Unanchored Credit

A consumption unit denominated in product features rather than any external resource — a currency the vendor mints. The conversion ratios (how many credits a given action costs, how many credits a dollar buys) are set by the vendor, frequently banded by plan, and re-ratable at the vendor's discretion. Expiry and non-rollover terms add breakage economics: credits purchased but never redeemed are pure margin. The structural analogy is the frequent-flyer mile: the issuer controls the redemption rate, and devaluation arrives not as a price increase announcement but as a quiet re-rating of what the currency buys. The unit sits in the middle of the abstraction gradient — compute-anchored unit → unanchored credit → outcome-anchored metric — maximally abstracted from cost on one side without yet reconciling to customer value on the other.