Raj Mitra
We recently revised some of our tokenomics and project mechanics to better reflect our mission and vision. In a nutshell, Project Mycelium (version 4 of the grid) will be utilizing a dual-token system, inspired by Bernard Lietaer’s Yin–Yang currency concept, which builds on Taoist balance and applies it to monetary systems.
The Yang side represents the competitive, profit-driven market economy powered by assets that are scarce and designed to generate financial and physical capital. It is responsible for fuelling growth, innovation, and trade but also concentrates wealth and erodes social and ecological foundations.
The Yin side, by contrast, consists of cooperative, community-oriented systems enabled by mutual-credit or complementary currencies. These currencies strengthen trust, relationships, and sustainability by regenerating social and natural capital.
In Project Mycelium, the Yin token is “AUR” and the Yang token is “SPORE.”
🔗Yin-Yang Economy In Practice
In our modern economy, we have a dominance of Yang. So while modern civilization is highly competitive and productive, it’s financially fragile, socially fragmented, and ecologically depleted. A balanced economy needs the Yin circuit to maintain cohesion and resilience.
When both circulate together, economic systems become self-correcting, capable of creating prosperity without undermining the very social and environmental foundations on which that prosperity depends.
All this sounds really good, but what about in practice? Let’s see how it works in Bali. The island is known for its artisans, farmers, and craftsmen, each contributing to a vibrant creative ecosystem.
On one side lies the Yang economy. We have tourism, export trade, and monetized craftsmanship, all powered by cash flow, pricing, and market exchange.
Running parallel to it is the Yin economy, sustained through the “banjar” system. The local village cooperative that governs community labor, temple upkeep, festivals, and mutual aid. Neighbors exchange time, skills, and support through “gotong royong” (collective work), maintaining both social harmony and shared prosperity. The result is an economy that sustains both body and spirit.
We have another example in Japan’s Fureai Kippu (caring relationship tickets) system. Introduced in the 1990s, it allows individuals to earn credits by helping elderly or disabled members of their community.
The help includes shopping, cooking, cleaning, or simply providing companionship. These credits can later be redeemed for similar services when the giver grows older, or even transferred to a family member in another part of Japan. By design, it reinforces trust, empathy, and reciprocity, the core traits of a Yin system.
Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS) follow a similar principle across many parts of the world. LETS allows neighbors to trade skills and services using locally created credits instead of national money.
A graphic designer might earn 20 credits for a logo design, then spend those credits on carpentry, tutoring, or home repairs offered by other members. Each transaction strengthens relationships and keeps value circulating within the community rather than flowing out to centralized markets.
These systems don’t replace national currencies, they complete them by filling social and ecological gaps that money alone cannot reach.
🔗Applying The Same Principles In Project Mycelium
Let’s see how SPORE and AUR work together to reflect Lietaer’s philosophy.
🔗SPORE: The Force of Growth
In nature, spores are small, resilient units that carry the potential for life. They drift through the air and across the earth until they find the right conditions to grow. When they do, they become mycelium, which are vast underground networks that connect, communicate, and share resources across ecosystems. It’s a living system built on balance, movement, and renewal.
That same idea lies at the heart of Project Mycelium. The Mycelium Network forms the foundation, a decentralized IPv6 overlay that mirrors the adaptability and reach of biological mycelium.
On top of it sits Mycelium Cloud, a platform that allows anyone to run scalable Kubernetes clusters with strength and flexibility.
The Virtual Data Center (VDC) layer adds another dimension by making it simple to run applications on Mycelium Cloud clusters. It removes much of the complexity behind Kubernetes, giving users an intuitive interface to deploy and manage workloads without needing deep technical knowledge. For those who prefer full control, the underlying Kubernetes layer is still available for direct configuration and resource management.
At the top of the stack is the Mycelium AI Agent Framework. These agents sense, decide, and act within the network, optimizing resources and automating complex tasks. Together these layers create a digital ecosystem that grows, adapts, and self-organizes just like its biological counterpart.
This entire stack is powered by SPORE, representing the Yang energy of expansion and reward. It fuels the competitive, entrepreneurial side of the ecosystem. Hosters, farmers, builders are all incentivized to grow the network and earn value through contribution.
🔗Core Characteristics:
- Type: Tradable, utility token. Supply capped at 10 billion.
- Purpose: Compensation and incentive
- Mechanism: 80% of every rental payment flows to hosters in SPORE. 10% is burned, creating long-term scarcity, and the other 10% flows into the Project Mycelium development fund.
SPORE channels ambition and innovation. The controlled minting and burn model ensures that growth remains disciplined, not inflationary.
🔗AUR: The Force of Stability
AUR is the stabilizing currency of the Mycelium ecosystem. The Yin counterpart to SPORE’s growth-oriented energy. In most decentralized systems, service pricing fluctuates with token volatility, creating uncertainty for both users and hosters. Mycelium solves this through AUR.
AUR’s design emphasizes reciprocity, trust, and sufficiency over speculation. It is non-tradable, meaning it cannot be hoarded, pumped, or gamed on external exchanges.
Every AUR in circulation exists to facilitate real economic activity. Users paying hosters, hosters providing services, and the network sustaining itself. Its value is anchored to gold (1 AUR = 0.001 g), ensuring that transactions remain fair and predictable across time.
🔗Core Functionality
- Reciprocity: AUR circulates within a closed ecosystem. It moves between users, hosters, and the protocol, never leaving the community.
- Sufficiency: Supply expands only as needed for real demand, avoiding the scarcity-driven competition of Yang currencies.
- Trust & Continuity: Gold-backing and internal use preserve value without exposure to speculative volatility.
- Community Flow: Because AUR can’t be hoarded or traded externally, it continually recycles through the system, mirroring the mutual-credit flow that Bernard Lietaer identified as the heart of cooperative economies.
- Predictable Economics: Users know exactly how much they pay. For example, “1 compute slice = 9,375 AUR.” That value remains constant in gold terms regardless of token market swings.
🔗The Balance
Most of today’s systems lean too far toward the Yang side. That’s why markets swing wildly and communities fracture. Mycelium was built to correct that imbalance.
The dual-token model is how we bring balance into a system that’s often one-sided. AUR allows Mycelium to decouple network utility from market volatility. Users and developers can plan, price, and deploy services with confidence, while hosters earn in SPORE. This separation of functions between AUR (stability) and SPORE (growth) keeps the ecosystem in equilibrium.
By giving equal weight to cooperation and competition, we’re building something that can scale without breaking the people who make it work.
For more information on our tokenomics, read this.
