- Object of investigation
- LINK (Ethereum mainnet): Chainlink Reserve, Payment Abstraction, Staking v0.2 pools and Reward Vault, published non-circulating wallets, Safe 0xd50f074ec5c7997ce1daacb513ec194c480878af
- Observation
- Chainlink launched the Chainlink Reserve on 2025-08-07: an on-chain Ethereum contract with a multi-day withdrawal timelock, funded by converting off-chain and on-chain revenue into LINK through Payment Abstraction; it held over $1M of LINK at launch. Payment Abstraction went live 2025-03-31, first for SVR fees. Staking v0.2 caps the community pool at 40,875,000 LINK (45M total); rewards come from a pre-funded Reward Vault, and the FAQ says sources such as user fees may be added later. Etherscan-labelled non-circulating wallets have sent LINK to Binance in large batches since at least August 2022; on 2026-04-03 one batch was 9,774,999 LINK, alongside 4,624,999 LINK to Safe 0xd50f. Totals over the Reserve's lifetime are not stated in these sources.
- Hypothesis
- Inference to test: LINK has a documented, revenue-funded buy route (the Reserve) and a fixed supply, but net circulating supply over the Reserve's lifetime is driven mainly by non-circulating releases rather than Reserve accumulation. If so, documented capture is real but small against release, and staking yield is Vault-funded rather than fee-funded.
- What would invalidate it
- Reserve or Payment Abstraction addresses cannot be verified on-chain; Reserve inflows cannot be traced to fee conversion (e.g. all from one treasury-like sender); non-circulating releases are smaller than Reserve inflows plus net staking growth over the same window; or Reward Vault top-ups trace to fee conversion.
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