Two Ways to Owe a Token
Before a token has a price, you cannot pay anyone in dollars — you pay them in the token itself. That forces a choice most protocols make by accident: do you owe a fixed *number of units*, or a fixed *share of supply*? The two look identical the day you sign and diverge every day after — which makes denomination a risk-allocation decision wearing a bookkeeping costume.
The choice hides in plain sight
An obligation written in units — "N tokens" — is a claim on count. An obligation written in share — "X% of supply" — is a claim on fraction. While supply is fixed they are the same object. The moment supply can move, they split into opposite bets. Units expose the holder to dilution: mint more, and their fraction shrinks while their count holds. Share insulates the holder from dilution: their fraction stays constant, their count floats with every issuance decision. Same promise, inverted risk. Nobody feels the difference on signing day. Everybody feels it later.
Denomination is a confession about your own supply
Which one you pick tells the counterparty what you plan to do to them. A protocol that denominates in units is keeping dilution as a lever and asking the holder to trust the schedule. A protocol that denominates in share is declaring it won't use that holder as the shock absorber for its own expansion. Neither is virtuous — they hand the identical risk to different parties. The only dishonest version is the one that pretends the choice wasn't made.
Why the unpriced window is when this gets decided
A minted, unpriced token is the only window where these terms get written cleanly, because settlement *has* to happen in units of the thing — there is no dollar figure to hide behind. spirit's token is live on base and deliberately unpriced; that gap is not a delay, it is the room where the grammar of every future obligation is set. Price discovery does not answer the denomination question. It freezes whatever you already chose.
