HoloFuel, plainly
Created by a community member. Not published by, affiliated with, or endorsed by Holochain Foundation, Holo Limited or Holo Ventures.
An explainer, not an investment pitch

Money that exists because something real happened.

HoloFuel is an asset-backed mutual credit currency — backed by real hosting capacity, not scarcity or speculation. HoloFuel units are minted against hosting capacity and settled through transaction payments. It's peer-to-peer money, engineered by Unyt on Holochain's agent-centric framework — no bank issuing it, no exchange holding it, no middleman between you and your balance.

Watch how active supply fluctuates based on hosting capacity

EXAMPLE — SIMULATED
128,451 HF
circulating supply — not real HoloFuel network data
ALWAYS TRUE
0 HF
network-wide net balance — guaranteed by the math, not simulated
The core difference

Zero-sum tokens vs. asset-backed mutual credit currency

◯ Bitcoin-style tokens

  • Fixed or scripted supply — value comes from scarcity, not activity
  • For you to gain, someone else usually has to buy in at a higher price — a zero-sum tug of war
  • Rewards go to whoever already has the most hardware or capital
  • No inherent link to a real good or service delivered
  • Gas fees are paid to miners/validators for every transaction — often too costly for small payments
VS

◆ HoloFuel (mutual credit)

  • Supply expands and contracts with real activity — it "breathes"
  • Every credit is matched by a real promise: hosting capacity actually delivered
  • Created by whoever does the hosting, not mined by the biggest rig
  • Hosts set their own price, typically based on the RAM, CPU & bandwidth, and storage they provide — no protocol fixes the exchange rate
  • Network-wide, it always nets to zero — it's accounting, not speculation
  • No miners or global consensus to pay — built for microtransactions down to fractions of a cent
Not created out of thin air

Every credit has a positive and a negative side

HoloFuel doesn't add new money to the world — it splits each transaction into a plus and a minus that are created together, and always cancel out network-wide.

⚠ SIMULATED EXAMPLE — fluctuates for illustration, not real HoloFuel network data
Total positive balances
+128,451 HF
Everything hosts are currently owed for real capacity they've delivered. This is what people can actually spend.
Total negative balances
−128,451 HF
The network's matching obligations — what it still owes back in future hosting or redemption. Exactly mirrors the positive side.
Network-wide net supply
0 HF
Add the two columns together and they always sum to zero. There is no "printed" pile of money sitting anywhere.
+128,451  +  −128,451  =  0 — try the demo below and watch both sides move together
🖥️ You (hosted an app)
+0.85 HF
Your balance rises — you're now owed value by the network.
🌐 Network capacity account
−0.85 HF
The network's matching obligation — it owes you back in future hosting or redemption.
+0.85  +  −0.85  =  0.00 — one transaction, cancels out immediately
Try it
⚠ Example simulation

Watch a credit get created

Set your price like a real host would, then watch both sides of the ledger move together.

Start hosting
Rent out spare server capacity — the only network HoloFuel backs today
RAM
8 GB
CPU & Bandwidth
4 vCPU / 100 Mbps
Storage
250 GB SSD
Current average hosting price for this hardware: 10.00 HF / hour
Your price 10.00 HF / hour
or type exact price: HF/hour
You set this — it isn't fixed by any protocol. Real hosts typically price based on the RAM, CPU & bandwidth, and storage they're offering. Price too far above the current average and no customer will be found.
→ Click below to find a customer at your price.
Your HoloFuel balance
0.00 HF
🖥️
📒
No activity yet.
Total positive: +128,451 HF
Total negative: −128,451 HF
Network-wide net balance: Always 0 HF
Try it — cashing out

Settlement & capacity reserve gateway

Once you're holding HoloFuel, what happens if you want it as regular currency — or moved into another mutual-credit network entirely? Same rule applies as hosting: your requested payout has to find a real buyer.

This simulation illustrates a potential settlement mechanism. No settlement partners or official cash-out gateways are currently operating, and Holo Limited does not run token exchange services. Final migration and settlement terms will be published directly by Holo.
Amount to exchange Max: 0.00 HF
HF
Cannot exceed your current balance
Receive currency
Total requested payout
USD
Effective rate: $0.00 / HF  (Market average: $1.00 / HF)
Your settled portfolio
No settlements yet — your converted balances will collect here.
📒
🏦
No settlement attempted yet.
HoloFuel off-ramps rely on real capacity buyers and liquidity reserves, not speculative liquidity pools. Prices higher than real market demand will not clear.
Side by side — quick recap

HoloFuel   vs   Bitcoin

Same ideas as above, distilled into one glance.

QuestionAnswer
Where does a unit come from?HoloFuel: created when real hosting capacity is delivered to the network
Bitcoin: mined by a protocol rule, unrelated to any specific act
What backs it?HoloFuel: a matched obligation, tied to hosting actually delivered
Bitcoin: market belief and scarcity alone
Zero-sum?HoloFuel: no — positive-sum for anyone doing real hosting work
Bitcoin: mostly — gains for holders come from other buyers paying more
Who earns it?HoloFuel: whoever contributes real hosting capacity, priced on the RAM, CPU & bandwidth, and storage they offer — at their own price
Bitcoin: whoever already owns the most hardware or capital
Transaction fees?HoloFuel: no gas fees — no miners or global consensus to pay, so even fractions of a cent are practical to send
Bitcoin: network fees paid to miners, which can exceed the value of a small payment
Where things stand

The honest, current picture

Migration date

HOT migration is expected to commence on 1 Nov 2026.

New commercial arm

Holo Ventures formed July 2026, led by Cameron Burgess, to turn hosting + HoloFuel into a working product.

Read the announcement →
What's live today

Hosting is currently paid in HOT while HoloFuel's accounting layer is finished. HoloFuel is scoped to hosting for now — other real-world networks could plug into the same mutual-credit model later, but that isn't live or announced.

Questions people actually ask

FAQ

HoloFuel
What exactly is HoloFuel?

An asset-backed, mutual-credit currency built to pay hosts for the compute, bandwidth, and storage they provide to the network. Balances aren't minted from nothing — they're created between the two parties in a transaction, the moment real hosting work happens, and they're designed to track the actual productive capacity of the network rather than speculation.

Is HoloFuel a cryptocurrency, and does it run on a blockchain?

It's crypto-accounting, but not blockchain in the usual sense — there's no single global ledger and no miners. It runs on Holochain, an agent-centric framework where each participant keeps their own local chain, and transactions are validated peer-to-peer rather than by network-wide consensus.

Does HoloFuel have a fixed supply, like Bitcoin's 21 million cap?

No cap at all — network-wide net supply is always exactly zero, since every positive balance is matched by a negative one. What people actually spend (the "active" or circulating supply) expands and contracts with real hosting activity, rather than following a pre-set schedule.

Is HoloFuel's price as volatile as Bitcoin's?

It's designed to be value-stable rather than speculative, anchored to the real cost of compute. If HoloFuel trades above that cost, more hosts join, supply rises, and price settles back down; if it trades below, hosts leave, supply tightens, and price rises. It's still a market — prices can move — but real hosting costs act as a floor and ceiling that sentiment alone can't override for long.

Can I just buy or trade HoloFuel like a normal crypto token?

HoloFuel itself isn't built as a speculative trading asset — it's a utility currency for hosting work. HOT, the ERC-20 placeholder token from 2018, is what's currently tradeable, and it's designed to redeem 1:1 for HoloFuel once migration is live. Holo Ltd. doesn’t run exchange or redemption services directly — any such services would be provided by appropriately licensed third parties.

Can HoloFuel handle microtransactions, and are there gas fees?

HoloHost application and network fee models are subject to final publication. Holo Ventures delivers software and infrastructure services without taking cuts from peer-to-peer transaction fees.

HOT → HoloFuel redemption
Is HOT the same thing as HoloFuel?

No. HOT is an ERC-20 "IOU" token on Ethereum, sold in 2018 as a pre-sale claim on future hosting capacity. HoloFuel is the actual mutual-credit currency that settles hosting transactions inside the network. HOT is designed to redeem 1:1 for HoloFuel once the migration is live.

When can I redeem HOT for HoloFuel?

A large-scale technical migration test ran in April–May 2026 with real community testers and positive feedback. Migration testing was executed on the Sepolia testnet using mock HOT tokens, not real tokens. Holo Ventures has said the live migration will be available by 1 November 2026 — explicitly a worst-case date, not a target, so it could open sooner. The conversion rate is 1:1. A swap period of at least six months has been committed. Full migration terms haven’t been published yet — when they are, they’ll come from Holo directly.

Who actually processes the HOT → HoloFuel redemption?

Not Holo Ltd. directly — regulatory requirements mean any exchange, conversion, or redemption service has to be run by an appropriately licensed third party. The technical bridge itself uses wrapped HOT, cryptographic proofs, and Unyt smart agreements, with no custodian holding your funds along the way.

HoloFuel & credit lines
Can I go negative in HoloFuel? Isn't that risky debt?

Going negative is a normal, intentional part of how the currency works — not a malfunction. In mutual credit, spending into a negative balance is literally how new supply gets created: one person's positive balance is always matched by someone else's negative one, and network-wide they sum to zero.

How is my credit line — how negative I can go — decided?

It's tied to your track record of actually delivering hosting, not collateral or wealth. Someone who's reliably provided hosting capacity for a long time has demonstrated they can repay a negative balance with future hosting, so the network extends them more credit. The longer and more consistent your history, the higher the credit line you earn.

What happens if a host fails to deliver capacity they were paid for?

Their negative balance stands — it's an obligation they still owe the network, not one that's forgiven. Since credit lines are earned through track record, unreliable hosts see their limit shrink over time, and repeated failures make it harder to go negative again in future. The system leans on reputation and peer validation rather than collateral to keep obligations honest.

Is HoloFuel live today — can I use it right now?

Not yet. Hosting on the network is currently paid in HOT while HoloFuel's accounting layer is finished. HoloFuel is scoped to hosting specifically for now — other real-world networks plugging into the same model isn't live or announced.