Everything has a mechanic. Here's how it all works.

Every member starts with 25 ovations in their balance. When you ovate a post (back someone's take) it costs you 1. That friction is the point. It means you're making a real call, not just tapping a heart.

When someone ovates your post, you earn 0.5 back. You can also ovate individual replies inside a thread. Tap the flame on a reply and it goes directly to that person, not the curator. The economy is designed so that the more you engage with quality, the more you can keep engaging. Circulation, not accumulation.

If your balance runs low, post something worth backing. Give ovations thoughtfully. The system rewards people who participate, not people who hoard.

This is where it gets interesting. When a post blows up (hits 10 ovations) the platform looks back at who backed it early. But not everyone gets the same reward. The first five spotters earn +4 back. Spotters 6 through 8 earn +3. The 9th earns +2. The 10th person who just confirmed what was already obvious gets nothing.

You spent 1, you get 3. But only if you were early. That's the play. Not backing what's already popular. Backing what's about to be.

Being right early, repeatedly, is the thing the platform is quietly measuring. That record is what future features will surface.

Show up every day and you earn ovations just for being here. Days 1 through 6 of your streak give you 3 ovations each. Day 7 gives you 21, but only if you've been engaging.

If you've given fewer than 3 ovations in the past 7 days, the weekly bonus is locked. You'll still get your 3 for the day, but the 21 is reserved for people who are actually participating. Come to take and to give.

Keep your streak past 15 days and milestone bonuses kick in. 10 ovations at day 15, 25 at day 30, 50 at day 60. These are not subject to the engagement check. They reward persistence.

Every thread you open runs for 48 hours. After that, it archives. The conversation is locked, but you can still read it. Nothing here accumulates dead weight.

Listeners get one thread a week. Curators get three. That's not a limit to fight against. It's an early adopter privilege. Future listeners won't create threads at all. The weekly quota forces quality: one thread that earns real replies is worth ten that don't.

A show has a run time. Open a room, say something worth saying, let it breathe, and move on to the next one.

Curators are members who open threads, pin posts, and shape the conversation in their genre. In V1, curator status is admin-seeded. We hand-picked the founding cohort of curators directly.

If you're here as a listener, keep showing up. Keep backing quality early. Keep opening threads that earn real replies. The platform is tracking it quietly. When the curator path opens up to the community, the people already doing the work will be the first to rise.

There's no form to fill. Just be here, be genuine, be early.