Spend becomes ownership.
MELO · v0.1 · 20 September 2026
Melo is a spend-to-own protocol. Qualifying purchases at public companies are treated as allocation events against those companies’ listed equity. Separately, anyone with a wallet can deposit ETH into the Melo vault and receive MELO — an ERC-20 share token — in that same wallet.
Mechanism
Everyday spend is the input. A receipt at a participating merchant is matched to that merchant’s listed ticker. The protocol computes a fractional allocation from the settled ticket. The shopper does not change cards. The ledger changes.
Example, labeled as illustration: $890 at Costco maps to COST. The reward engine books a fractional COST position. That merchant map is the product claim. It is not yet a live brokerage feed.
Deposit vault
The v0 vault is a single contract: it is both the ERC-20 and the payable deposit function. ETH sent to deposit() stays in the contract. MELO is minted to msg.sender. There is no redeem in v0. There is no automated purchase of listed stock.
If a shared vault address is not configured, the first deposit from a browser deploys a vault from the connected wallet on the current network. That wallet pays gas and becomes the first depositor. A production deployment sets NEXT_PUBLIC_MELO_VAULT so every visitor mints from the same contract.
Parameters
| Token | MELO |
|---|---|
| Symbol | MELO |
| Decimals | 18 |
| Mint rate | 1 ETH → 1,000 MELO |
| Networks | Sepolia, Ethereum, local |
| Redeem | None in v0 |
What this is not
Melo v0 is not a broker-dealer, not a listed-stock purchase, not DTCC settlement, and not a registered securities offering. Deposited ETH is held by the vault contract. Merchant rows on the marketing ledger are illustrative. This paper is not legal advice.
The spend-to-own map (receipt → ticker → listed share) is the protocol’s aim. The wallet mint is the instrument that exists today: connect, deposit, hold MELO.