# Orb: why someone returns — updated October 10, 2026

Orb's useful promise is: **find people to do something with, turn useful work into
an approved contribution, and keep the resulting record and reward in your wallet.**
More tabs or a token alone do not establish demand, retention or a hackathon win.
The following is a pilot plan, not evidence that customers already want to pay.

## Three jobs, one journey

| Person | Immediate need | Orb flow | Reason to return |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Community member | Find friends and something to do tonight | Live room → planned game night → voice/Arena | Familiar people and the next scheduled session |
| Tester or contributor | Find a clear useful task and track payment | Live playtest → public report → sponsor review → test reward withdrawal | New missions and a portable contribution record |
| Project/community organizer | Run a test with a group, collect evidence and fund accepted work | Mission with criteria/budget → session in an accessible voice room → review | A repeatable testing group and a measurable cost per accepted report |
| Trader | Discuss what actually happened, without blindly copying | Reviewed Spot trade → selected verified receipt → follow author → own fresh quote | Trusted discussions and market context; never promised profit |

The new session board connects the existing communication and mission tools.
The new receipt/follow flow connects existing trading and social tools. Neither
requires a new sidebar destination or silently signs a transaction.

The local journey now provides explicit mission → session-plan → participant
return links, reviewed reward withdrawal inside the mission panel and independent
ORB contribution/receipt verification. Normal community profiles also connect
their public wallet-controlled identity after dual-owner checks. These are usable
source changes, not proof of adoption or a newly deployed release. Public registry
and capsule ownership do not replace hosted room permissions or copy private chat.

## Flagship demo to rehearse

1. A project wallet funds a small test-ORB mission with explicit acceptance rules.
2. A community organizer schedules a playtest in its voice room and links that
   mission. A second member sees it, RSVPs and opens the room.
3. Two people talk and test together. The contributor submits a public report
   voluntarily; private messages are not exported as evidence.
4. The actual sponsor reviews it and approves it. Show the contract receipt,
   reserved credit and the contributor's withdrawal transaction.
5. An independent viewer reads the public contract after the Orb API is blocked.
   Explain the precise claim: sponsor approval and payout, not objective work quality.

The organizer and mission sponsor can be different wallets. A session's mission
link does not certify their relationship. Use test tokens and label every simulated
account/transport honestly. The demonstration is useful without claiming 10,000
TPS measured from two browsers. Monad enables inexpensive onchain coordination;
measure actual transaction-to-receipt latency for the demo instead.

## How the pieces pay for each other

Orb is several surfaces, and a visitor should be able to see which of them earns something, from whom, and why that never buys a
better outcome. This is the October 10 reading of what is built, all of it on Monad testnet with a token that has no market value.

| Line | Who pays | How much | Where it is enforced | Status |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Mission service fee | A sponsor, out of the reward they funded, only when they approve work | 5% of the reward | `contracts/OrbMissions.sol` (`FEE_BPS`), counted in `fees()` | Live on testnet |
| Paid app installs | A community owner, once per community, when they install a priced app | The developer's price: 95% to the developer, 5% to Orb | `contracts/OrbBotRegistry.sol`, and the server refuses a priced install until the payment is on chain | Live on testnet |
| Arena prize claims | Deducted from a prize pool a sponsor chose to fund | 1% of a claimed reward; deposits and entry are free | `contracts/OrbCommunityEconomy.sol` (`FEE_BPS`) | Live on testnet; no prize pool is promoted |
| Assistant conversations | Nobody: five free conversations per wallet per day, then an active Holder Pro licence | No fee. This is cost control for a real inference bill, not income | `lib/ai-access.ts` | Live |
| Holder Pro | The owner of a community locks 100 ORB for 30 days and gets it back | A lock, not a payment: no ORB reaches Orb | `contracts/OrbToken.sol` licence | Live on testnet; utility, not revenue |
| Organizer services (Community Pro, campaign setup) | A community or a project | Prices are hypotheses ($19 a month, $99 a campaign) | Nothing in code: interest requests only | Proposed, needs interviews |
| Trading | Nobody | No fee anywhere | Not implemented, on purpose | Do not pretend otherwise |

How they connect, as one loop and not as separate products:

1. **An idea is free to raise and costs a refundable bond.** The [Council](orb-council.md) turns members' ORB into a square-root voice
   and a public team decision. An approved proposal links straight into a mission brief with its title filled in.
2. **Funded work is where Orb earns.** A sponsor funds the mission, a contributor delivers, the sponsor approves, and the contract keeps 5% of the
   reward. Nothing is charged for proposing, voting, scheduling, RSVP or chatting.
3. **Apps make a community worth coming back to, and let a builder be paid.** A developer registers an app, optionally with a price; a community
   installs it; the contract splits the one-time price 95/5 to the wei. A free app costs nothing and needs no record at all.
4. **Holder Pro is the one subscription-shaped thing, and it is a deposit.** An organizer who locks ORB gets metrics, report exports and
   coverage of the assistant for the community's members beyond the free taster. It gives ORB a reason to be held, not Orb a bill.

What must stay true for this to be honest: a fee is disclosed before anyone signs and fixed in a contract with no admin to change it; no fee,
price or ORB balance changes ranking, matchmaking, safety tools or what a moderator can do; voting weight is a square root of locked ORB, so
buying more is a poor way to win a vote; nothing is a yield or a return, and ORB is described everywhere as a test token.

Anyone can read the counters instead of trusting a page: `fees()` on the mission contract (`/token/missions.deployment.monad-testnet.json`),
on the Bot Registry (`/bots/registry.deployment.monad-testnet.json`) and on the Arena economy (`/economy/deployment.monad-testnet.json`). They hold
what is waiting to be claimed by the fee recipient, not a lifetime total, and the judge page shows the registry's.

## Revenue that follows a customer need

The deployed mission pilot reserves an explicit 5% service fee on sponsor-approved
work. Scheduling, RSVP and ordinary social participation remain free. Community
Pro analytics, campaign services and organizer tooling are candidate paid products;
their prices and willingness to pay still need interviews. Existing Holder Pro
is testnet utility, not proof of a viable subscription business.

Do not create artificial transaction spam, hidden trading fees, paid rankings,
promised ORB appreciation or automatic trades to make metrics look impressive.
The token is not necessary for casual participation. Mainnet, real payment
processing, dispute handling and an independent contract audit are separate work.

## Pilot evidence worth more than another feature

Proposed targets for the remaining hackathon preparation, not achieved results:

- Invite three real communities and run at least one session with each.
- Observe at least ten new users without coaching every click. Record consented
  aggregate funnel counts, errors, time to first conversation and drop-off points.
- Complete funded contribution → approval → withdrawal with two independent real
  Privy accounts, including account switch, reload, pending and revoked-session cases.
- Measure how many people return for the next event and how many organizers schedule
  a second event. Ask whether the reports helped and what the organizer would pay.
- Record one concise end-to-end demo with real receipts and an independent viewer.

Never label all of this “complete” merely because automated fixture tests pass.
The biggest remaining gap is real use and a reliable demo of the entire journey.