Question 1

What is IRON?

Accepted Answer

IRON is the native asset of the Iron Fish mainnet. Iron Fish is a proof-of-work Layer 1 network; IRON is used to pay transaction fees and also incentivizes miners participating in block production through block rewards and fees. It therefore connects both the resources users need to use the network and the incentives for miners maintaining it. Custom assets on Iron Fish may have their own rules, but they cannot replace the protocol's definition of native fees and miner rewards.

Question 2

Why might IRON also be needed when transferring other assets?

Accepted Answer

Transaction fees on Iron Fish are paid in native IRON. When submitting a transaction, users must provide sufficient IRON to cover the fee; after miners package valid transactions into a block, they can receive the fees from the transactions included in that block. Therefore, even when transferring another on-chain asset, users will generally still need to retain IRON to pay network fees. The fee is the cost of a transaction entering a block, not the amount of the asset being transferred; the actual fee required is determined by wallet or network information at submission time.

Question 3

How does Iron Fish verify transactions without revealing transfer details?

Accepted Answer

Iron Fish uses cryptographic commitments and zero-knowledge proofs, enabling the network to verify that transactions comply with protocol rules such as those governing assets and balances without publicly revealing protected transfer details such as the sender, recipient, and amount. The key point is not that transactions go unverified, but that the object of verification changes from public details to cryptographic proofs. This mechanism does not automatically conceal off-chain identities, exchange records, or information users disclose themselves.

Question 4

How is new IRON produced and distributed to miners?

Accepted Answer

IRON is gradually produced through proof-of-work block production. Miners compete to generate blocks accepted by the network; once a block complies with the rules and is accepted, the miner can receive newly produced IRON through a reward transaction, as well as the fees from transactions it contains. Accordingly, new supply is not minted arbitrarily by ordinary accounts, but issued under the protocol's block-reward rules. A miner receives rewards only if its block is accepted by the network, while fees come from IRON paid by users.

Question 5

How does IRON supply move from genesis supply toward terminal supply?

Accepted Answer

Iron Fish has a genesis supply of 42 million IRON and a terminal supply of 256,970,400 IRON in its tokenomics design. The difference between them is gradually produced through subsequent mining emissions, rather than all becoming available supply at genesis. The emission curve described by the official materials makes early mining rewards higher and then reduces them year by year. Terminal supply describes the long-term design cap; it is not equivalent to current circulating supply and cannot by itself explain market supply and demand at any particular time.

Question 6

Can ordinary accounts mint or burn IRON themselves?

Accepted Answer

Protocol issuance of native IRON is controlled by the block-reward mechanism; ordinary accounts cannot set rules themselves to arbitrarily mint or burn it. Accounts can spend or receive IRON under transaction rules, but that differs from changing the issuance path of the native asset. Iron Fish supports custom assets, which may operate under their own minting or burning rules; those rules affect only the asset itself and cannot be used to infer that native IRON can be arbitrarily increased.

Question 7

What is the difference between block rewards and transaction fees?

Accepted Answer

Block rewards and transaction fees are both miner income, but they come from different sources. Block rewards are newly produced IRON issued by the protocol under emission rules; fees are existing IRON paid by users for transactions and received by the miner that packages those transactions. As block rewards decline according to the design, fees may become relatively more significant in miner incentives; however, actual income still depends on block production, the number of valid transactions, and fee levels, so the existence of fees cannot be directly equated with stable returns.

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