What max_fee does, and what it does not do 

Stored, never charged

A request account records the job type, the input, the constraints, the optional callback and the fee ceiling the requester was willing to accept. Fulfilment verifies a proof, writes the output and performs the callback. No lamports move for the work, because no instruction transfers a request fee.

A ceiling, not a price

The field is a limit the requester sets, not a quote the protocol returns. Once fees are configured, a request whose ceiling sits below the configured fee fails at creation rather than being charged the difference.

Four roles, no numbers

ADR 0005 is accepted as a split of roles. The actual fee, when one is charged, divides between four destinations:

• node reward
• verifier reward
• protocol treasury
• security fund

The shares live on ProtocolConfig and JobConfig as basis points rather than as constants in program source, and the on-chain check requires them to sum to 10,000 when they are written. Milestone 3 does not pick those basis points, does not transfer request fees, and has no claim_reward instruction. Arithmetic on lamports is checked.

Stake is not a fee

The lamports a node locks are a separate mechanism from anything a requester pays. Stake sits on the node account, has to meet the registry minimum before the node can fulfil, waits out a cooldown on the way out, and can be slashed by the configured authority. None of that is funded by max_fee.

Separate authorities for separate money

The treasury, the security fund and the reward destinations are distinct authorities, set at initialization and empty until then. The key management policy keeps node identity, operator authority, treasury and security-fund authorities on separate keys, so one compromised key cannot drain every role.

Why we do not publish a split yet

Writing a plausible-looking split into the source would freeze an economic policy into a binary and make the website quote a number nobody has decided. The ADR rejects exactly that.

Until a record names basis points, every fee figure on this site reads coming soon. Milestone 4 copied accounts into a read model and still did not charge a fee.