Overview
Nula is an in-development payment protocol for streaming tokens over time. Instead of sending one lump sum, a future sender would lock tokens once, set an accrual rate, and let the recipient withdraw whatever has built up. It is a roadmap-stage project, not a live app yet.
Built by Five Binaries, the team behind Blockfrost, Nula is planned around Cardano smart contracts: on-chain code that can hold funds and release them by rule. If launched as planned, the same setup could support payroll, token vesting, grant tranches, subscription billing, and treasury payouts from a community-run organization1.
Key Features
- Designed for ongoing payments. A sender would lock tokens once at a chosen accrual rate, and the recipient could claim the amount that has built up. The same model is meant to cover salaries, multi-year vesting, or grants that release as work lands1.
- No platform fee planned. Nula says users would pay only the standard Cardano network cost. Those fees would flow to stake pool operators and the Cardano treasury, not to the team building Nula1.
- Planned support for ADA and Cardano tokens. Streams are designed to work with ADA or any token issued on Cardano, including stablecoins and project tokens1.
- Designed for organizations, not just people. The proposal covers community budgets and treasury contracts as well as person-to-person payments, so organizations could use streams for scheduled payouts2.
- Optional scheduled delivery. The proposal includes an automatic payout option, where a scheduled service would send accrued tokens to a recipient wallet on a fixed cadence2.
What to Expect
The Nula website is a single-page introduction with sections for features, pricing, roadmap, and a long FAQ. There is no mainnet app yet; the protocol is still in development and is seeking funding through the Cardano community budget process administered by Intersect2. The roadmap includes Plutus smart contract development, testnet deployment, a third-party security audit, and mainnet launch.
If you are a sender, you would pick a recipient, an amount, a token, and a duration, then lock the funds. From there, value flows to the recipient by the second until the duration runs out, with the option to cancel any unstreamed remainder. If you are a recipient, you see your balance tick up in real time and withdraw whenever you want, or set up automatic delivery so the tokens land in your wallet on a schedule.
Nula is built by Five Binaries, a Cardano-native team founded in 2019 and led by Marek Mahut, with a track record of funded community proposals and integrations across the ecosystem3.
