Costs and custody model
Managed custody is the v1 default. Liskov holds and operates the service-side authority needed to register Acurast jobs and settle network costs within the Application's effective policy and the organization's customer controls.
Customer money model
USD Service Credits are the account unit. Liskov supports read-only views of available, reserved, used, and transaction history in USD. It quotes work, reserves bounded credit, settles a final charge from evidence, and releases unused reserve for eligible, already-funded organizations.
Customer Stripe checkout and issuance of new Service Credits remain release-gated. Internal first-party acceptance uses an existing pre-funded organization; it does not prove that customer funding is available.
You do not:
- deposit USDC or ACU;
- manage a customer Acurast wallet;
- approve a token swap;
- monitor a crypto balance; or
- withdraw network settlement assets.
Liskov's treasury mechanics are not a second customer balance.
For managed custody, scanner-proven report absence has a specific closeout.
Once the strict report deadline has passed and the finalized scanner still has
no report, the customer is not billed: the final charge is zero, the whole
linked reserve is released, and no customer action or review amount remains.
The customer-facing reason is report_absent_not_billed. Any exact network
reward, refund, processor payout, or deregistration fee remains Liskov treasury
accounting rather than customer exposure.
This rule does not turn an open or unreadable evidence window into zero. A pending scanner, unavailable reader, outside-coverage result, identity or timing conflict, or read failure still defers settlement.
Layers of authority
A deployment must fit all relevant boundaries:
- manifest/effective-policy caps;
- enabled product capability and organization entitlement;
- current quote and reserve;
- available USD Service Credits;
- explicit customer confirmation where required; and
- network acceptance.
No single cap promises that the work will be available or cost exactly that amount.
Managed custody does not erase chain ownership
Once a job is registered, Acurast owns its schedule. Pause and retirement stop new Liskov work but cannot force the chain to end an existing job. Retirement therefore waits for execution and financial closure.
Self-custody
A separate signer design exists as Preview work, not as the default v1 path. It changes key and funding responsibility and has its own pairing/liveness boundary. Until an explicit Preview is available and documented, do not follow internal signer or custody commands. The managed no-report rule does not apply to self-custody: ACU movement remains immutable chain accounting, never an ACU refund or reversal invented by Liskov.
See Read USD Service Credits and Quotes, reserves, and final charges for tasks.