Crypto’s payout factor of 1 does not establish that its capital earns more than Classic’s. The atomic change altered both the payout policy and the principal assigned to one round. A factor comparison that ignores the denominator is incomplete.
Revised September 8, 2026. Earlier claims that the raw pool decline left almost no capital at risk are withdrawn.
Locate the policy boundary in actual rounds
The audited Crypto metadata first showed atomic staking at round 1292, opened June 18, 2026. The preceding observed round was legacy. The announcement’s migration start and the first observed atomic round are separate dates.
For the captured atomic Crypto policy, CORR has multiplier 0.1 and MMC has multiplier 1. The position return is capped at ±100%, with factor 1. Classic round 1343 instead uses CORR60 × 3 and MMC60 × 15. Signals round 1349 still reported legacy staking, despite a separate score-system transition.
A smaller position can coexist with substantial capital
At the common September 8 source time, Crypto’s current staked balance was about 53,800 NMR. A round-level denominator of a few thousand NMR does not contradict that balance. See the locked-NMR explanation.
The payout factor note treats the factor as one policy parameter among several. Relative realized returns also depend on target behavior, score distributions, the funding schedule and which rounds have settled.
USDC staking was described as planned in the reviewed documentation. It is not a present payout unit for these charts. I would compare mature, matched capital-return windows before ranking tournament economics.
Method: latest 100 upstream round metadata records per tournament captured September 8, 2026, matched to dashboard round totals. Only confirmed outcomes are plotted; Crypto observations missing from either input are excluded.