PlatON (LAT) Price

LAT is the native asset of the PlatON mainnet, not an independent contract token deployed on the chain. It serves both as the settlement asset for transfers between accounts and on-chain application operations, and as the stake-bearing asset used to stake or delegate when participating in PlatON's PPoS consensus. LAT is therefore more than a transferable balance. Users pay fees in LAT when sending transactions that require on-chain execution. Holders wishing to help secure the network can use LAT as a candidate validator's self-stake or delegate it to a candidate validator. When validators produce blocks, they can receive the transaction fees in those blocks and the corresponding rewards under protocol rules.

PlatON's PPoS does not have every staker take turns producing blocks. Holders first become candidate validators through self-staking, while other holders can delegate LAT to them. At each Epoch settlement block, up to 225 candidate validators are selected under rules including running version and total stake; then, in each consensus round, VRF randomly selects 43 validators from that group. The selected 43 validators jointly run BFT consensus and take turns proposing blocks. A consensus round consists of 430 blocks; each validator may propose up to 10 consecutive blocks, with a 20-second proposal window each time. More stake improves a candidate's chance of selection, but VRF adds randomness, so the highest-stake node is not guaranteed to be selected in every round. This design of ranking selection followed by random selection affects both participation opportunities and the network's validator set.

Holders who do not run a node can delegate LAT to a candidate validator. The delegation counts toward that node's total stake and helps it compete to enter the top 225 candidate validators. Delegators do not produce blocks directly. Their returns depend on whether the node becomes a candidate validator or is selected as a validator, the staking/block-production rewards earned by the node, and the reward-sharing percentage the node sets and commits to delegators when staking. Delegation does not begin earning rewards immediately after submission. LAT is locked at the start of the next Epoch, and only a valid delegation that remains locked for a full Epoch participates in that period's reward distribution. Delegation rewards must be claimed through a transaction initiated by the delegator; a claim can include all settled rewards under that delegator's nodes. After a node voluntarily exits or is removed from the candidate list by the system, delegators must submit a redemption themselves. PIP-10 changed the undelegation rule for valid delegations to a 56-Epoch lockup. No delegation rewards accrue during that period. Therefore, being able to initiate undelegation and having LAT available again are not the same point in time.

LAT has no hard supply cap. Supply consists of the genesis initial issuance and subsequent additional issuance. Initial allocations are written into the genesis configuration and handled through the Lockup contract according to specified lockup periods; they unlock automatically at the relevant Epoch settlement block. If locked LAT is still being used for staking or delegation and the contract balance is insufficient to complete unlocking, the system records the shortfall and continues unlocking at later settlement blocks. Additional issuance is settled by a block-height cycle rather than fixed calendar days. The protocol uses 365.25 days and the prior average block time to calculate the number of blocks in one additional-issuance period. Each period is about one year, and its final block is also a settlement block. In each period, 2.5% of the total LAT issued at the end of the previous year is newly issued: 2%—80% of that period's new issuance—goes to the reward pool, while 0.5% goes to a trust fund for which the LatticeX Foundation acts as trustee, for future base-protocol developer rewards. This is therefore not a one-time fixed total-supply mechanism. Additional issuance increases supply while supporting validator and staking incentives through the reward pool. Under the documentation's definition, the new amount in issuance period x can be expressed as W × (1+2.5%)^(x−1) × 2.5%, where W is the first-year base made up of the initial issuance and circulating LAT at genesis, and x is the issuance-period number since genesis. This formula describes the protocol's issuance rule; it does not represent real-time circulating supply or any market-price forecast.

Transfers or on-chain application calls on PlatON require transaction fees paid in LAT. The fee is the cost a user pays to have a transaction processed and written to the chain. The validator that produces the relevant block receives the transaction fees in that block in real time, directly linking fees to incentives for validators to process transactions and maintain the network. Transaction fees and protocol-issued rewards do not come from the same source. The documentation states that validation incentives also come from the reward pool: in each additional-issuance period, half of the pool is used for block rewards issued in real time based on blocks produced, while the other half is used for staking rewards settled each Epoch. Block-producing validators can also receive transaction fees. Consequently, a user's final cost depends on the fee settings and execution of the specific transaction, while validator income can consist of transaction fees, block rewards, and staking rewards.

A self-operated candidate validator and an ordinary delegation have different exit conditions. Once a candidate validator voluntarily exits, it immediately leaves the candidate list and can no longer collect commission or increase its self-stake. Its self-stake not yet in a lockup period may be returned with the exit instruction, but locked self-stake is returned only after a further freeze of 168 Epochs, excluding the current Epoch. Ordinary delegators can submit a partial or full redemption. Delegations still in the hesitation period before the current Epoch's settlement block can be returned immediately; delegations that have taken effect and become locked in the next Epoch are returned at that Epoch's settlement block. For valid delegations after PIP-10, undelegation also has a 56-Epoch lockup with no delegation rewards during that time. The different exit paths and lockup lengths are among the most important availability differences between operating a node and only delegating LAT.

Validators do not necessarily retain eligibility simply by staking. PlatON penalizes double voting/double preparation intended to cause forks, as well as extended offline periods and failures to produce blocks or validate signatures properly. Penalties may reduce a node's locked self-stake. If that stake falls below the candidate-validator threshold after the reduction, the node loses candidate status and is automatically unstaked. After forced exit, the node no longer participates in candidate-validator or validator elections and does not share in staking rewards at that period's settlement block. Its remaining self-stake generally remains locked for 168 Epochs before being returned. Delegations to that node become invalid and unlock, but are not automatically returned to delegators' accounts; delegators must still submit a redemption themselves. Thus, a node's operating and penalty status can affect a delegator's reward eligibility and redemption actions.

PIP-10 was an implemented PlatON governance upgrade, not merely a proposal. Its on-chain vote ended on November 9, 2022, and the official announcement stated that 89.18% of nodes voted in favor; v1.3.0 subsequently went live at block height 45,531,841. It set a 56-Epoch lockup for valid delegations after undelegation and made the EVM return the new chain ID 210425. The change directly affected asset operations and wallet network configuration. Before the upgrade, users might have used ChainID 100; after it took effect, the PlatON mainnet no longer supported that old chain ID, and wallets using the old configuration needed to switch to 210425 to continue connecting to the mainnet. It did not replace LAT with a different asset, but it changed the timing conditions for delegation redemption and the mainnet identifier used in EVM transaction signatures.