permanently, the moment it lands.
the rebase math is mathematically exact. there is no rounding loss for holders who never sell. holding is the only correct strategy if you believe the protocol will see swap activity. if you believe it will not, you should not buy. that is the entire calculus.
08 —contract
idle is deployed on ethereum mainnet at the address shown in the bottom strip. the contract is verified on etherscan. the source is the contract. read the bytecode if you want the truth.