Backing an auteur

Curating expresses conviction in a work. Backing expresses conviction in the person making it.

You deposit $AUTEUR into the Ethereum backing vault against an Auteur participant ID. Your position can earn rewards in epochs when that auteur has funded work. You do not buy ownership of the auteur or their work, and no liquid creator token or NFT is issued.

Open a position

1. Connect to Auteur and open another auteur's profile.
2. Choose Back, select your wallet, and enter an amount of $AUTEUR.
3. Approve the backing vault to spend that amount if an allowance is needed.
4. Confirm the backing transaction.

Positions belong to the wallet that opened them. Keep access to that wallet: adding a different wallet to your profile does not make it the position owner.

The interface hides self-backing for the same participant. The contract does not detect whether multiple wallets belong to one person; this is not an identity-based anti-sybil guarantee.

Activation and exits

Backing uses the same 48-hour epoch clock as curation. A deposit in Epoch N becomes active in Epoch N+1.

For example:

• Back during Epoch 10: active from Epoch 11.
• Request unstake during Epoch 12: active through Epoch 12.
• Epochs 13 and 14: inactive cooldown.
• Start of Epoch 15: principal becomes withdrawable.

An unstake request does not automatically return tokens. You must submit the withdrawal transaction when it becomes available. Cancelling before activation skips the cooldown.

Each additional deposit creates a new onchain position with its own activation epoch. It does not inherit an older deposit's entry date. Positions are non-transferable, and exits currently apply to a whole position, not a partial amount.

What earns rewards

A position earns only if it is active in a reward-enabled epoch and its auteur has funded work in that epoch. The backend must also associate the opening wallet with an Auteur participant.

The backing-enabled pool split is:

• authors: one third;
• curators: one half;
• backers: the remaining one sixth.

See Epochs and rewards for historical policies and rollout configuration.

For each eligible position:

effective backing = principal + confirmation weight received - weight contributed
reward weight = effective backing × auteur's funded works in this epoch

Planned payout limits

The next reward-policy update will separate the available backer budget from the amount actually earned. Eligible positions will share only the unlocked portion, rather than automatically distributing the full pool simply because eligible backing exists.

Being the only eligible backer will not, by itself, entitle a position to the whole pool. Unallocated rewards will remain in the rewards vault for future distributions. If no positions qualify, nothing will be distributed from the backer pool.

This is the planned policy, not yet the deployed settlement rule. The unlock formula, payout limits, and activation epoch will be specified before it takes effect.

How early conviction matures

New deposits start at a base weight of 1x. Later active backing from other participants can transfer some reward weight toward earlier positions on the same auteur.

The current default parameters are β = 1 and S = 10M AUTEUR:

B = historical backing from earlier activation epochs by other participants
A = currently active backing from later activation epochs by other participants

target multiplier = 1 + β × A/(A + S) × S/(B + S)

This is a target, not a guaranteed multiplier. Later cohorts fund the bonus from at most half of their base weight at β = 1. Total effective backing is conserved: no extra reward budget is created. Earlier positions can approach 2x; later positions retain at least 0.5x before weighting by funded work count.

Deposits by the same participant into the same auteur with the same activation epoch are grouped for reward calculation. Your own later deposits are excluded from your confirmation evidence. These rules do not prove that unrelated-looking accounts are different people.

Positions starting in the same epoch do not confirm one another. If later backing exits, the evidence and future relative rewards can change. There is no permanent entry bonus, fixed APY, or guaranteed positive return.

Follow your position

In Profile, Conviction shows curation power, backing positions, and recorded backing earnings. Open an auteur's backing view to see their backing history and other backers.

Returns compare recorded reward amounts with the position principal, not dollar profit or token-price gains. During settlement, the displayed earnings can include prepared or submitted reward rows before onchain credit. Only credited rewards are claimable. A newly active position can have no return to show until its first eligible settlement is calculated; a shadow calculation is not a credited reward.

The interface can show a submitted action immediately. Ethereum confirmation and indexing still determine the final state; a rejected or reverted transaction does not open or close a position.

Principal and claims

Principal stays in the backing vault. Reward credits go to the position owner's address in the separate rewards vault. Claiming rewards does not unstake principal, and withdrawing principal does not erase previously credited rewards.

The contract does not slash principal when an auteur is not funded. That does not make backing risk-free: tokens are locked during activation/cooldown, token prices can change, transactions cost gas, and smart-contract and operational risks remain.

The backing admin can pause new deposits, but cannot use that pause to block cancellation or withdrawal. See Contracts for the Mainnet addresses.