A circularity is not a metaphor. It is a loop with a price on entry, a grade on the material, and a share on the way out. Cross the loop and you pay the toll. Verify the material and you set the score. Subscribe to the system and you earn the dividend. Six rings. One ledger. Every tonne, every tier, every time.— MD-453 Sovereign Seal · The Circularities Doctrine
The Circularity Toll™ is the fixed extraction levied on every tonne, every transaction, every gateway crossing inside CircularOS. It is operated by Circularity Toll Ltd (Tier 3 entity · Pricing Engine · Fees) and lives at the front of every flow. Whoever wants to convert raw plastic, raw evidence, or raw compliance pain into verified value pays the toll first. There are 14 toll tiers in the master pricing constellation (MD-353), and the toll is what funds the verification fabric, the Truth Ledger writes, the dPRN minting, the H.BLUE pattern detection, and the operator margin.
The toll is not a tax. A tax goes to a state. A toll goes to a road, and the road is the one the operator built and maintains. CircularOS owns the road. You can use it without paying — but then you do not get the dPRN, the deed, the ESG Block, the Proof Stack, or the Dividend Share. You get raw plastic that no auditor will defend. The toll is the price of admissibility.
The Circularity Dividend™ is the percentage of value generated by your material that comes back to you, the subscriber, instead of staying with the system. It is the inverse of the toll. The toll is what the system takes on the way in. The dividend is what the system gives back on the way out. Together they form a balanced loop — not extraction, but a covenant where verification value is shared with the source.
The Dividend Share™ has four tiers, fully wired into the CVCaaS Hub at /cvcaas-hub. The higher the tier, the larger the share returned. The 0% tier (Trial) gets the proof but keeps no dividend. The 50% tier (Sovereign) gets half of every pound the verification of their material generates downstream — VMR sales, ESG Block sales, dPRN trading premiums, white-label royalties.
The dividend fires after the 7% Covenant. Order of operations: gross value → 7% to Covenant (40 meals + Children's Trust + Mother's House) → remainder split per Dividend tier. The Covenant always eats first.
The Circularity Score™ is a 0–100 grade computed for every tonne entering the system. It measures how circular the material actually is: provenance clarity, polymer purity, contamination, traceability, processor relationship, journey length, evidence completeness. The score is not aesthetic — it is the price-setting variable. It decides whether a tonne sells at the £450 floor or the £500 ceiling, and everything in between.
The Score is calculated by the Circularity Score Calculator (Pioneer System PS-028) and the Quality Scoring Engine (PS-031). Both are wired into the dPRN minting pipeline — score is stamped on the deed at issuance, immutable from that point. This is why two tonnes of identical PET can sell for £450 and £500 in the same week. The market does not pay for plastic. It pays for proof, and the score is the proof of the proof.
Three more circularities exist in the fabric, each named, each priced, each documented:
| Name | What it is | Where it lives | Price layer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Circularity Credit | The convertible token unit. Every verified tonne mints 1 Credit, redeemable against the Toll, the dPRN, or the ESG Block. Pioneer System PS-019. | Sovereign Bank · Truth Ledger · PS-019 cluster | 1 Credit = £450 face · convertible |
| Circularity Premium | The £25–£50 add-on the Score earns you. Floats above the floor. Paid by the buyer, banked as upside, splits into Covenant + Dividend Share. | Stamped on dPRN at minting · settles on sale | £25 to £50 / tonne above floor |
| The Circularity Loop | The underlying fabric — material → verification → dPRN → £450 → 40 meals → Truth Ledger → next tonne. The reason the other five circularities exist. The loop is the system; the rest are pricing layers on top of it. | The whole of CircularOS · all 66 protocols | — (the loop is the road, not the toll) |
Every tonne entering CircularOS triggers the same six-step ring sequence:
| Step | Ring | Action | Price impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Loop entry | Tonne presented at gateway · evidence captured | — |
| 2 | Score™ | Quality assessed · grade 0–100 stamped | Sets premium £0 / £25 / £50 |
| 3 | Toll™ | Tier-based fee charged · CVCaaS verifies · dPRN minted | £450 floor + premium |
| 4 | Credit | 1 Circularity Credit issued to subscriber's wallet | £450 face value |
| 5 | Covenant first | 7% off the top → 40 Meals + Children's Trust + Mother's House | −7% always |
| 6 | Dividend Share™ | Remainder splits per subscriber tier · 0% / 25% / 40% / 50% returned | Quarterly settlement |
Why this order matters: the score must come before the toll because the toll tier depends on the score. The Covenant must come before the dividend because the 7% is a sealed first-charge over all subscriber returns. Reverse the order and the doctrine collapses.
Any competitor can mint a token. Any competitor can charge a fee. Any competitor can score quality. But no competitor can run all six rings off one Truth Ledger with a 7% Covenant first-charge and a tiered Dividend Share returning value to the source. The Toll funds the rails. The Score sets the price. The Credit makes it portable. The Premium pays the verifier. The Covenant pays the kingdom. The Dividend pays the subscriber. That is not a product. That is a constitution.
The moat is not in the brilliance of any single ring. The moat is in the fact that removing any one ring breaks the other five. Without the Score, the Toll is arbitrary. Without the Toll, the Credit is unfunded. Without the Credit, the Dividend has no unit. Without the Covenant, the Dividend is just rebates. Without the Dividend, subscribers leave. Without the Loop, none of it exists. Six rings. Locked. Mutually load-bearing.