The price corridor, explained with two numbers
Most coins have a price. ASTRX has a corridor. Here is what that means, with nothing but the two numbers that define it.
The floor
Backing per token is the reserve divided by the circulating supply. It is not an estimate; it is a division the contract performs on every operation. Any holder can redeem tokens for that share of the reserve at any time, less a fee of 0.9 %. That right is the floor. If the market ever prices the coin below backing by more than the fee, buying on the market and redeeming in the contract pays — and someone does it, which lifts the price back. The floor is not a promise to buy; it is arithmetic plus an open door.
The ceiling
The cost of entry is the price at which the contract creates a new coin. In Phase 1 it follows a published curve from a tenth of a cent to two hundred dollars; in Phase 2 it rises with time at a rate the holders choose from a fixed ladder. It never falls. If the market ever prices the coin above the cost of entry by more than the costs, minting a new one is cheaper than buying — and someone does that too, which pushes the price back under. The ceiling is not a cap the contract enforces; it is the point past which nobody needs to pay.
Between them
The market price is wherever demand puts it between those two. The corridor can be wide: in the model, two to ten times. The price can sit at the top in a strong phase and drift to the bottom in a quiet one, and no rule is touched either way. When the site says “the market price can fall”, this is what it means: it can fall inside the corridor, all the way to the floor. It cannot fall through the floor, because the floor is a redemption right, not a quote.
What moves the corridor
The ceiling moves by rule and only up. The floor moves through four channels that raise it — closings above backing, the redemption fee, the transfer fee, votes — and one that can lower it, dilutive closings, which are throttled and can act only after backing has risen. An outflow of holders does not lower the floor at all: redemption removes reserve and supply in the same proportion. So the corridor as a whole drifts upward over time, and how far the price sits from the floor is the market’s share of the story.
Why not a target price
A target needs someone to defend it, and that someone can fail. A corridor needs nobody: both edges are held by strangers acting in their own interest, and the contract publishes where the edges are. The design gives up the comfort of a level and gets in return something a level cannot have — a floor that rises and a ceiling that never comes down.