What it costs
What a holder pays, what a creator earns, and the ceilings that can never be raised.
Every Basket sets its own fees, and many set them to zero. Whatever they are, they are visible before you buy and they cannot rise beyond the limits fixed on the day it launched.
The two fees
A management fee, charged as a percentage per year. You never send a payment: the Basket issues a small number of new tokens to its creator over time, which makes each existing token represent slightly less of the holdings. At 1% a year, a token backed by $100 of assets is backed by $99 after twelve months, all else equal.
A trading fee on buying or redeeming, taken as a share of the amount. A 1% buy fee means supplying assets for 101 tokens and receiving 100.
The first charges you for holding, the second for moving. A Basket can use either, both, or neither.
The ceilings are permanent
When a Basket is created its creator commits to a maximum for each fee, and that maximum can never be raised, not by them and not by anyone. They can move fees freely underneath it.
This is the real guarantee. A creator who set a 5% ceiling can never charge you 20%, however the Basket performs or whoever ends up controlling it.
What the protocol takes
The protocol keeps 30% of what a creator earns. This is not added to your cost: it is a share of the fee the creator already charges, split between them. A Basket charging nothing produces nothing for anyone, the protocol included.
The fee is charged as it accrues
A management fee is not deducted when you sell. It accumulates continuously, so by the time you redeem your tokens are already backed by proportionally less, and they are whether or not you ever redeem. Selling is simply when you notice.
Check when a fee was last collected
Collecting the fee is a transaction someone has to send, and nothing sends it automatically. A Basket that has not collected in a long time will do so in one step, which is a single larger adjustment rather than many small ones. It does not change what you owe in total; it does mean the backing per token can move noticeably in one moment.