How CIP-0104 changes what drives net CC issuance on Canton

A new framework for measuring app rewards

CIP-0104 on @CantonNetwork was set to go live on August 18, marking a significant shift in how Featured App rewards are calculated. However, according to the official Canton Network Forum, the on-chain proposal that would have activated Traffic-Based App Rewards was not approved. Only the supporting Daml models were enabled on that date. The full activation of traffic-based reward accounting remains pending a separate governance vote.

The proposal itself, authored by Simon Meier and approved at the governance level in February 2026, is designed to replace activity markers with a cleaner measurement. As the CIP specification states, the goal is to base "an app's rewards on the actual traffic spent on (sub-)transactions that change the state managed by the app." Under the new model, rewards would be calculated directly from traffic attributed to app activity on the Global Synchronizer, removing the need for app builders to manually create activity marker contracts.

Two sides of $CC issuance, and where the gap sits

The framework makes it easier to separate $CC issuance into two distinct streams. One side is tied to network usage and covers Featured Apps and validators. Apps submit through validators, validators buy traffic with $CC, and that $CC is burned. When the burn matches the issuance tied to it, the usage side nets out to roughly zero in terms of net supply impact.

The other stream runs outside network usage entirely. Super Validators and the Development Fund receive $CC through discretionary approval rather than traffic-based activity. According to @ModuloFinance, this award-side issuance can run at up to roughly 24% of scheduled issuance. Closing that gap requires sustained paid traffic from real product demand, not governance-allocated rewards.

The Canton Coin whitepaper states that approximately 2.5 billion $CC must be burned annually to maintain a stable circulating supply at the model's steady-state issuance level. If annual burns exceed that amount, supply contracts; if burns are lower, supply expands. CIP-0104, once fully activated, is designed to tighten the link between what apps actually do on the network and what they earn, making net issuance more directly readable from on-chain traffic data.

Canton introduced CIP-0104 to shift application rewards toward traffic-based measurement. Under this model, rewards are increasingly tied to observed transaction flow, linking emissions more directly to network usage.

Sources:
CIP-0104 specification, Canton Foundation on GitHub
CIP-0104 MainNet Go-Live Update, Canton Network Forum
Understanding Canton Network, Messari by Blockworks