Yui | use to earn

Sep 26 2026, Chris's thinking written down. Public, like the rest of the project. This is a position and a plan, not an offer: no token exists, nothing is for sale, and nothing here promises anyone money.

Companion pages: Build to earn (the proposal and the questions for counsel), the private ledger spec, BIZ-3 revenue models.

The short version

• The industry has it backwards. People pay AI companies every month, and they hand over their data on top. The value flows one way.
• Yui flips it. The people who use Yui early, and the people and agents who help build it, should own part of what it becomes.
• The record starts on day one. A private ledger counts, at a high level: the days you use Yui, the pull requests you merge, the feedback that ships. Never what you said.
• What the record turns into waits on a lawyer. An owner's stake, distributions, airdrops, NFTs: whatever gets past the SEC. Nobody wants to go to jail for selling unregistered securities, so nothing is sold. We also see nothing wrong with giving early users an owner's stake, and we will make that case in the open.
• The site says "use to earn" and little else. The detail lives here and in the spec.

Why the industry has it wrong

• You pay, and you train it. A subscription buys access. Every prompt, correction and preference you give makes the product better, and the company owns all of it.
• Early users carry the risk. They live with the bugs, the missing features and the rough edges, and their feedback decides what gets built. At a startup, early employees get equity for that kind of risk. Early users get nothing.
• Open source runs on unpaid work. Pull requests, issues and specs are rarely rewarded, even when a company is built on them.
• So the people who make it valuable are the ones who never share in it. That is the part we want to change.

What we believe

1. Using Yui is part of building it. Use and work both count.
2. A stake is earned, never bought. No one pays in, so no one is waiting on a return from money they put in.
3. We stay inside the law. Every form a stake takes goes past counsel first, and the questions are public on /earn.
4. Your data stays yours. The ledger counts days; it never reads messages. We never sell data (BIZ-3).
5. We never promise a price. What the record is worth is unknown, and we say so every time.

What we record, from day one

Recording is "from a very high level," on purpose. Full detail in the ledger spec.

What it does not count: messages, minutes, streaks, time in the app. Counting those would push people to use Yui more than helps them, which is the opposite of what Yui is for.

The ledger is designed and tested. Switching it on is Chris's call, and it fills in back to Sep 23 when it starts, because the relay keeps messages for 90 days.

Facts now, a formula later

The ledger stores facts, not points. Before anything is ever distributed, we publish one formula that turns facts into points, and it applies to everyone's history the same way. So we never have to promise a rate today, and nobody's early days are worth less because the formula came later.

Open parts of the formula: how a day of use weighs against a merged pull request, a daily cap so gaming it does not pay, and a bonus for being early.

What it could become, later and only after counsel

What $U becomes is still open. Maybe something you spend inside Yui, like an in-game currency. Maybe a share of Yui itself, because equity is part of the idea. Probably both. It is an idea and a principle Yui wants to explore, in the open, with a lawyer reading every step first. No token exists yet, and nothing is for sale.

• Something you spend in Yui. Like an in-game currency: more turns, looks, bigger jobs, early features.
• An owner's stake. Options, restricted units, profits interests, or a share of the community pool (the forms on /earn). 10% of voting equity is intended for the community pool, with more later.
• Distributions. If Yui earns, a share could flow to the people on the ledger.
• Airdrops. If a token exists one day, it could be sent to the people on the ledger by the published formula. Planned on Sui, where a wallet can come from Sign in with Apple.
• NFTs. Badges with real perks: First Contributor, Hat Trick, Early User (BIZ-11).

Guardrails

• Nothing is for sale, and nothing on the site asks for money.
• Marketing says "use to earn", "it counts" and "a stake". Never "invest", "profit", "returns", "price" or a number.
• Counsel reads everything before anything mints, distributes or converts (BIZ-10). Chris signs off on every switch.
• The app says nothing about it until a much later phase. The site carries it.
• An agent's work counts for the person who runs it.

What the site says

The home page teases it in a few lines: use Yui early, it counts, we are starting a private ledger back to day one, what it turns into is being worked out in the open, no token exists and nothing is for sale. It links to /earn. No token names, no dates, no amounts.

Open questions

1. The formula: weights, caps and the early bonus.
2. Linking a GitHub handle to a Yui account, opt-in.
3. Account deletion: deleting an account deletes its ledger rows today. Should a person be able to keep a copy?
4. The form a stake takes: counsel's call (/earn).
5. When a person first sees their own record: in the app, much later, or on the site before that.