{ "allocation": { "version": "2026-10-26-v3", "policy": "v3", "status": "preview", "effective": "Policy v3 is adopted and sealed on the public ledger (2026-10-26). Under the change rule below, a new policy version takes effect after the published 90-day notice period — for v3, on 2027-01-24 — and in any case not before the first fee charged under it. Charging remains unarmed and no fee has ever been charged. Policy v2 never governed a charged fee, and v3 replaces it in full.", "supersedes": { "version": "2026-10-23-v2", "policy": "v2", "summary": "Policy v2 split distributable surplus 90% to the network pool and 10% to the founders' accrual, with referral commissions on a referred customer's contribution, under the same published waterfall policy v3 keeps. It never governed a charged fee: no fee has ever been charged. Policy v3 replaces it in full." }, "waterfall": [ "1. Gross earned revenue: fees actually earned. Escrow principal is never revenue (only the escrow fee is), and unused prepaid balances are customer liabilities until earned — never revenue, never distributable.", "2. Minus pass-throughs — payment processing, refunds, chargebacks, and taxes collected for remittance — giving net collected revenue (NCR).", "3. Minus direct service costs — hosting and infrastructure, metered third-party costs, human review and hearing labour, and work-pay: validators, witnesses, mirrors and nodes paid per verified unit of work at the posted rates, capped per stage — giving contribution.", "4. Minus the core operating budget, in the published categories only, giving operating surplus.", "5. Minus reserve top-ups until both reserves stand at target, giving distributable surplus.", "6. Distributable surplus splits 60% to the network pool and 40% to the founders' accrual. From the Scale stage onward, the surplus ceiling first routes the portion attributable to margin above 40% of net collected revenue inside the pool — the referral fund made whole first, the remainder to price relief (see surplus_ceiling). The split is of profit, under this waterfall — anyone can recompute it from the monthly statement at GET /v1/policy/pool." ], "split": { "basis": "distributable surplus, at the end of the published waterfall, after the surplus ceiling where it applies", "network_pool_bps": 6000, "founders_bps": 4000, "founders_note": "The founders' 40% of distributable surplus is the only margin, and it is the founders' — not an operator fee and not an administration cut; the record's operation takes no separate share. Founder cash stays at zero until the break-even lock opens (see break_even_lock), and distributions carry the referral-seniority withholding stated there." }, "surplus_ceiling": { "applies": "From the Scale stage onward.", "cap": "Retained operating margin over a trailing 12 months may not exceed 40% of net collected revenue over the same window.", "mechanism": "Applied monthly: the part of the month's distributable surplus attributable to margin above the cap is skimmed before the split. The skim is kept by no one — it is routed inside the pool to the price-relief & free-allowance fund, which gives it back to users as lower prices or larger free allowances. The monthly statement publishes each month's skim.", "seniority": "The referral fund is filled to its settlement schedule before any skim is computed: the skim never reduces the referral fund's allocation. Any part of the skim needed to bring the fund to its pre-skim allocation goes to the fund; only the remainder goes to price relief." }, "work_pay": { "treated_as": "A direct cost of the work itself (waterfall step 3), owed for work delivered whether or not the month was profitable — never paid out of the pool and never a share of profit.", "posted_rate": "Validators whose cosignatures stood past the 72-hour challenge window split 90% of the fees attached to the block they checked, divided evenly. A block's work-pay can never exceed the fees the work carried.", "block_share_bps": 9000, "stage_caps": "Total work-pay in a month is capped as a share of the month's net collected revenue, by stage: Ignition 25%, Growth 30%, Scale 35%, Maturity 35%. Work that would pass the cap stays payable and is settled as headroom allows. In the Free Proof stage shares accrue in credits at the planned rates and no cap binds." }, "network_pool": { "share_of_surplus_bps": 6000, "funds": [ { "id": "referral_fund", "pays": "Referral commissions on referred customers' contribution, under the referral terms below." }, { "id": "validator_redundancy", "pays": "Extra validation redundancy and coverage beyond the base work rate — never a second payment for the same base work." }, { "id": "price_relief", "pays": "The price-relief and free-allowance fund: excess margin is returned to users as lower prices or larger free allowances before it is ever distributed." }, { "id": "builder_bounties", "pays": "Builder and ecosystem work bounties, paid for delivered work only." } ], "referral_fund_share_of_pool_by_stage": { "Ignition": "60%", "Growth": "55%", "Scale": "50%", "Maturity": "45%" }, "remainder": "What no fund reaches stays in the pool and rolls forward. Fund balances are public aggregates (GET /v1/policy/pool)." }, "referral_commission": { "basis": "the referred customer's monthly contribution: their net collected revenue minus the direct costs attributable to them (their metered operations at the published attribution schedule, and their share of the work-pay for the blocks carrying their fee-bearing entries), floored at zero", "cohort_rates": "Locked at signup by the stage in force, for the customer's first 12 months: Ignition 50% of referred contribution, Growth 35% of referred contribution, Scale 25% of referred contribution, Maturity 20% of referred contribution. A second-year tail of 5% applies to Scale and Maturity cohorts. Accounts that signed up during the Free Proof stage hold the Ignition cohort terms.", "cohort_rate_bps_by_stage": { "1": 5000, "2": 3500, "3": 2500, "4": 2000 }, "tail_rate_bps_by_stage": { "1": 0, "2": 0, "3": 500, "4": 500 }, "window_months": 12, "tail_months": 12, "global_cap": "Referral payouts in a month never exceed the referral fund — its stage share of the pool inflow plus its rolled-forward balance. If vested claims exceed the fund, they pay pro-rata by vesting date and the remainder stays accrued; earned claims do not expire while the account is in good standing.", "liability_brake": "If total accrued referral liability exceeds 35% of trailing-12-month net collected revenue, the rates for new cohorts step down one stage. Existing cohorts are never changed.", "vesting": "Commissions vest 60 days after the month they accrued for has ended. Refunds and chargebacks within 180 days offset future earnings. Spend paid from referral credits or recycled balances earns nothing. Self-referrals and commonly-controlled accounts earn nothing.", "form": "Commissions accrue as service credits, redeemable at face against paid lines once vested. Cash-out is optional, batched monthly at face, once the balance reaches $100 and the referred account has 3 paid months.", "payout_terms": { "ladder": [ "1. Service credits (the default): commissions vest as credits, redeemable at face against paid lines. Credits have no cash value and are never a deposit or a balance owed in cash.", "2. Own-usage rebate: spending vested credits on your own usage is the same instrument from the other side — there is no separate discount program.", "3. Cash (the exception): optional, batched monthly at face through the payment rail, only when every cash gate below holds. A referrer who cannot or will not pass the gates keeps credits; nothing is owed in cash instead." ], "identity_gate": "Cash requires a payout identity bound to an operator verified at KYA L1 or higher — one payout identity per operator. A referrer with no verified operator behind it (an agent-only referrer) is paid in credits only: its earnings circulate inside the platform's services, and the loop opens to cash at exactly one point, a verified operator. Before the first cash payment, the operator's tax form must be on file (W-9 for US operators, W-8BEN for non-US operators); cash settlements are reported as the law requires.", "first_cycle_delay": "A referrer's first cash-out waits until the underlying revenue has cleared the full 180-day clawback window.", "whale_cap": "One referrer's cash settlements in a month are capped at 25% of that month's total vested referral claims; any excess carries forward and is never voided.", "chargeback_breaker": "If a cohort's referred-account chargebacks exceed 1% of its referred settled volume in a month, that cohort's cash-outs pause automatically pending review.", "claim_window": "Cash-eligible balances may be claimed for 24 months from vesting, with notices at 12, 20, 23 months. No expiry ever applies retroactively.", "forfeiture": "Nothing unclaimed ever becomes founder or platform income. Cash-eligible balances still unclaimed at the claim window's close follow the unclaimed-property track of the operator's jurisdiction and nothing else. Forfeited credits are recycled to the price-relief & free-allowance fund, published as its own line in the monthly statement. No expiry ever applies retroactively." } }, "stages": [ { "stage": 0, "name": "Free Proof", "gate": "The starting stage: hosting at or under the published threshold, charging unarmed, everything free." }, { "stage": 1, "name": "Ignition", "gate": "Charging is armed (the collection trigger has sealed, or the monetization mode has been flipped by hand)." }, { "stage": 2, "name": "Growth", "gate": "Net collected revenue of at least $2,500 in each of 3 consecutive months, and a contribution margin of at least 40% over those months." }, { "stage": 3, "name": "Scale", "gate": "Net collected revenue of at least $25,000 in each of 3 consecutive months, both reserves at target, and distributable surplus above zero for 3 consecutive months." }, { "stage": 4, "name": "Maturity", "gate": "Net collected revenue of at least $250,000 in each of 3 consecutive months." } ], "reversion": "A contribution margin below 25% for 2 consecutive months reverts one stage for new referral cohorts and discretionary spending only. Existing cohorts, vested claims and the free-forever checks are never touched by a reversion.", "reserves": { "operating_target": "6 months of the forward core budget (the trailing average of core operating budget plus hosting), recomputed monthly", "risk_target": "the greater of 2% of trailing-12-month gross earned revenue or 90 days of expected refunds and disputes (the trailing 3 months of refunds and chargebacks)", "topup_min_bps_of_operating_surplus": 5000 }, "core_opex_categories": [ "counsel_compliance", "accounting", "security_tooling", "support_operations", "insurance", "admin_software", "founder_labor" ], "core_opex_note": "The core operating budget may draw only on these published categories. No founder salary hides in them: if a founder is ever paid for labour, it is the disclosed founder_labor line, separate from the founders' share.", "break_even_lock": { "rule": "Founder cash distributions are zero until all of these hold at once: cumulative earned contribution since inception is at or above zero (prepaid inflows excluded); both reserves stand at target; and distributable surplus has been above zero for 3 consecutive months. After the lock opens, quarterly founder cash is at most the founders' accrual balance, and only from unrestricted cash above both reserve targets after the withdrawal. Seniority at the distribution step: if the referral fund's balance falls short of vested referral claims, the shortfall — and only the shortfall — is withheld from distributions dollar-for-dollar until the fund is whole. A claim that is overdue, or that cannot yet be paid because its referrer has not passed the payout gates, locks only its own amount, never the whole distribution. The vested claims outstanding and any withholding in force are published on the monthly statement.", "state": "/v1/policy/pool" }, "expense_attestation": { "rule": "No cost enters the published waterfall as an evidenced cost without committed evidence: the SHA-256 hash of the vendor receipt or invoice behind the line, recorded with the month's finance record. Where a vendor publishes its own figure, the vendor's figure is used — hosting and infrastructure costs are read from the hosting provider's own usage records (the same readings that drive the collection trigger), and work-pay is settled on the public payout ledger itself. Lines without recorded evidence are flagged unattested in the monthly statement, in the open, until their evidence is recorded.", "statement": "Each month of the statement at GET /v1/policy/pool carries its attestation coverage: attested and total cost lines, and attested and total cost amounts." }, "price_governance": { "margin_band_bps": [ 5500, 7500 ], "relief_ratchet": "If a paid line's contribution margin exceeds 80% for 2 consecutive quarters and both reserves are at target, the next quarter either cuts that line's price by 10% or expands its free allowance by 25%, whichever keeps the projected margin at or above 65%.", "squeeze_protocol": "If a paid line's contribution margin falls below 40% for 2 consecutive months, the response order is fixed: first cut costs, then tighten incentives for new cohorts, and only then a price increase — at most 10% per line per year, under the published 90-day notice rule. No surge pricing, ever.", "collection": "No per-transaction card charges. Fees collect through prepaid balances with a $10 minimum top-up, or monthly netted invoices for verified accounts. The processing target is at most 4% of net collected revenue; above 5%, minimums rise or verified accounts move to monthly aggregation. Unused prepaid balances are customer liabilities, refundable under the published terms, and are never counted as revenue." }, "attribution_unit_costs_micro": { "light": 10, "standard": 100, "heavy": 5000 }, "never_paid_for": "Nothing is paid for holding, parking or depositing value. A validator's security deposit is refundable, can be reduced only by a final arbitration award for proven bad validation, and never earns anything.", "change_rule": "Any change to these percentages, categories or formulas is a new published policy version, sealed on the public ledger, and takes effect only after the published 90-day notice period." }, "pool": { "status": "preview", "policy_version": "2026-10-26-v3", "policy": "v3", "stage": { "stage": 0, "stage_name": "Free Proof", "cohort_stage": 1, "cohort_stage_name": "Ignition", "reverted": false, "armed": false, "current_month": "2026-11" }, "waterfall": { "basis": "Monthly, cash basis, settled funds only. Gross earned revenue excludes escrow principal (only the escrow fee is revenue) and excludes unused prepaid balances, which are customer liabilities until earned. Lines with no data yet show honest zeros — the structure is published now; the numbers arrive with usage.", "months": [ { "month": "2026-10", "gross_earned_micro": 6000, "passthrough_micro": 0, "ncr_micro": 6000, "direct": { "hosting_micro": 1461700, "thirdparty_micro": 0, "labor_micro": 0, "work_pay_micro": 0, "total_micro": 1461700 }, "contribution_micro": -1455700, "contribution_margin_bps": -2426167, "core_opex_micro": 0, "core_opex_by_category": {}, "operating_surplus_micro": -1455700, "reserve_topup_micro": 0, "reserves": { "operating_target_micro": 8770200, "risk_target_micro": 120, "operating_balance_micro": 0, "risk_balance_micro": 0, "at_target": false }, "distributable_surplus_micro": 0, "pool_in_micro": 0, "founders_accrual_micro": 0, "ceiling_skim_micro": 0, "referral_seniority_micro": 0, "referral_fund_micro": 0, "referral_paid_micro": 0, "attestation": { "attested_lines": 1, "total_lines": 1, "attested_micro": 1461700, "total_micro": 1461700 }, "stage": 0, "paid_ops": 3, "free_ops": 29625, "free_tier_cost_micro": 1461552, "infrastructure_bps_of_ncr": 2436167 }, { "month": "2026-11", "gross_earned_micro": 0, "passthrough_micro": 0, "ncr_micro": 0, "direct": { "hosting_micro": 0, "thirdparty_micro": 0, "labor_micro": 0, "work_pay_micro": 0, "total_micro": 0 }, "contribution_micro": 0, "contribution_margin_bps": null, "core_opex_micro": 0, "core_opex_by_category": {}, "operating_surplus_micro": 0, "reserve_topup_micro": 0, "reserves": { "operating_target_micro": 4385100, "risk_target_micro": 120, "operating_balance_micro": 0, "risk_balance_micro": 0, "at_target": false }, "distributable_surplus_micro": 0, "pool_in_micro": 0, "founders_accrual_micro": 0, "ceiling_skim_micro": 0, "referral_seniority_micro": 0, "referral_fund_micro": 0, "referral_paid_micro": 0, "attestation": { "attested_lines": 0, "total_lines": 0, "attested_micro": 0, "total_micro": 0 }, "stage": 0, "paid_ops": 0, "free_ops": 7013, "free_tier_cost_micro": 0, "infrastructure_bps_of_ncr": null } ], "cumulative": { "gross_earned_micro": 6000, "ncr_micro": 6000, "contribution_micro": -1455700, "distributable_surplus_micro": 0, "pool_in_micro": 0, "founders_accrual_micro": 0, "ceiling_skim_micro": 0, "price_relief_skim_micro": 0, "referral_seniority_micro": 0 } }, "pool": { "balance_micro": 0, "funds": { "referral_fund": { "allocated_micro": 0, "paid_micro": 0, "balance_micro": 0, "liability_outstanding_micro": 0, "vested_claims_outstanding_micro": 0 } }, "work_pay_paid_micro": 0, "note": "Work-pay is a direct cost of the work (waterfall step 3), not a claim on the pool: base validation pay is settled per block at the posted rate, subject to the monthly stage cap. The pool funds referral commissions first, then validator redundancy and coverage, price relief, and builder bounties; what no fund reaches rolls forward." }, "founders": { "accrual_micro": 0, "cash_paid_micro": 0, "withholding_micro": 0 }, "break_even_lock": { "open": false, "conditions": { "cumulative_contribution_nonnegative": false, "reserves_at_target": false, "distributable_surplus_positive_3_months": false }, "overdue_claims": { "referral_vested_unpaid_over_30d": 0, "work_unpaid_over_30d": 0 }, "vested_claims_outstanding_micro": 0, "referral_fund_balance_micro": 0, "withholding_micro": 0, "cumulative_contribution_micro": -1455700, "rule": "Founder cash distributions are zero until the three conditions hold at once: cumulative contribution at or above zero, both reserves at target, and distributable surplus positive for 3 consecutive months. After the lock opens, quarterly founder cash is at most the founders' accrual balance, only from unrestricted cash above both reserve targets after the withdrawal — and reduced dollar-for-dollar by any shortfall of the referral fund against vested claims, which is withheld until the fund is whole. An overdue claim withholds only its own amount; it never freezes a whole distribution." }, "break_even": { "required_monthly_contribution_micro": 365435, "weighted_avg_contribution_per_paid_op_micro": null, "required_paid_ops_per_month": null, "actual_paid_ops_current_month": 0, "note": "Required monthly paid contribution is the core operating budget plus hosting plus one twelfth of the remaining reserve gap. Required paid volume is that figure divided by the weighted-average contribution per paid operation; until paid operations exist, the volume is not yet computable and says so." }, "ledger_seal": { "sealed_sweeps": 2768, "latest": { "seq": 7184, "sweep_key": "628da8ba4666c71f383d3ef398ad3794eec4c702b9567d7168b6b1ce228be6ca", "at": "2026-11-03T16:40:55.414Z" } }, "note": "Aggregates at the published planned rates; during the preview no fee is charged to anyone and amounts settle in Rightshold credits (no cash value). Policy v3 is adopted and sealed on the ledger and takes effect under the published 90-day notice rule — and in any case not before the first charged fee, which has never occurred; policy v2 never governed a charged fee." } }