Useful work.
A buyer.
Your cut.

THOT is intended to connect people who produce useful AI research with buyers who want to learn from it. The token pays for licensed traces. The seller receives the purchase price minus a disclosed service fee. This page describes proposed launch terms; the app’s release status shows current availability.

Start with an actual purchase.

1. A contributor saves supported AI work in a private library.
2. The contributor sets a licence and THOT price once when connecting OpenRouter. Eligible new recordings list automatically. Historical uploads can be enrolled separately.
3. A buyer funds a matching purchase in escrow. The purchase proceeds automatically, without another contributor approval. The treasury can be that buyer.
4. After recorded delivery and the dispute window, the service finalizes an undisputed sale and pays the contributor’s wallet. The receipt records the payment.

The selected direction is for buyers to pay in THOT. They can use tokens they hold or acquire them from the market. The trace market splits that funded payment; it does not create new tokens. Treasury-funded purchases follow the same escrow and seller-share rules.

The fee supports delivery, operations and eligible referrals. The production tariff will be published before purchases open. Governance publishes prospective changes; funded purchases keep their original tariff.

Enrollment shows the authorized price and minimum seller proceeds. A purchase that violates that signed floor cannot complete. Future unfunded sales can be stopped; already purchased rights remain in force. The seller’s proceeds are the payment for that purchase, not a bonus added on top.

The proposed launch terms give buyers 12 hours after recorded delivery to raise an eligible dispute. The service then finalizes an undisputed sale and pays the seller’s wallet. Manual claiming remains available if the service is delayed. Delivery is intended to occur with the purchase; the failure timeout remains two days. Delayed delivery, disputes or delayed finalization can extend the wait. Failed delivery makes the buyer’s funds refundable. Sale proceeds have no extra vesting period and are separate from the THOT a participant has locked.

The app records a durable delivery job and withholds plaintext until the matching release hash is acknowledged onchain. The operator attests availability, not that the buyer read the trace. Licensed retrieval ends 30 days after the automatic sale. Deleted or expired sources stop new listings; copies supporting unexpired committed rights are retained until those rights expire.

Contribute useful traces. Lock THOT.

Locking is the selected v0 direction. Useful contributors commit actual THOT to qualify for additional participation benefits. The custody position cannot be transferred, and its principal stays locked until expiry. A liquid wallet balance does not satisfy this rule. Transferable participation is deferred.

Sale proceeds stay separate and can be paid while principal remains locked. Additional rewards need an identified, funded budget; the operator cannot spend locked principal to pay them. If future surplus is distributed, it must come after the market meets its other obligations.

The amount, duration, contribution requirements and benefit formula are being finalized. Custody locking exists; the current settlement tariff does not yet award a lock benefit. The complete schedule and funding will be published before reward-bearing enrollment opens. Existing locks keep their original withdrawal terms.

Buy at the posted price.

A buyer with little or no qualifying THOT can still buy, provided they fund the purchase. There is no membership surcharge. Checkout shows the gross price, service fee and seller proceeds before funding, and the signed review binds the tariff.

Public descriptions and supported property results remain free to browse. Ordinary buyers receive no trace excerpt before payment, at any balance. The disclosed acquisition vault pays the same service tariff and follows its separate campaign caps.

Introduce useful contributors. Share the contribution.

One accepted direct referrer can earn 20% of net service contribution from the referred contributor’s reviewed independent sales. Net contribution is the service fee minus the quoted direct-cost allowance; the contributor’s proceeds stay unchanged.

The referral comes from the disclosed service fee. It does not add another charge to the buyer or reduce the contributor’s quoted proceeds. The protocol retains the rest of the fee to cover costs and operations; that receipt is revenue before expenses.

Register the contributor-approved referrer before the contributor’s first sale. The first reviewed independent order must be funded within 90 days of attribution; this opens a 365-day funding window. The funding-time terms survive settlement. A refunded order earns no referral, even if it started the clock. Treasury-funded, self, affiliated and reimbursed purchases are excluded. There is one referral level, with no recursive rewards or payments for signups, token purchases or idle holdings.

The treasury can be the first buyer.

The selected launch plan targets a fixed initial supply of 1 billion THOT on Pons, with a disclosed creation-time purchase of 500 million THOT to fund the contribution reserve. There is no investor or partner allocation in this plan. The selected concurrent-campaign contract is implemented for a new deployment; existing hosted workspaces retain their prior contracts and paid-release access while separate acceptance proceeds.

The purchaser must supply the launch capital. Once funded, the reserve holds existing THOT that the treasury can spend on specific licensed traces. Each acquisition goes through the same purchase escrow as an external buyer’s order, under the contributor’s standing authorization and the same disclosed service tariff. The reserve supplies THOT directly to escrow; the buyer’s wallet pays gas. Governance controls campaign permissions within the published spending limits. The selected launch controller permits any one of three owners to execute governance actions with no notice delay; these controls do not shorten delivery, dispute or custody clocks. The curve opens an allowance that stays in the vault until a buyer chooses to spend it. The worker handles delivery and settlement.

DAO sampling is opt-in and one-in-twenty.

A contributor may enroll eligible traces in reserve sampling or keep selling normally without joining it. For every 20 new, unique, eligible traces from one opted-in contributor, the service forms a stable group, selects one complete approved release uniformly, and persists that selection. Nineteen traces produce no selection; 20 produce one; 40 produce two.

All three authorized reserve reviewers see the same selected release. Refreshing, reconnecting, reenrolling, or switching reviewer wallets cannot draw again. The contributor’s standing consent defines the covered sources, recipients, duration, and revocation boundary. Inspection grants no training or redistribution right and does not guarantee a purchase. This reserve-only permission gives ordinary buyers no access to trace content.

The contributor sets the asking price. A manual listing requires an entered THOT amount; Codex / Claude Code and OpenRouter stream setup start at an editable 100 THOT per completed trace. Subsequent automatic listings use that signed connection price. An assay does not set it. The reserve buyer can purchase an eligible selected release at its asking price or skip it.

The subsidy is the treasury’s purchase budget. It is not a second award added to a sale payment. A treasury purchase moves existing reserve tokens and does not count as independent buyer demand; the protocol’s retained share of its own purchase is internal recycling.

Before making paid offers, publish the reserve address, spending controls, available budget, and acquisition terms. An estimate or private upload alone creates no entitlement to payment.

Treasury reserve, purchase escrow, and contributors’ locked principal are separate. A contributor’s lock must not finance acquisitions. A separate treasury contract can hold existing THOT and fund approved purchases, so no extra minting function is needed. Committed purchases cannot exceed funded assets.

A bounded first acquisition campaign.

Selected first-campaign parameters. The planned acquisition places 500 million THOT in the reserve, with 50 million THOT of first-campaign spending authority over 90 days. The remaining 450 million THOT can support separately authorized contribution campaigns, including campaigns that overlap. Each has a published budget, start, duration and upfront allowance.

• Available at the start: 555,555.555555555555555555 THOT, one ninetieth of the first budget rounded down to token atoms.
• The rest releases linearly: remaining authority accrues over the 90-day term. Unspent released allowance carries forward while the campaign is open; spending stops at expiry.
• Concurrent budgets stay bounded: any one governance owner can create a campaign without a notice delay. Outstanding allocations must fit inventory, and allocations plus lifetime gross purchases cannot exceed 500 million THOT. No independent-demand gate applies.

The upfront amount is available immediately, with further allowance accruing afterward; it is not a fixed daily ceiling. A budget does not require purchases. Each completed purchase pays the seller its asking price minus the frozen service fee.

Each funded treasury offer consumes spending authority once, including if it later expires or refunds. Returned fees, refunds and new deposits do not reset the 500 million lifetime ceiling. Closing or expiring a campaign releases only its unspent allocation for another governance decision. Treasury purchases remain separate from independent demand. The full whitepaper specifies the budget formulas and review rules.

Timing matters: campaign spending permissions and purchase settlement have separate clocks. Under the proposed launch terms, undisputed sales settle after the 12-hour filing window from recorded delivery. A pending payment is distinct from withdrawable proceeds.

A useful market could reinforce itself.

Independent buyers who need THOT may acquire it. A funded sale pays for the useful research that produced it. Better trace supply may attract more buyers. These are possible responses to a useful product, not automatic steps or guaranteed demand.

Treasury purchases also move tokens into sellers’ hands. Sellers can sell, and locked tokens can return to circulation at expiry. Those flows can offset demand. The mechanism does not guarantee price appreciation.

Trading fees and trace revenue are different.

The chosen Pons setting adds a 1% creator-tax field to the 1% base fee for a displayed 2% total trade fee. With native Buyback & Lock off, the inspected configuration allocates 1.7% to the creator and 0.3% to Pons. Recheck and publish the deployed recipients and split at launch.

Those fees apply to trading through the relevant launchpad or pool mechanism. They do not establish an automatic tax on every transfer or every market in THOT.

The trace marketplace separately retains the quoted service fee from actual trace purchases, less any eligible referral payment. That remainder must cover its costs and operations before it becomes profit. Trading revenue may also fund disclosed acquisitions when it has actually been collected and allocated; it is not the same as independent demand for research and creates no passive holder dividend.

From your work to a payment.

1. Capture privately. Use a supported CLI capture, import a history or configure an available API connection in your workspace.
2. Authorize a release. Choose the research, THOT price and license once. Opt into treasury sampling if you want the reserve to consider it.
3. A buyer funds the purchase. Property checks can run before payment; the complete purchased release becomes available after funding.
4. Your share becomes payable. Under the proposed launch terms, an undisputed purchase settles after the 12-hour filing window. The worker sends the proceeds to your linked wallet; you can also claim them yourself.

Subjective disputes require the buyer to meet the reviewed independent-purchase eligibility terms disclosed before funding; treasury purchases cannot use this route. Under the proposed launch terms, an eligible buyer files within 12 hours after recorded delivery. The seller has 24 hours to respond privately and may separately choose to close that period early after responding. Otherwise it remains open for the full 24 hours. Non-conflicted DAO reviewers then have up to seven days to decide under the published reviewer threshold. A buyer win refunds 50% of the total escrowed payment and burns the other 50%. Without the required decision by the deadline, the original sale settles. Objective delivery failure has a separate full-refund path.

An estimate, a funded offer, and a payment.

Estimated value compares what similar research has sold for, even before your own trace has sold. It needs sufficient evidence and does not guarantee a buyer. Purchase escrow holds a buyer’s funded payment under the acquisition terms. Sale proceeds are the seller’s share of a completed purchase. Treasury funding changes who buys the trace; it does not create an extra reward to count twice.

Borrowing against future trace revenue would require a lender, a repayment agreement, and a basis for underwriting. There is no borrowing facility in the launch app.

Next: appraisal inside the enclave.

The roadmap includes an LLM appraiser for disputes and reserve acquisitions. A committed model, prompt and workflow would evaluate the private release inside the enclave; an attested receipt would bind the policy, input commitment and result without publishing the prompt or trace text. The aim is consistent policy and less human exposure to sensitive research.

This could eventually replace the DAO’s opt-in 5% sampling access. Current reviewer decisions, sampling limits and dispute remedies remain unchanged. The appraiser needs defined authority, output limits, failure handling and a way to challenge errors before it can settle purchases; it is not active today.