# Whitepaper to Current Mainnet

The [2025 PIPE Token Whitepaper](pipe-token-whitepaper-2025.pdf) is an archived MiCA notification dated September 3, 2025. It is not the current mainnet operating guide. This page records the differences that matter for readers of this documentation set.

## What the archived PDF described

The summary and crypto-asset functionality sections (including pages 11 and 48) describe a permissionless point-of-presence (PoP) network in which:

- Customers access bandwidth and storage by converting PIPE into non-transferable Data Credits that are burned on use.
- PoP operators stake or receive delegated tokens to become eligible for service provision **and incentives**.
- Token holders can participate in on-chain governance of network upgrades and economic parameters.

Those statements belong to the dated publication. They are not current mainnet policy in this repository.

## What this documentation set describes

| Topic | Archived 2025 PDF | Current docs |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Customer credits | Token converted to Data Credits | Prepaid storage credit purchased with USDC on Solana |
| Operator product | Permissionless PoP nodes | Firestarter nodes |
| Node software | PoP-era node guides and binaries | Invite-gated `lattice-node` source or binary, provided with the enrollment invite, by Pipe Network operations, and configured with `LATTICE_*` settings. This documentation set does not publish a clone URL |
| Node rewards | Participation incentives for PoPs | **Individual nodes receive no rewards or payouts** |
| Participation stake | Token stake or delegation for PoP eligibility | **10,000 PIPE staked through LovePIPE** per Firestarter node |
| Enrollment | Permissionless PoP participation | Invite-only; no public waitlist or self-serve form; operators may email hello@pipe.network to inquire |
| Delivery / routing products | Decentralized CDN / streaming framing | This documentation set covers Pipe Storage and Firestarter nodes only |

Older PoP-era setup pages, environment names, and reward language are obsolete. Do not follow them for mainnet.

## Where to read current policy

- [Tokenomics](../Tokenomics.md): no individual node rewards, LovePIPE staking, and optional treasury policy.
- [Tokenomics operations spec](../tokenomics-operations-spec.md): parameter registry and implementation boundaries.
- [Pipe Storage](../storage/overview.md) and [Storage API](../storage/api.md): customer access.
- [Mainnet Firestarter Nodes](../nodes/mainnet.md): operator enrollment and the `lattice-node` executable.

The PDF is preserved unchanged. A revised whitepaper has not been provided for this documentation update.