The PYTH token

PYTH is the network's native token. It has two jobs: securing the data through Oracle Integrity Staking, and voting on how the network is run. This chapter is descriptive, not advice — what the token does, where it came from, who controls it. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or hold anything.

What PYTH is for

• Oracle Integrity Staking (OIS). Token holders delegate PYTH to publishers. If a publisher submits a bad price, a portion of the stake backing them can be slashed. In exchange, stakers earn a share of network fees.
• Governance. PYTH holders vote on parameters: which feeds get sponsored, fee schedules, treasury spending, upgrades. Voting runs through the Pyth DAO and a set of specialized councils.
• Permissioning publishers. A publisher must have PYTH staked behind them to participate. The token aligns publishers with the people consuming their data.

Oracle Integrity Staking, in plain terms

OIS is the security model in one sentence: publishers post good prices because misbehaving costs them money. The way it works on the ground:

1. A publisher applies to join. They have to put PYTH at stake.
2. Anyone else can delegate their PYTH to that publisher to boost their cap. Delegators earn a share of the publisher's rewards.
3. If the publisher submits manipulated or wildly inaccurate prices that an audit can prove, governance can vote to slash a portion of the stake — the publisher's own and delegators'.
4. Rewards flow from the fee pool: update fees, Lazer subscriptions, Pro contracts, the lot.

The economic logic: a publisher cannot profit from manipulating a price unless the upside exceeds the stake they would lose plus the reputational hit of being slashed in public. Stakers behave as a market-driven audit team.

Governance councils

Direct token voting is messy. Pyth governance is split into specialized councils, each elected by PYTH holders but holding scope over a narrow domain.

• Pythian Council. Day-to-day operational decisions: adding feeds, parameter tweaks, fee adjustments.
• Price Feed Council. Feed listing standards, publisher whitelisting, OIS slashing decisions.
• Community Treasury. Allocations of treasury funds for grants, audits, ecosystem programs.

The DAO itself — every PYTH holder — votes on the big stuff: protocol upgrades, council elections, anything that materially changes the design.

Supply

• Total supply: 10 billion PYTH (fixed).
• Initial circulating: 15% at the November 2023 retroactive airdrop. The rest unlocks over six years.
• Unlock schedule: cliff at launch + 6, 18, 30, 42 months. Each cliff releases a chunk for publishers, ecosystem, protocol development, contributors, and private investors.

What PYTH is NOT

• Not a gas token. You do not pay update fees in PYTH — you pay in the chain's native gas token.
• Not required to consume feeds. Anyone can read Pyth prices without holding a single PYTH.
• Not a security. The Pyth DAO and the foundation explicitly position it as a governance and staking token.