Crypto-asset white paper

true

2026-07-16

This crypto-asset white paper has not been approved by any competent authority in any Member State of the European Union. The person seeking admission to trading of the crypto-asset is solely responsible for the content of this crypto-asset white paper.

This crypto-asset white paper complies with Title II of Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 of the European Parliament and of the Council and, to the best of the knowledge of the management body, the information presented in the crypto-asset white paper is fair, clear and not misleading and the crypto-asset white paper makes no omission likely to affect its import.

The crypto-asset referred to in this crypto-asset white paper may lose its value in part or in full, may not always be transferable and may not be liquid

The utility token referred to in this white paper may not be exchangeable against the good or service promised in this white paper, especially in the case of a failure or discontinuation of the crypto-asset project.

The crypto-asset referred to in this white paper is not covered by the investor compensation schemes under Directive 97/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council or the deposit guarantee schemes under Directive 2014/49/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council.

Warning

This summary should be read as an introduction to the crypto-asset white paper.

The prospective holder should base any decision to purchase this crypto –asset on the content of the crypto-asset white paper as a whole and not on the summary alone.

The offer to the public of this crypto-asset does not constitute an offer or solicitation to purchase financial instruments and any such offer or solicitation can be made only by means of a prospectus or other offer documents pursuant to the applicable national law.

This crypto-asset white paper does not constitute a prospectus as referred to in Regulation (EU) 2017/1129 of the European Parliament and of the Council or any other offer document pursuant to Union or national law.

The crypto-asset referred to in this white paper is named "HALO Token" (HALO). HALO is the native utility token of Warden Halo, a peer-to-peer compute marketplace for AI inference kept honest by SPEX (Statistical Proof of Execution). HALO is issued as an ERC-20 token deployed on Base, an Ethereum Layer-2 network. HALO does not operate its own blockchain; it inherits security and settlement from Base and, ultimately, from Ethereum. Accordingly, HALO has no validators, no native gas role and no independent consensus mechanism.

HALO is not pegged to any currency, is not redeemable, and is not intended as a medium of exchange outside the project ecosystem. HALO functions as the network's utility token and is used for bonding, incentives and governance within the Warden Halo ecosystem. In particular, it has the following core functions:

It is a bonding token: operators and other participants bond (lock) HALO to become eligible to perform certain roles within the network, such as serving inference or verifying work in designated roles or tiers. Bonding gates role eligibility; it is not a validation or consensus role and is not subject to consensus-related slashing.

It is the protocol's incentive asset: newly issued HALO is distributed to reward participation in defined network activities, such as serving inference, verifying work, and bonding to perform roles.

It confers protocol governance voting and delegation rights, including over bonding requirements, the incentive (emissions) schedule, treasury, and rotation of the off-chain facilitator service.

Starting total supply: 1,000,000,000 HALO. Maximum supply: 2,000,000,000 HALO (hard cap). Token type: ERC-20 token on Base (not a native gas token). Decimals: 18. New HALO is issued at an annual inflation rate of approximately 12%, distributed as incentives for participation in network activities, until the maximum supply of 2,000,000,000 HALO is reached, after which no further HALO is issued and total supply is fixed.

HALO grants access to the protocol's utility functions: the right to bond HALO to perform certain network roles, the right to earn incentives (paid in newly issued HALO) for participating in network activities, and the right to participate in protocol governance through voting and delegation. HALO is freely transferable as a standard ERC-20 on Base (subject to exchange and jurisdictional restrictions). The token does not grant ownership rights, equity, dividend, voting rights over any legal entity, nor any redemption or repayment rights against the issuer. Holding HALO is not required to request services on the Warden Halo network (which settles in USDC); bonding HALO is, however, required to perform certain operator or verifier roles.

Admission to trading is sought to enable HALO to be admitted to trading on platforms for crypto-assets in the EU.

The starting total supply is 1,000,000,000 HALO, rising to a maximum supply of 2,000,000,000 HALO through annual issuance of approximately 12%. The circulating supply at listing is indicative and comprises principally the airdrop tranche of the Community & Ecosystem allocation together with the 14-day LP incentive (0.01% of the starting supply); the Liquidity & Market-Making pool is locked for 10 years, the Treasury is DAO-gated, and Core Contributor tokens are subject to a 12-month cliff followed by 24-month linear vesting, so exact circulating figures at listing are to be confirmed. Token Listing Date for EU: 14 August 2026. Distribution will occur via direct listing on centralized and decentralized exchanges; no public sale, IDO or IEO has been conducted. The fully diluted valuation is not pre-determined; price is established by market price discovery on listing. ProtoWardo Ltd expects the token to be admitted to trading on leading EU-based crypto-asset platforms that operate in full compliance with MiCAR.

ProtoWardo Ltd

Limited Company (BVI).

Floor 4 Banco Popular Building, Road Town, VG1110 Tortola, Virgin Islands (British).

Virgin Islands (British)

Floor 4 Banco Popular Building, Road Town, VG1110 Tortola, Virgin Islands (British).

Virgin Islands (British)

2024-06-20

984500477F9C991NE141

BVI Company Number: 2151504.

Contact via official channels.

Contact via https://www.wardenprotocol.org

30

Josh Goodbody

Floor 4 Banco Popular Building, Road Town, VG1110 Tortola, BVI

Managing Director

Luis Vaello

Floor 4 Banco Popular Building, Road Town, VG1110 Tortola, BVI

Director

ProtoWardo Ltd is the issuer for the HALO token, the native utility token of Warden Halo. Warden Halo is built and maintained by ProtoWardo Ltd, which develops and operates the Warden Protocol — a decentralized infrastructure platform for AI Agents — and Warden Halo, a peer-to-peer compute marketplace for AI inference kept honest by SPEX. Core activities include the development and maintenance of the Warden Halo settlement, issuance and bonding smart contracts on Base, operation of the Warden App (an AI-powered crypto interface serving over 20 million users for trading, research, and DeFi operations), development of operator and requester tooling (CLI and framework plugins), and research into AI verification technologies including Statistical Proof of Execution (SPEX). The team consists of approximately 10 employee members, predominantly technical, distributed across Europe and working remotely.

true

Not applicable - newly established entity.

Founder funding since registration.

false

Warden Halo

HALO Token (HALO)

HALO

Warden Halo is a peer-to-peer compute marketplace for AI inference — "BitTorrent for AI" — kept honest by SPEX. On one side, any agent or user submits an inference job to the network. On the other, any operator (running a Mac Mini, an idle gaming rig, an OpenRouter key, an Ollama server or a self-hosted agent) picks the job up and earns USDC. The network routes each prompt to the cheapest or fastest available operator, and the requester pays per call in USDC, with no API keys, no provider lock-in and no rate limits.

A peer-to-peer compute market has an obvious problem: how does a requester know the operator actually ran the model that was paid for? SPEX (Statistical Proof of Execution) solves this. SPEX fingerprints every computation as a compact (~1 KB) Bloom filter, allowing any independent operator to detect cheating statistically in milliseconds, without slow zero-knowledge proofs or hardware enclaves. The mesh is the product; SPEX is why the mesh can exist.

HALO is the network's utility token, used for bonding, incentives and governance. HALO is not a payment token: requesters pay for inference and verification in USDC, and operators and verifiers are paid in USDC. Operators and other participants bond HALO to become eligible to perform certain network roles, and participants earn incentives in newly issued HALO for taking part in network activities. The protocol issues new HALO at an annual inflation rate of approximately 12%, subject to a maximum supply of 2,000,000,000 HALO, distributed as incentives for participation, after which issuance ceases.

Core components:

Warden Halo network: a peer-to-peer compute marketplace for verified AI inference, deployed on Base, with USDC settlement, x402 and direct-deposit payment paths, and swarm verification.

SPEX (Statistical Proof of Execution): a cryptographic verification mechanism that fingerprints computation as a Bloom filter and enforces honesty through reputation rather than capital slashing.

Settlement and protocol contracts on Base: settlement escrow, the WardenX402Splitter, a bonding and incentive-distribution contract, and a token issuance (emissions) contract enforcing the maximum supply cap.

Operator and requester tooling: CLI and framework plugins for serving and consuming inference.

The protocol is deployed on Base because Base offers fast finality and near-zero gas costs, and because EIP-712 enables free off-chain coordination. The broader Warden ecosystem already processes over 60 million autonomous tasks across more than 20 million users.

Development team

ProtoWardo Ltd

Floor 4, Banco Popular Building, Road Town, VG1110 Tortola, BVI

Virgin Islands (British)

true

HALO provides functional access to the protocol's utility layer: the right to bond HALO to perform certain network roles, the right to earn incentives (paid in newly issued HALO) for participation in network activities, and the right to participate in protocol governance. Access to the compute marketplace itself (requesting inference) is paid for and settled in USDC and does not require holding HALO; bonding HALO is required only to perform certain operator or verifier roles (for further details see Sections F and G below).

The project is structured as a peer-to-peer compute and verification network in which HALO serves as the utility, bonding, incentive and governance token, with participation incentives funded by protocol token issuance up to a maximum supply cap.

The architecture is composed of: a settlement layer of smart contracts on Base (settlement escrow, WardenX402Splitter, a bonding and incentive-distribution contract, and a token issuance (emissions) contract); an off-chain coordination layer using EIP-712 signatures for free request/accept/verdict messaging; the SPEX verification mechanism (Bloom-filter fingerprints with reputation-based enforcement); an identity layer using ERC-8004 for pseudonymous, on-chain agent reputation; and operator/requester tooling (CLI and framework plugins).

Token allocation (indicative). Starting supply: 1,000,000,000 HALO. The allocations below apply to the starting supply. Subsequent issuance, up to the maximum supply of 2,000,000,000 HALO, is distributed as incentives for participation in network activities at an annual inflation rate of approximately 12%.

Community & Ecosystem: 35% of starting supply (350,000,000 HALO) — airdrop to real HALO users plus a 14-day LP incentive (0.01% of the starting supply).

Core Contributors: 25% of starting supply (250,000,000 HALO) — core team and early contributors; 12-month cliff, then 24-month linear vest.

Treasury: 25% of starting supply (250,000,000 HALO) — development, integrations, infrastructure spend; DAO-gated release.

Liquidity & Market-Making: 15% of starting supply (150,000,000 HALO) — HALO side of the primary liquidity pool (locked 10 years) plus reserves.

Past milestones (Q2 2026): litepaper published; full whitepaper, first alpha on Base mainnet (anyone can serve or consume verified inference with real USDC), and public roadmap; SPEX Bloom-filter verification, x402 and direct-deposit payment paths live.

Planned milestones include:

Q3 2026: HALO admission to trading on a MiCAR-authorised venue (14 August 2026); bonding and issuance-funded incentives live; emissions schedule active; swarm verification; ERC-8004 identity integration.

Q4 2026: operator-network scaling; free provider-auditing tooling; optional TEE-isolated private-inference tier; on-chain governance.

2027 and beyond: general availability; optional capital-gated high-value verification tiers.

Resource allocation across the project: Engineering and Product — approximately 50% of headcount; Management and Strategy — approximately 33%; Marketing — approximately 10%; Operations — approximately 7%. Infrastructure costs include cloud computing, AI model inference for reference runs, smart-contract operations on Base, security audits, and legal compliance.

Long-term development and research programs; infrastructure maintenance; ecosystem and operator incentives; security audits and compliance; operational expenses. A protocol fee slice (the protocol's share of network fees, retained in USDC in the treasury) provides stable protocol runway.

Admission to trading

The admission to trading is sought in order to enable HALO to be listed on leading EU-based crypto-asset platforms that operate in full compliance with MiCAR, and to be tradeable on decentralized exchanges on Base. The objective is to provide market participants with transparent and regulated access to the token, ensure liquidity within a regulated environment, and facilitate broader adoption and participation in the network's bonding, incentive and governance mechanisms across the Warden Halo ecosystem. It also enables liquidity and price discovery necessary for the practical operation of the token. Any funds or crypto-assets collected in connection with admission to trading are intended to be used solely to support the development, operation, and scaling of Warden Halo and its services. This includes continued technical development and maintenance, ecosystem and operator incentives to encourage decentralised participation, security audits and compliance activities, operational and administrative costs, liquidity and market-support arrangements, and initiatives that support the project's objective of progressively decentralising infrastructure and, where applicable, governance. No funds are intended to be used for the distribution of profits, dividends, or returns to token holders.

false

US Dollar

1000000000

All types of investors

No. Token distribution will be carried out to holders in accordance with the laws and regulations applicable in each EU Member State.

false

Not applicable

Admission to trading of HALO is sought on the following MiCAR-authorised crypto-asset service provider: Bitvavo B.V. (Amsterdam, Netherlands), supervised by the Autoriteit Financiële Markten (AFM). Expected to commence trading on or around 14 August 2026. HALO is additionally tradeable on Base-native decentralized exchanges.

VAVO

Bitvavo is accessible via web (bitvavo.com) and mobile applications to verified users in all EEA member states.

Investors may incur third-party costs associated with accessing and using crypto-asset trading platforms, such as trading fees, custody fees, or network transaction fees (gas on Base, paid in ETH), which are determined by the relevant platform or service provider and are outside the control of the issuer.

No offer expenses are charged to investors by the issuer in connection with the admission to trading of HALO.

No material conflicts of interest. Certain persons involved in the project may hold, have acquired, or may in the future acquire crypto-assets of the same type as those admitted to trading, or may have professional or commercial relationships with service providers involved in the project. Such situations may give rise to potential conflicts of interest, which are managed through internal governance arrangements and disclosure practices.

Law of the British Virgin Islands.

Courts of the British Virgin Islands.

Crypto-asset other than asset-referenced tokens or e-money tokens (Utility Token) — an ERC-20 utility token deployed on Base, used for bonding, incentives and governance.

HALO is a multi-functional utility token used for bonding, incentives (reward distribution) and governance within the Warden Halo ecosystem. It is deliberately not a payment token and not a gas token: all use of the network (requesting, serving and verifying inference) is paid and settled in USDC. In particular, it has the following core functions:

Bonding: operators and other participants bond (lock) HALO to become eligible to perform certain roles within the network, such as serving inference or verifying work in designated roles or tiers. Bonding gates role eligibility; it is not a consensus role and is not subject to consensus slashing. Bonded HALO is locked for the duration of the bond and any applicable cooldown, and is returnable on good-standing exit.

Incentives: HALO is the protocol's incentive asset. Newly issued HALO is distributed to reward participation in defined network activities (such as serving inference, verifying work, and bonding to perform roles), funded by protocol token issuance at an annual inflation rate of approximately 12%.

Governance: enables voting and delegation over protocol parameters, bonding requirements, the incentive (emissions) schedule, treasury and facilitator rotation.

The functionalities of HALO become effective from token deployment and the activation of the settlement, issuance and bonding contracts on Base.

Current functionality (launch): USDC-settled inference and verification (x402 and direct-deposit paths); protocol fee routing to the treasury; bonding to perform network roles; issuance-funded participation incentives; token issuance per the emissions schedule.

Planned functionality expansion:

Q3 2026: bonding and issuance-funded incentives live; emissions schedule active; swarm-verification fee tiers; ERC-8004 reputation-weighted operator pricing.

Q4 2026: on-chain governance over bonding, incentive (emissions) and treasury parameters; optional TEE-isolated private-inference tier.

2027 and beyond: optional capital-gated high-value verification tiers.

Other crypto-asset token white paper

New

HALO is the native utility token of Warden Halo, deployed as an ERC-20 token on Base (an Ethereum Layer-2 network built on the OP Stack optimistic-rollup architecture). HALO does not operate its own blockchain or consensus mechanism and has no validators; transaction security and finality are provided by Base, which settles to Ethereum.

Technical characteristics:

Network: Base (Ethereum Layer-2, OP Stack optimistic rollup)

Token Standard: ERC-20 (not a native gas token)

Starting Total Supply: 1,000,000,000 HALO

Maximum Supply: 2,000,000,000 HALO

Decimals: 18

Hard Cap: Yes — maximum supply of 2,000,000,000 HALO; token issuance ceases permanently once the cap is reached

Token Contract: [HALO ERC-20 contract address on Base — to be published prior to admission to trading]

Blockchain Explorer: https://basescan.org

Inflation mechanism: HALO is issued at an annual inflation rate of approximately 12%, calculated on total supply, and distributed as incentives for participation in network activities. Issuance is enforced by the token contract and stops permanently once total supply reaches the maximum of 2,000,000,000 HALO. Starting from 1,000,000,000 HALO, the maximum supply is reached in approximately six years at this rate, after which total supply is fixed. All issuance is transparent and verifiable on-chain.

Interoperability: HALO is an ERC-20 on Base and is compatible with standard EVM tooling and Base-native decentralized exchanges and bridges.

HALO / Warden Halo.

https://wardenprotocol.org

2026-08-14

2026-08-14

ProtoWardo Ltd provides the following services:

Warden Halo network: a peer-to-peer compute marketplace for verified AI inference, with USDC settlement, x402 and direct-deposit payment paths, swarm verification, and SPEX-based verification.

Operator and requester tooling: CLI and framework plugins compatible with common agent frameworks and inference runtimes for serving and consuming inference.

Warden App: an AI-powered crypto interface offering multi-chain token swaps, yield optimization, portfolio management, AI research agents, and trading.

Custody and identity infrastructure: embedded wallets with private keys held in hardware-isolated enclaves (TEE) and ERC-8004 on-chain agent identity.

English.

N7DJ64CHV

Not applicable

false

true

true

Netherlands

• Austria
• Belgium
• Bulgaria
• Croatia
• Cyprus
• Czechia
• Denmark
• Estonia
• Finland
• France
• Germany
• Greece
• Hungary
• Iceland
• Ireland
• Italy
• Latvia
• Liechtenstein
• Lithuania
• Luxembourg
• Malta
• Norway
• Poland
• Portugal
• Romania
• Slovakia
• Slovenia
• Spain
• Sweden

The rights attached to the token include the right to bond HALO to become eligible to perform certain network roles, the right to earn incentives (paid in newly issued HALO) for participating in network activities, the right to participate in protocol governance through voting and delegation, and the right to transfer HALO freely as a standard ERC-20 on Base (subject to exchange and jurisdictional restrictions). The token does not grant ownership rights, equity, dividend, voting rights over any legal entity, nor any redemption or repayment rights. Holding HALO is not required to request services on the Warden Halo network (which settles in USDC); bonding HALO is required only to perform certain operator or verifier roles.

Token-holder obligations: comply with applicable laws and regulations in the holder's jurisdiction; maintain secure wallet access and private-key management; self-custody (the holder is responsible for security); and report and pay taxes as required by local law.

The exercise of rights attached to HALO is limited to on-chain functional interactions on Base:

Bonding: lock HALO in the bonding contract to become eligible to perform designated network roles; bonded HALO is locked for the duration of the bond and any applicable cooldown, and is returnable on good-standing exit.

Incentives claim: eligible participants claim accrued HALO incentives from the incentive-distribution contract, per the emissions schedule.

Governance: vote on proposals through on-chain governance; delegate voting power where supported; proposals visible on the governance interface.

Transfer: standard ERC-20 transfer transactions; exchange deposits/withdrawals; bridging via supported bridges.

Token rights and obligations may be modified through: (i) protocol governance — proposals submitted to on-chain governance, token-weighted voting determines outcomes, time-locked implementation for approved changes; (ii) smart-contract upgrades — multi-signature approval required, public visibility of pending changes, community notification period; and (iii) unilateral changes by the issuer — emergency security patches may be implemented by the core team, with all changes publicly documented and the community informed through official channels.

Modification limitations: core token properties (decimals, the maximum supply cap) cannot be changed arbitrarily; the token issuance (emissions) logic and the maximum supply cap are contract-enforced; bonding requirements and the incentive schedule are governed parameters; the off-chain facilitator handles signature validation only, never holds funds, and can be rotated by governance. Token holders accept that protocol evolution may result in changes to functionality over time.

No additional public token sales are planned. Future token distribution will occur through participation incentives (issuance), ecosystem incentives, operator incentives, and protocol-defined allocation schedules as outlined in the tokenomics.

250000000

true

Access to the protocol's utility layer: bonding to perform network roles, earning participation incentives, and governance participation. Access to the Warden Halo compute marketplace is settled in USDC and does not require HALO, except that bonding HALO is required to perform certain operator or verifier roles. The token serves as the bonding, incentive and governance asset of the Warden Halo ecosystem.

HALO does not include any redemption mechanism and cannot be redeemed for fiat currency, goods or other assets directly from the issuer. Tokens can be sold on secondary markets (centralized and decentralized exchanges) at prevailing market prices. Service-access rights are ongoing as long as the protocol operates.

false

Tokens can be purchased and sold on supported centralized exchanges through standard exchange order books and on Base-native decentralized exchanges. No direct purchase from the issuer is available.

No technical transfer restrictions are implemented on-chain. HALO that is bonded is locked for the duration of the bond and any applicable cooldown. Vested and locked allocations are subject to smart-contract-enforced schedules: Core Contributors (12-month cliff, then 24-month linear vesting); Liquidity & Market-Making LP (locked 10 years); Treasury (DAO-gated release). Exchange transfers are subject to exchange KYC/AML policies.

true

Supply increases over time through token issuance until the maximum supply cap is reached. Starting supply is 1,000,000,000 HALO; new HALO is issued at an annual inflation rate of approximately 12%, calculated on total supply, and distributed as incentives for participation in network activities. Issuance is enforced by the token contract and ceases permanently once total supply reaches the maximum of 2,000,000,000 HALO, after which total supply is fixed. There is no other minting authority and no discretionary issuance outside the emissions schedule. All supply changes are transparent and verifiable on-chain.

false

No explicit token value-protection schemes exist. Token value is determined by market forces, and no mechanism is designed for price stabilization.

false

British Virgin Islands law governs the issuer entity. Protocol operations are decentralized and not subject to any single jurisdiction. Token holders are subject to the laws of their respective jurisdictions.

Courts of the British Virgin Islands for disputes with the issuer. Protocol-level disputes may be subject to on-chain governance mechanisms. Exchange-related disputes are governed by exchange terms.

HALO is an ERC-20 token deployed on Base, an Ethereum Layer-2 network built on the OP Stack optimistic-rollup architecture. Base batches transactions and posts data to Ethereum Layer-1, inheriting Ethereum's security and settlement guarantees. HALO does not run its own ledger, consensus or validator set. The Halo protocol is implemented as a set of smart contracts on Base (settlement escrow, WardenX402Splitter, a bonding and incentive-distribution contract, and a token issuance (emissions) contract), coordinated by off-chain EIP-712 signatures, with a single on-chain settlement transaction per job or per batch. State is settled on Base and, ultimately, on Ethereum; the architecture maintains compatibility with standard EVM tooling.

The network follows standard EVM Layer-2 conventions on Base. Technical standards include:

ERC-20 (HALO token standard), with a contract-enforced maximum supply cap

EIP-712 typed-data signatures (free off-chain coordination of requests, acceptances and verdicts)

x402 (the HTTP 402 payment standard) for pay-per-request inference and verification flows

ERC-8004 (lightweight on-chain identity and reputation for autonomous agents)

SPEX (Statistical Proof of Execution — Bloom-filter execution fingerprints)

OP Stack / Base Layer-2 conventions; Merkle-root batch settlement

XBRL/iXBRL compliance for this white paper

Interoperability protocols: standard EVM tooling and Base-native decentralized exchanges and bridges.

Warden Halo's architecture is purpose-built for verified, distributed AI inference. Every architectural decision optimizes for one goal: enabling a peer-to-peer compute marketplace where requesters can trust that the model they paid for was actually run.

The architecture stacks purpose-built layers:

Settlement layer (Base smart contracts): a settlement escrow holds requester USDC; the WardenX402Splitter atomically routes pay-per-request payments (90% to the operator in USDC, 10% to the protocol treasury in USDC); a bonding and incentive-distribution contract manages bonded HALO, role eligibility, and the distribution of participation incentives from newly issued HALO; a token issuance (emissions) contract mints HALO at the scheduled annual rate of approximately 12% up to the maximum supply of 2,000,000,000 HALO, after which minting is disabled. Batch settlement uses a single Merkle-root transaction (~200,000 gas regardless of whether there are 10 or 10,000 verdicts).

Verification mechanism (SPEX): a model's inference output is not bit-deterministic across hardware, but its token distribution is stable across honest runs (typically 90%+ overlap). The requester inserts every emitted token ID into a ~1 KB Bloom filter that ships with the result; an independent verifier re-runs the model and checks how many of its own tokens are members of the filter. Honest runs land at roughly 90%+ overlap, pure fabrication at roughly the Bloom false-positive rate (~1%), with a configurable acceptance threshold typically around 70%. Forging a Bloom filter that hits a specific unknown token sequence is as hard as predicting the model's output, which requires actually running the model.

Coordination and settlement timing: request, acceptance and verdict are exchanged off-chain via EIP-712 signatures (free, instant). A single settlement transaction lands on Base in approximately 2 seconds for a fraction of a cent. Total time from request to verified result is typically 4–12 seconds, bounded by the inference re-run rather than the chain. Swarm verification (splitting a verification into hundreds or thousands of micro-tasks) completes in under three minutes with hundreds of independent checks.

Identity and reputation (ERC-8004): agents register a pseudonymous on-chain identity; verification history and accuracy become a permanent, queryable record. It is not a KYC gate; good actors accumulate trust and bad actors accumulate evidence.

Custody (embedded wallets): operators authenticate through their Warden account (email, social login or passkey). Private keys are generated and held exclusively inside a hardware-isolated enclave (TEE); the operator's machine never holds the key. Policy-based controls (MFA, time-delays, co-approval) protect high-value operations.

Privacy (three layers): every prompt is encrypted to the specific operator's public key using ECIES; batch fragmentation means each operator sees only one task out of many; optional TEE isolation (Intel TDX, NVIDIA Confidential Computing, AMD SEV-SNP) is available for the most sensitive work.

Documentation: https://docs.wardenprotocol.org. Network and contracts are deployed on Base (https://basescan.org).

HALO does not have, and does not operate, its own consensus mechanism, and there are no HALO validators or consensus staking. HALO is an ERC-20 token on Base; transaction ordering and security are provided by Base, an OP Stack optimistic rollup that posts transaction data to and settles on Ethereum. Ethereum secures the settled data through its own consensus. Within the Warden Halo protocol, certain roles require participants to bond HALO to become eligible; beyond this eligibility bond, correctness of inference is established not by a blockchain consensus mechanism but by SPEX statistical verification and reputation-based enforcement: an operator who signs a provably false verdict is placed in a 7-day settlement cooldown and loses reputation (−10 points); honest verdicts earn reputation (+1). Bonds gate role eligibility and are not subject to consensus slashing; ordinary misbehaviour is deterred by foregone revenue (the opportunity cost of the cooldown) and reputation loss rather than by capital slashing, a guarantee the protocol acknowledges is deliberately weaker than capital slashing in exchange for low onboarding friction. HALO bonding gates role eligibility only and plays no role in network consensus.

Incentive mechanisms:

Operators (inference): paid in USDC, typically 90% of each pay-per-request payment, settled instantly.

Verifiers: paid in USDC for checking work; honest verdicts also earn +1 reputation, while false "invalid" verdicts incur a 7-day settlement cooldown and −10 reputation.

Participants: receive incentives in newly issued HALO for participating in network activities (such as serving inference, verifying work, and bonding to perform roles), funded by protocol token issuance at an annual inflation rate of approximately 12% (until the maximum supply is reached).

Applicable fees: inference and verification fees are paid in USDC; a protocol slice (e.g. 10% on the x402 path) accrues to the protocol treasury in USDC; gas on Base is paid in ETH and is near-zero. Participation incentives are funded by token issuance up to the maximum supply; there are no validator rewards, because HALO has no validators.

true

Base (and the Warden Halo contracts deployed on it) provides:

USDC settlement: escrow of requester funds and atomic payment splitting to operators and the protocol treasury.

Bonding: management of bonded HALO and role eligibility for operators and verifiers.

Token issuance and participation incentives: minting of new HALO per the emissions schedule (capped at the maximum supply) and distribution as incentives to participants.

Verification settlement: on-chain commitment of SPEX verdicts, including Merkle-root batch settlement for scale.

Identity and reputation: ERC-8004 agent identity and queryable reputation records.

Governance: on-chain proposal submission, token-weighted voting, and time-locked parameter changes.

Live explorer: https://basescan.org. Documentation: Halo Guide (https://runhalo.xyz/guides).

true

Security audits:

Warden Protocol Audit (2024) — Auditor: Informal Systems. Scope: core Warden Protocol components, including SPEX-related logic. Result: findings addressed and remediated. Report available in project documentation.

Warden Halo smart-contract audit (2026) — Scope: the HALO ERC-20 contract (including the maximum supply cap and issuance logic). Result: completed prior to admission to trading; no critical vulnerabilities present.

Ongoing security measures: open-source code enabling community review; continuous integration testing; bug-bounty program; regular dependency updates.

The admission to trading of HALO entails risks related to market volatility, liquidity availability and operational execution. Cryptocurrency markets are highly volatile and the token price may fluctuate significantly with no guarantee of maintaining value. Secondary-market liquidity is not guaranteed; large orders may impact price significantly and exchange delistings could reduce trading options. Centralized exchanges are subject to regulatory actions, exchange failures could result in loss of tokens, and trading halts are possible during market stress. Evolving cryptocurrency regulations globally, potential classification changes, and expanding geographic restrictions may all affect trading. Vesting/lock-up unlock risk is material: a majority of the starting supply is restricted at genesis (Core Contributors 25% under a 12-month cliff and 24-month linear vesting; Treasury 25% DAO-gated; Liquidity & Market-Making 15% locked for 10 years), and scheduled unlocks, together with ongoing issuance of participation incentives, may create selling pressure. Market-maker activity may affect price dynamics, and competition risk arises from other tokens competing for exchange attention and from new entrants in the AI/compute space. Investors should only invest amounts they can afford to lose entirely.

Key person risk: the project depends on founding-team expertise; loss of key personnel could impact development. Operational risk: the team is remote and distributed across Europe (approximately 10 employee members, majority technical); coordination challenges in a distributed organization. Financial risk: startup nature with limited operating history; revenue dependent on protocol adoption and usage. Jurisdictional risk: the issuer is incorporated in the British Virgin Islands and may face regulatory scrutiny in various jurisdictions; the legal framework may evolve unfavorably. Concentration risk: token holdings concentrated among team, treasury and early contributors (Core Contributors 25%, Treasury 25% of the starting supply). Governance risk: the management body has significant influence over protocol development; transition to full decentralization is ongoing. Business-model risk: the token's economic model (participation incentives funded by token issuance) is not yet proven at scale and depends on sustained network usage.

Market Risk: Crypto-assets are notoriously volatile, with prices subject to significant fluctuations due to market sentiment, regulatory news, technological advancements, and macroeconomic factors.

Liquidity Risk: Crypto-assets may suffer from low liquidity, making it difficult to buy or sell large amounts without affecting the market price, which could lead to significant losses, especially in fast-moving market conditions.

Custodial Risk: Risks associated with the theft of crypto-assets from exchanges or wallets, loss of private keys, or failure of custodial services, which can result in the irreversible loss of crypto-assets.

Inflation and Dilution Risk: HALO is issued at an annual inflation rate of approximately 12% until the maximum supply of 2,000,000,000 HALO is reached. Holders who do not participate (and so do not receive incentives) are diluted over time as their proportional share of total supply decreases, and the distribution of newly issued HALO as incentives may create selling pressure. The real value of participation incentives depends on market price, participation levels, and network usage, and is not guaranteed.

Bonding Risk: HALO that is bonded to perform network roles is locked and illiquid for the duration of the bond and any applicable cooldown, during which it cannot be transferred or sold and remains exposed to price movements. Bonding does not guarantee incentives or any return, and bonding requirements and eligible roles may be changed through governance.

Smart Contract Risk: HALO and the Warden Halo settlement, issuance and bonding contracts are code running on Base. Bugs or vulnerabilities in the code — including in the ERC-20 (and its supply-cap and issuance logic), the splitter, the emissions contract, or the bonding and incentive-distribution contract — can expose users to potential hacks and exploits, leading to the loss of crypto-assets or unintended behaviour despite audits. A flaw in the issuance or cap logic could, in particular, result in incorrect supply.

Regulatory and Tax Risk: Changes in the regulatory environment for crypto-assets (such as consumer protection, taxation, and anti-money laundering requirements) could affect the use, value, or legality of crypto-assets in a given jurisdiction.

Counterparty Risk: In cases where crypto-assets are used in contractual agreements or held on exchanges, there is a risk that the counterparty may fail to fulfill their obligations due to insolvency, compliance issues, or fraud, resulting in loss of crypto-assets.

Reputational Risk: Association with illicit activities, high-profile thefts, or technological failures can damage the reputation of certain crypto-assets, impacting user trust and market value.

Stablecoin and Market-Infrastructure Dependency Risk: Settlement depends on USDC and trading depends on Base-native exchanges; de-pegging of USDC, liquidity shortfalls, or exchange failures could impair settlement, trading and the value of incentives.

Self-Custody Risk: Token holders are responsible for private-key security; lost keys mean lost tokens permanently with no recovery mechanism.

No Investor Protections: HALO is not covered by deposit guarantee schemes or investor compensation schemes; there is no insurance on holdings.

Development risk: roadmap milestones may be delayed; technical challenges may arise; resource constraints possible. Adoption risk: a two-sided marketplace must attract both operator supply and requester demand; network effects may not materialize. Competition risk: multiple projects in the AI × compute and verification space; established players may enter the market. AI technology risk: AI models evolve rapidly; SPEX verification, while statistically robust, is novel and unproven at very large scale. Enforcement-model risk: misbehaviour is deterred by reputation and foregone revenue rather than by capital slashing; the protocol explicitly accepts that this guarantee is weaker than capital slashing, and on a poorly utilised network the opportunity cost of a settlement cooldown may be an insufficient deterrent. Token-utility delivery risk: promised features (bonding, participation incentives, swarm verification, TEE-isolated inference, governance) may not materialize as planned; utility-token status depends on delivering services; regulatory classification may change.

Private Key Management Risk and Loss of Access to Crypto-Assets: The security of crypto-assets heavily relies on the management of private keys. Poor management practices, loss, or theft of private keys or credentials can lead to irreversible loss of access to crypto-assets. Operator signing keys are held in TEE-backed embedded wallets, but holders self-custodying HALO remain responsible for their own keys.

Settlement and Transaction Finality: Base provides fast confirmation, but as an optimistic rollup it relies on Ethereum for final settlement and on a fraud-proof/challenge mechanism. Once a transaction is confirmed it cannot be reversed; crypto-assets sent to a wrong address cannot be retrieved. Withdrawals from Base to Ethereum may be subject to challenge-window delays.

Sequencer and Layer-2 Dependency Risk: Base currently relies on a sequencer to order transactions. Sequencer downtime, censorship or failure could delay or disrupt settlement, issuance, bonding and trading. HALO depends entirely on the continued operation and security of Base and Ethereum; any failure, halt, reorganisation or critical bug in either could affect HALO.

Scaling Limitations and Transaction Fees: As the number of users and transactions grows, network congestion on Base or Ethereum could increase transaction fees and slow processing times, affecting usability and costs.

Network Attacks and Cyber Security Risks: The network can be vulnerable to a variety of cyber-attacks, including attacks on the sequencer, bridges, or exchange liquidity, as well as DDoS attacks. These can disrupt operations and compromise integrity.

Bugs in Core Code: Even with thorough testing, unknown bugs may exist in the HALO contract or the settlement, issuance and bonding contracts, which could be exploited. Continuous code review, audit trails, and a bug-bounty program are essential to identify and rectify such vulnerabilities promptly.

Smart Contract Security Risk: Bugs or vulnerabilities in smart-contract code can expose users to potential hacks and exploits. Despite audits, unknown bugs may exist, and any flaw can lead to loss of crypto-assets or unauthorized access.

Dependency on Underlying Technology: The protocol relies on Base, Ethereum, USDC, x402 facilitators, Base-native decentralized exchanges, embedded-wallet custody and third-party AI inference providers, which may themselves be vulnerable to attacks, outages, or other interferences. The protocol also depends on third-party libraries and upstream open-source dependencies.

Risk of Technological Disruption: Technological advancements such as quantum computing could make components insecure or obsolete, potentially leading to theft or loss of crypto-assets or compromised integrity.

Governance Risk: Faulty governance models can lead to ineffective decision-making, slow responses to issues, and potential disproportionate influence by a group of stakeholders, including over the bonding requirements, the incentive schedule and treasury.

Anonymity and Privacy Risk: The transparency of public ledgers can expose transaction patterns; addresses may be linked to activity, exposing holders to phishing, fraud, or other malicious activities. SPEX privacy layers mitigate, but do not eliminate, exposure.

Verification-Integrity Risk: SPEX relies on statistical token-distribution overlap; mis-calibrated thresholds, novel model behaviours, or coordinated provider tampering could in principle reduce verification reliability, though swarm verification across diverse providers is designed to surface such anomalies.

Third-Party Risks: Crypto-assets rely on third-party services such as exchanges and wallet providers for trading and storage. These platforms can be susceptible to security breaches, operational failures, and regulatory non-compliance.

Risk mitigation measures include:

Security: professional security audits (Informal Systems and the 2026 Warden Halo smart-contract audit); open-source code enabling community review; multi-signature and TEE-backed custody for critical operations; bug-bounty program; regular security assessments and updates.

Technical: proven technology stack (Base / EVM, ERC-20 with a contract-enforced supply cap, EIP-712); comprehensive testing and CI/CD pipelines; gradual rollout with alpha testing on mainnet; redundancy across independent operators; SPEX swarm verification for stronger statistical guarantees.

Operational: experienced team; geographic distribution reduces single points of failure; clear incident-response procedures.

Financial: protocol treasury (funded by the protocol fee slice in USDC) for stable runway; diversified inference and verification revenue; a contract-enforced maximum supply cap and conservative token-release schedule (cliffs, linear vesting, 10-year LP lock).

Governance: time-locked protocol changes; multi-signature requirements for critical operations; community oversight through open-source development; gradual decentralization roadmap.

Compliance: legal counsel for regulatory monitoring; geographic restrictions where required; adaptation to evolving regulatory frameworks.

Users should conduct their own due diligence and consult financial and legal advisors before acquiring tokens.

HALO is an ERC-20 token deployed on Base. HALO does not operate its own blockchain, does not use a Proof-of-Work or Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism of its own, and has no validators. Consequently, HALO does not directly consume energy for the validation of transactions or the maintenance of a distributed ledger. The energy attributable to HALO is the marginal energy associated with executing HALO transactions on Base, an Ethereum Layer-2 optimistic rollup that batches transactions and posts compressed data to Ethereum Layer-1, which is secured by an energy-efficient Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism that does not require energy-intensive mining hardware. Layer-2 rollups amortise the cost of Ethereum settlement across many transactions, so the per-transaction energy footprint is extremely low relative to Proof-of-Work systems and lower than transacting directly on Ethereum Layer-1. The off-chain components of Warden Halo (operator inference and SPEX verification) run on already-existing, mostly idle consumer and prosumer hardware; SPEX adds only the marginal cost of a verification re-run or a single inference slice. Detailed quantitative environmental metrics specific to HALO are not separately measured because HALO operates no validation infrastructure of its own; the issuer commits to providing updated sustainability information as standardised Layer-2 methodologies become available.

ProtoWardo Ltd

984500477F9C991NE141

HALO

HALO is an ERC-20 token on Base and has no consensus mechanism or validators of its own. Base is an Ethereum Layer-2 optimistic rollup (OP Stack) that orders transactions via a sequencer and posts transaction data to Ethereum Layer-1 for settlement. Ethereum Layer-1 is secured by a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism, which does not rely on energy-intensive mining. Correctness of inference within the Warden Halo protocol is established by SPEX statistical verification and reputation-based enforcement (a 7-day settlement cooldown and reputation loss for provably false verdicts), not by a blockchain consensus mechanism. Certain network roles require participants to bond HALO to become eligible; bonds gate eligibility and are not subject to consensus slashing.

All network usage settles in USDC: operators are typically paid 90% of each pay-per-request payment in USDC, verifiers are paid in USDC, and a protocol fee slice (e.g. 10% on the x402 path) accrues to the protocol treasury in USDC. Participation incentives are funded by token issuance: new HALO is minted at an annual inflation rate of approximately 12% and distributed as incentives to participants in network activities, until the maximum supply of 2,000,000,000 HALO is reached, after which issuance ceases. Gas on Base is paid in ETH.

2026-01-01

2026-12-31

500

Energy is estimated using a transaction-based methodology applied to Base Layer-2 activity, with Ethereum Layer-1 settlement energy amortised across rollup batches. As HALO operates no validators, no node-level measurement is applicable; figures will be refined as standardised Layer-2 energy methodologies mature.