The Waidrn economy, explained plainly

Waidrn runs on a simulated economy. WAID is the coin the community uses to keep stories alive, back projects and pay creators for delivered work. It has no real-world value, it cannot be bought with real money or withdrawn, and nothing here is an investment. What is real is the accountability: the numbers are exact, every movement is recorded, and the supply can be checked by anyone at /economy.

This page explains the whole system in plain language. The Lexicon defines every term; the Rules state the commitments; the FAQ answers the common questions.

In one paragraph

Exactly 1,000,000,000,000.00 WAID exists, forever. At genesis the whole supply was placed in the founder's treasury, which decays 15% a year into a mint pool that funds simulated minting and buys. Users hold two balances — spendable account coin and non-transferable loaned coin from the mint. Posts, chapters and project proposals carry power: WAID staked to the content that pays its storage rent and decays with it. Patrons can gift power to what they love, pledge to community projects held in escrow, and vote STAY or LEAVE at each delivered milestone. Creators are paid only for what patrons stayed through, and every settled project gets a public, permanent receipt. The platform takes no fee on anything, and one WAID pegs to one simulated US dollar for the demo buy/sell rail.

The supply is fixed

• 1,000,000,000,000.00 WAID, exactly, from the first day to the last. There is no inflation, no minting of new supply and no hidden pool.
• The whole supply was placed in the founder's treasury at genesis. The founder account is public: its balance is shown on /economy.
• The founder treasury decays continuously at 15% per year. That decay is the only "tax" in the system, and it is a tax on the founder's wealth, not on anyone's work. The decayed coins move into the mint pool, which funds simulated minting and buys.
• Because only the founder's stock decays, coins circulate toward the people who use the site while the total stays exactly the same.
• 1 WAID = 1,000,000 sparks. Sparks are the smallest unit; the interface shows WAID with two decimals.
• The invariant — every bucket sums to the fixed supply — is asserted in the tests, in the command line, and live on /economy. If it ever failed, the site would say so.

Two balances

Publishing spends loaned first, then account. Loaned coin can never be gifted, pledged, sold or transferred — it is work credit, not capital. This is deliberate: one balance is money you own, the other is a cushion for your own work.

Getting WAID

• Simulated USD. New accounts receive $100.00 of simulated USD (demo dollars) from a platform reserve. You can buy WAID 1:1 with it, or sell account WAID back 1:1. No fees.
• Mint. A small proof-of-work puzzle pays 0.10 WAID of loaned coin, at most once every 15 minutes per account, and only while the mint pool has coins. It is a toy puzzle — there is no real mining, no blockchain and no expectation of value.
• Earning. Gifts to your posts, project settlements, refunds and marketplace activity all land in your account balance.

Power: rented memory

Content is not free to store, so storage is paid for in a way that is visible and fair:

• Every board post, work chapter and project proposal carries power — at least 0.10 WAID at publication.
• Power pays rent at 1 spark per byte per day (the byte size includes a small fixed overhead on top of the text). Rent is paid continuously from the post's power.
• When power reaches zero, the post enters a 7-day grace period: the public page is truncated and shows a top-up notice, but the full text stays safe in the database. A top-up or a gift during grace restores it completely.
• If grace ends with no top-up, the post is pruned: the body is deleted and a tombstone remains with the title, author and dates. A pruned post cannot be revived. Receipts and public project records survive pruning.
• Comments and likes are free and never decay. Only power-bearing content — posts, chapters and proposals — rents storage.
• A work's power is the sum of its chapters; a thread's power is the sum of its posts. Power, not likes, drives the "most power" sorts.

Why it works this way: content is rented memory, conversation is ephemeral, and commitments are durable. Power lets readers keep what they love alive instead of paying a platform.

Gifts and the author share

Any signed-in reader can gift power to a live post, chapter or project proposal:

• A gift is split by the post's author share, which the author sets from 0% to 100% (default 50%). The author's share goes straight to the author's account; the rest becomes post power.
• Example: a gift of 10 WAID to a post with a 60% author share pays the author 6 WAID immediately and adds 4 WAID of power to the post.
• A top-up is a 100%-to-power transfer with no author credit.
• Gifts record the exact split and appear on the post and in the author's wallet history. The current author share is public on every post.
• A gift can pull a post back out of grace.

Community projects: escrow, milestones, STAY / LEAVE

Community projects turn wanting into funded work:

1. Quest. A requester writes literal terms and a minimum funding target. Anyone can back it with a pledge from their account; the minimum pledge is 0.10 WAID. Pledges sit in escrow and can be withdrawn in full until a creator's claim is accepted. If the funding deadline passes unclaimed, every pledge is refunded automatically.
2. Claim. Once the pool reaches the funding target, a creator claims the project and proposes one to eight milestones, each with acceptance criteria, a delivery date, a payout percentage and an optional fund target. The claim's terms are hashed and become immutable once accepted.
3. Claim vote. Backers vote STAY or LEAVE within three days; abstaining counts as STAY. A leave refunds that backer in full immediately. If enough stake stays (at least half the pool at claim), the project becomes active.
4. Delivery. At each milestone the creator publishes a public deliverable — a URL and a SHA-256 hash, plus a release note. Patrons cannot accept what they cannot see.
5. Milestone vote. Patrons vote STAY or LEAVE again. Leavers are refunded their remaining stake. Each stayer pays the milestone's payout percentage from escrow to the creator and keeps the marginal remainder for later milestones.
6. Continue or stall. The next milestone opens if the remaining stayer stake is at least its fund target; otherwise the project stalls and the remaining stake is refunded.
7. Completion. After the final milestone, leftover stake is refunded pro rata to the patrons who stayed. A public receipt records the parties, the milestone results (aggregate stay/leave counts, never per-person votes), the payments, the refunds and every deliverable hash. Receipts are written once and never edited. If a creator abandons or misses a delivery date badly, remaining funds are refunded, the deliverables stay public, and anyone may fork the quest with fresh terms.
8. Platform fee: zero. Every settlement from escrow to creators and back to patrons is fee-free.

The 1:1 simulated dollar peg

One WAID pegs to one simulated US dollar for the demo exchange. You can buy WAID with simulated USD and sell it back, 1:1, with no fees. The simulated USD side is bookkeeping for the demonstration only: there are no deposits, no withdrawals to a bank, no payment cards and no real currency anywhere in the system.

What this economy is not

• Not real money. WAID has no monetary value and cannot be exchanged for real currency.
• Not an investment. There is no yield, no appreciation, no security, no token sale and no expectation of profit.
• No KYC, no payment rail, no blockchain. No identity documents, no real payments, no wallets to connect, no on-chain settlement.
• No platform fee. The platform charges 0% on gifts, pledges, settlements and sales.
• Not permanent data. This is a live demonstration; demo state may be reset or advanced for testing. Every such action is audited and the visible clock is shown on /economy.

Where the numbers live

• /economy shows the fixed supply, the founder treasury, the mint pool, circulating coin, minted and burned totals, the simulation clock and the live invariant check.
• /wallet shows your account and loaned balances, mint state, buy/sell and transaction history.
• /docs/rules is the commitment text this economy runs under: no paywalls, free access, no fee, simulated money.
• /docs/lexicon defines every term used here.

If a number matters to you — the supply, a settlement, a receipt — the site shows it publicly. That is the point: a patronage economy should be legible to the people paying into it.