Dual contraction
PLOUTO leaves circulation twice, by two mechanisms that have nothing to do with each other. Keeping them separate is important, because one is reversible and one is not.
Temporary: locked
Staking removes tokens from active circulation for the duration of the lock. During that time they cannot be sold, transferred or used. At maturity they return in full.
- Reversible. Every locked token comes back.
- Owner keeps it. The tokens remain the staker's property throughout; the contract holds custody, not title.
- Counted.
totalStakedis the exact quantity currently locked, and it is the sum of every open position's amount — asserted as an invariant.
Locked supply is a real reduction in what can be sold today, and a real increase in what can be sold at a future date. Both halves of that are true.
Permanent: retired
The 60% buyback share purchases PLOUTO on the open market and retires it. Those tokens do not come back, by any mechanism, ever.
- Irreversible. No admin, key or upgrade can recover retired tokens.
- Protocol-owned then destroyed. The executor holds the tokens for the length of a single transaction and retires them before it returns.
- Counted two ways.
totalPloutoBurnedandtotalPloutoSentToDead, which sum tototalPloutoRetiredByProtocol.
Why the two are never combined
A single "supply removed" figure would be misleading, because the two have opposite futures. Locked supply is a timing effect. Retired supply is permanent.
The interface therefore shows:
| Figure | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Total supply | What the token contract reports. |
| Permanently retired | Bought back and removed, by either mechanism. |
| Estimated circulating | Total supply less the dead-address balance. |
| Currently staked | Locked, temporarily out of circulation. |
| Liquid estimated supply | Circulating and not locked. |
"Estimated" is doing real work in those labels — see supply accounting for exactly what each one can and cannot account for.
The interaction between them
The two mechanisms are funded by the same revenue but do not compete. Staking does not reduce the buyback budget, and buybacks do not reduce staking rewards; the 60/30/10 split allocates to both from the same epoch.
There is one indirect relationship worth noting: retiring supply reduces the denominator that totalStaked is measured against, so the percentage of circulating supply that is staked can rise even if nobody stakes anything new.