How IP Assets Work: From Idea to Royalty

What Is an IP Asset?

An IP Asset is a registered piece of intellectual property on this platform. It can be anything you created — a business model, an algorithm, a process design, a technical method, a creative work, or a concept with economic value. When you register it here, a cryptographic hash of your content is recorded, giving you a timestamped, verifiable proof of origination.

Registering an IP asset costs nothing. It does not require a pool or any economic commitment. It simply records your idea and makes it discoverable by the community.

The Five Stages

Stage 1: Create & Hash

Write your idea clearly — title, description, supporting evidence (URLs, documents, citations, datasets). When you publish, the system generates a content_hash — a unique fingerprint of your content. This is your proof of priority. No one can backdate it.

Stage 2: Publish to Pulse

When you publish your IP asset, it appears in the Pulse feed — the community discovery layer. Other users can discover it, signal interest, endorse it, and engage with it. This is purely social at this stage. No money changes hands. No penalties exist for an idea that doesn't get funded.

There is no downside to publishing. Endorsing a great idea that never gets funded is not a failure. Ideas can have value purely as knowledge — cited in documents, referenced in contracts, used as the foundation for future work — without ever needing a pool.

Stage 3: Open a Pool (Optional)

If you want the platform to expand its currency (LTU) to support your idea becoming economic activity, you open an IP Pool. This is a significant step — you are asking the community's validators to approve the creation of new LTU backed by your IP.

You declare:

• Pool mode: Inventor-Led (up to 80% mint cap, requires IA ≥ 7.0) or Collective (up to 50% mint cap, requires IA ≥ 4.0)
• Target LTU: how much currency the pool aims to support
• Your inventor stake: the % of target LTU you personally back

Your stake determines jury size: a high stake signals confidence and reduces scrutiny. A low stake increases the number of validators required.

Stage 4: Jury Validation

Validators with sufficient IA score self-select to review your pool. They examine your IP asset, your evidence vault, and your declared objectives. They pledge their reputation on the outcome — if they approve something that fails, it will cost them IA when history is measured. This creates real accountability.

The jury votes: approve, reject, or abstain. A simple majority of decisive votes decides the outcome.

Stage 5: Royalties Flow Forever

Once approved, LTU is minted and your pool is live. Any contract on the platform that cites your IP asset triggers an automatic royalty payment to you every time that contract burns LTU. You do not need to manage this. It is structural — the protocol routes value back to you as long as your IP is in use.

5% of every royalty event feeds the Respect Fund — the platform's commons pool for community-chosen projects.

The IP-as-Franchise Model

One of the most powerful uses of IP assets is the separation of invention from operation. You can:

1. Create a business model, algorithm, or system concept
2. Register it as an IP asset
3. Form a company around it (as a DAO, cooperative, or other governance model)
4. Publish it as a Funding Seeker — "here is the model, someone operate it"
5. Let others adopt and run the company
6. Earn royalties automatically as the operating company cites your IP in its contracts

You become the inventor-as-franchisor. Others are operators. Neither needs the other to be the same person. This unlocks a class of economic actor that has never existed before: the professional idea creator who earns perpetually from what they invent, without needing to build or manage anything.

What Happens If My Pool Fails?

If your IP pool is approved but generates no citations and no LTU burn within 24 months, the pool is marked as a definitive failure. The validators who approved it have their IA pledges resolved negatively — their intellectual authority score decreases, reflecting that their judgment was wrong. This is deferred; it does not happen at the moment of their vote.

Your own IA is affected by the quality of the ideas you originate. Consistently good ideas that get cited and used build your reputation. Failed pools reduce it.

Idea registration (without a pool) carries no IA risk whatsoever.