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. The mechanism below uses test tokens on Robinhood Chain Testnet; a Pons token has not been launched.

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 a one-hour 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 covers quoted direct costs plus a contribution toward allocated overhead, the operating buffer and eligible referrals. At this test calibration, direct costs are 0.01 THOT and net service contribution is 0.03 THOT. These are test-token parameters, not measured production costs or dollar amounts. 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 service finalizes an undisputed sale and pays the seller’s wallet after the one-hour window from recorded delivery. 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.

Holding is different from financing the work.

Holding or locking THOT does not change the service tariff, seller proceeds or referral rate. Locked principal stays in its custody contract until it can be withdrawn; it is not available to pay marketplace operating costs. The earlier lock-tier discounts are superseded.

A future working-capital arrangement could have different economics if it actually funds the service. That would need explicit cost, repayment and risk terms. There is no borrowing, prepayment-discount or passive holder-income facility in this test release.

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.

At the test tariff, 0.04 THOT of service fee minus 0.01 THOT of direct costs leaves 0.03 THOT. The qualifying referrer receives 0.006 THOT; the protocol retains 0.034 THOT to cover costs and operations. This remainder is revenue before expenses, not pure profit.

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 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. On this testnet deployment, any one of the three governance owners can authorize campaign changes without a governance delay. This does 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 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. The other 450 million remain inactive. Authority is a ceiling on gross purchase commitments, not an earned seller balance.

• A limited start: up to 1 million THOT of gross treasury purchases can begin without outside purchases, still subject to the daily cap.
• Further spending needs buyers: each THOT spent by reviewed independent buyers on finalized trace purchases permits at most one additional THOT of gross treasury purchases.
• Time also limits spending: daily purchase ceilings decline with a selected 180-day half-life and stop after 360 days. The daily and total limits apply even when there is enough buyer spending.

With no independent buyers, the treasury can commit at most 1 million THOT gross in total. Even with sufficient buyers, the selected time limits allow at most 37.5 million THOT gross over 360 days. For each completed purchase, the seller receives its price minus the frozen service fee.

Each issued, funded treasury offer consumes spending authority once, including if it later expires. Returned protocol fees and refunds do not reset that authority. Treasury purchases, token trading fees, and token turnover do not count as independent trace-buyer spending. The full whitepaper specifies the budget formulas and review rules.

Timing matters: the current testnet permits campaign activation by one owner without a governance wait. Sale proceeds use a separate one-hour dispute window after recorded delivery, then the service finalizes an undisputed purchase and sends the proceeds to the seller’s wallet. 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. An undisputed purchase settles after the one-hour delivery window. The worker sends the proceeds to your linked wallet; you can also claim them yourself.

In the testnet mechanism, a buyer whose current reviewed independent purchase plus prior finalized reviewed independent purchases total at least 10 million THOT can file a subjective dispute within one hour after delivery. A first large purchase can qualify. The seller has 24 hours to respond privately. After submitting a response, the seller can separately choose to close that response window early. Otherwise it remains open for the full 24 hours. Then any one eligible, nonconflicted governance reviewer can decide the case in the current one-of-three testnet arrangement, within seven days. A buyer win refunds 50% of the total escrowed payment, with no membership surcharge, 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.