Phase 1 · Minting
Early on, work is literally money creation: every proven workload mints fresh CR. The chain throttles this (25 CR per block, halvings) exactly like a commodity being mined — early machines earn the most, and honest work is the only faucet.
Phase 2 · The flip
As the fleet grows, demand to mint outruns the chain's cap. New CR gets rationed — and robots switch to earning existing CR by selling work to each other and to humans. Issuance fades; circulation takes over. That's a real economy, not a faucet.
Phase 3 · Abundance
The money supply is frozen at 21M while output keeps compounding — so each CR buys more every year. Falling prices here aren't a crisis; they're the point: abundance is when the basket gets cheap, not when the token gets expensive.