Fund research, reward evidence, recycle value, never sell rankings. This page describes how each
use of $HEY works. It does not say which ones are switched on: that changes with the deployment,
and a page written once cannot know it. /hey and GET /api/hey/profile say, for
each use, whether it is live or planned, read from the product's own switches at the moment you
ask.
Nothing here moves money by itself. Every transfer out of the treasury is a transaction the lab sends by hand; HEY then checks it against the chain and only then records it.
Linked wallets
A signed-in reader links one wallet to their account on /account by signing a plain message. That wallet is the identity behind every paid action: a research request or a placement is paid from it, a bounty is paid to it, and its $HEY balance is the only balance HEY ever reads for the account. HEY keeps the address and a hash of the signature, nothing else. One account per address; an address another account released waits a day before it can be linked again.
Holder tiers
Three tiers: Free, Holder and Holder+. The thresholds, the discount on prices in $HEY, the API allowance and early access for each tier are settings the lab can change; /hey shows the ones in force. HEY sets the tier from the linked wallet's balance and keeps the decision, never the balance. A tier grants no permission and touches no ranking.
Research Terminal access. There are two ways in. The first is automatic: hold at least $500 worth of $HEY in the linked wallet, valued at HEY's own market price when HEY checks the balance once a day. Once in, you keep access while it stays at $450 or more; below that you keep it for one more day, with a warning in the Terminal saying when access ends. The second is to request early access, which is reviewed by hand. HEY keeps only the decision, never the balance or its value, and none of it is an input to any status, score or ranking. The amounts are settings, and the Terminal access page always states the ones in force.
Prices in $HEY
Every price is quoted by HEY's server, never by the browser. A holder pays the list price less their tier's discount, and the figure is kept with the payment it was quoted for.
The treasury and its ledger
HEY's policy splits the creator tax paid to the treasury in three equal parts: research bounties, infrastructure and data, platform operations. No part of it is used to trade $HEY.
HEY's ledger records every $HEY payment its research economy handles — research requests, bounty funding and payouts, bond deposits and refunds — with its transaction, and HEY reads the treasury's balance from the chain every day. The creator tax is paid to the treasury by the Pons pool hook when fees are swept; HEY has not yet recorded which asset each payment arrived in, and it is not recorded in the ledger yet. The treasury's balances have moved more than the ledger explains, and until the creator tax and the treasury's spending are recorded HEY makes no claim about how past creator tax was spent. The treasury ledger page says what it holds today.
Paying in $HEY
Before you pay, HEY writes a quote: your linked address, the amount, the treasury, what it is for, and ten minutes to pay it. Your transfer is checked against that quote, never against what the browser reports. No extra signature is needed: the linked wallet is the identity. A payment counts only once enough later blocks are built on top of it; HEY keeps checking until then.
A transfer you send after the quote has expired is not accepted: if it was mined after the ten minutes, the ledger line is rejected with the reason that it is owed back.
Research bounties
A bounty is a $HEY reward for a piece of evidence work: verify GitHub ownership, trace a contract migration, document a shipped release, verify a Robinhood Chain deployment, research a disputed identity, map a project's own sources, or find an unlisted active project. A brief that asks for a ranking, a status, a badge or a placement is refused when it is written.
lab bounty: posted by the lab → OPEN
reader bounty: proposed on /bounties/propose → funded in $HEY → payment confirmed → OPEN
claim: a Scout claims it for seven days → hands in evidence → a moderator reviews it
approved: half the reward is due now, half in ninety days
ninety days: the second half is due if the evidence still stands
(not disputed, not retracted, no open flag), otherwise cancelled with the reason
rejected: the task reopens for another Scout
retracted: unpaid halves are cancelled
The funder cannot review their own bounty, the Scout cannot review their own work, and the funder cannot claim their own bounty. Open bounties are listed on /bounties.
A fact HEY already verified (2026-10-03). A bounty that asks HEY to verify something HEY has since verified from other evidence — the project's token contract, or its official repository — is no longer listed as open, and a claim on it is refused. An open one funded by the treasury is closed and can be reopened by a moderator; work already handed in stays for review, and nothing is paid, refunded or moved by this rule.
Bonds
A bond is $HEY put behind a claim, held by the treasury and returned when the claim checks out. Three kinds, each of which the lab can offer, require or leave off:
Scout claim taken when a Scout claims a bounty; returned after review (either way),
or when the claim lapses or is cancelled
Owner update optional, after a verified owner posts an update; returned once the update
is source-linked or verified, or after thirty days undisputed
Project submission with the submit form; returned on approval or an ordinary rejection,
or after a month if never used
A dispute, an open flag, or a submission rejected as spam, phishing, malware, impersonation or a false claim holds the bond for a decision. A bond is never kept automatically: a person decides, with a reason, and a kept bond becomes research money. Nothing here changes how an update is labelled or how a project is ranked.
API keys
Any signed-in reader can create a key on /account when keys are open; one active key per account, shown once, stored only as a digest. A key reads exactly the same public data as no key. It carries the account's holder tier, which sets a per-minute limit and a monthly allowance, and its answers are private to the caller. Every public read route takes a key; which routes those are, and how a refused key is answered, is in the public API. The MCP server sends your key for you.
HEY checks the linked wallet's balance once a day, and at once when a wallet is linked; a failed read changes nothing and is tried again.
Early access to research notes
When early access is on, an approved research note can be shown first to holders whose tier carries early access, for a window the tier settings set, and to everyone after that. Those readers see the note marked "Early access · public in N hours"; everyone else sees nothing extra. No ranking reads any of this.
The research-funding vote
A round is opened by hand by the lab, with two to eight options — themes, scopes, or projects to research. Accounts with a linked wallet cast one ballot each on /hey/vote and may change it while the round is open. When the round closes, HEY reads each ballot's wallet balance once, at the closing block, and counts it as the ballot's weight; a balance under 1 $HEY weighs nothing. Results show only after the count, and the lab publishes what it decided. The vote is advisory: never a governance right, never an entitlement, never a ranking input.
As of 3 October 2026 no round has been opened. /hey/vote shows a round when there is one.
Neutrality
None of this reaches what HEY ranks or how it judges a project. The ranking code cannot read the ledger, the quotes, the bounties, the wallets or the tiers — a test fails the build if it tries — and no holder or wallet figure is stored where a ranking could read it.