# Utility & Governance

### XCN Utility and Governance

#### 🔧 Utility & Gas

* **Gas token**: Used to pay for all transactions and smart contract executions across the Onyx L3 blockchain. A portion of every transaction fee is burned, making XCN total supply deflationary.
* **Service payments & discounts**: Required to access and pay for Onyx Cloud (RPC/API) and Sequence ledger services, with XCN holders receiving discounted or premium access.

#### 🗳️ Governance & Staking

* **Governance token**: XCN holders can stake tokens in the Onyx DAO to propose and vote on protocol changes, emissions, treasury allocations, and more. This ensures protocol security.
* **Staking rewards**: Stakers secure the network and gain governance power, while also earning periodic staking rewards.

#### 💱 Payment Instrument

* **Means of paymen**t: XCN is used within the ecosystem to pay commercial fees and access premium features.