How It Works

The Core Idea in 30 Seconds

A builder creates a product. Users use it. Users earn ownership — called Living Stake — proportional to their real contribution. 99% of the product’s profits flow to users. 1% stays with the builder. Stake can’t be bought, sold, or traded. It can only be earned. It fades if you leave. The product can’t be sold without user approval.

That’s it. Everything below is the detail.

Part 1 — Living Stake

What it is

Living Stake is your ownership share of a Your 99 product. It is called “living” because it grows when you contribute and fades when you don’t. It is always a reflection of your current, real relationship with the product.

How you earn it

Every Your 99 product publishes a Contribution Map — a clear, public formula that defines what earns stake.

Example: A note-taking app

Example: A social platform

Each product’s Contribution Map is different because each product values different things. But every map is public, readable, and changeable by user vote.

How it decays

Living Stake has a 24-month half-life. If you stop engaging with a product completely:

• After 24 months of inactivity: your stake is 50% of its peak
• After 48 months: 25%
• After 72 months: 12.5%
• It never reaches absolute zero — lifetime contributors always retain a trace

Why decay exists:

• It prevents early-adopter aristocracy (first users owning everything forever)
• It ensures ownership always reflects current participation
• It makes gaming expensive (fake accounts must be maintained indefinitely)
• It keeps the product alive — ownership belongs to people who care now

New user probation

New accounts earn stake at 50% of the normal rate for 90 days. After 90 days, they earn at full rate. This is the primary anti-bot defense: automated account creation becomes economically unviable because each fake account requires 90 days of realistic usage before earning meaningful stake.

Real users don’t notice this. They’re using the product because they want to, and 90 days passes quickly when you’re engaged.

Part 2 — Builder Models

Solo Builder

One person builds and maintains the product. The simplest, purest model.

Ownership: 1% of distributable profit — permanent, non-dilutable.

Fair Compensation: It is impossible to build great software if you cannot pay rent. When a builder launches a Your 99 product, they propose what they need to work on it full-time — their Fair Compensation. A builder in Prague might need $2,000/month. A builder in San Francisco might need $8,000. Users approve this through governance vote. Fair Compensation is deducted as an operating cost before the 99/1 split is calculated — so the 99/1 ownership number never changes.

Fair Compensation is a cap, not a guarantee. If the product earns less than the approved amount in a given month, the builder receives what’s available — no debt accrues, no shortfall carries forward. We share the upside; we share the reality. Once approved, Fair Compensation is locked for 12 months — it cannot be reduced by user vote mid-cycle, giving the builder security to focus on building rather than politics.

As the product grows, the builder’s 1% becomes increasingly meaningful on its own. Users may adjust Fair Compensation accordingly — or maintain it if the builder’s work warrants it. This is a living relationship, not a rigid formula.

Example math:

• 50,000 users, average revenue per user $3/month = $150,000/month revenue
• Operating costs (hosting, services): $15,000/month
• Builder Fair Compensation (user-approved): $3,000/month
• Distributable profit: $132,000/month
• Builder’s 1%: $1,320/month (+ $3,000 compensation = $4,320 total)
• Universal Pool (10%): $13,200/month
• Users’ 89%: $117,480/month (distributed proportionally by stake)

At 500,000 users: builder earns $22,050/month from 1% alone — Fair Compensation becomes a small fraction of total income. At scale, the 1% IS the compensation.

The Evolving Builder Role

The builder role is changing rapidly. Today, a builder writes code and designs interfaces. In six months, a builder may be someone directing AI agents that implement features based on user feedback. In a year, the builder’s role may be primarily curation, quality control, and stewardship.

The Your 99 model is designed for this evolution. As building becomes more automated, governance-driven Fair Compensation adjusts to reflect the actual work being done. If AI does 95% of implementation, users can adjust compensation to match the builder’s real contribution. The 1% ownership remains permanent — it rewards the builder for originating, launching, and stewarding the product, regardless of how the work gets done.

The model doesn’t assume building stays hard. It assumes building gets easier — and that’s exactly why 99% should go to users.

Team Builder

Products that need multiple people to build and maintain.

Ownership: The Lead Builder’s 1% is shared among the team at the Lead Builder’s discretion.

Fair Compensation: The builder proposes team compensation as part of their Fair Compensation proposal — covering the entire team. Users approve it annually through governance vote. Fair Compensation is transparent: users see who is on the team, what each person earns, and what they contribute.

Example math (team of 8):

• 500,000 users, $4/month average revenue = $2,000,000/month
• Operating costs: $100,000/month
• Team Fair Compensation (user-approved): $160,000/month ($20,000/person average)
• Distributable profit: $1,740,000/month
• Lead Builder’s 1%: $17,400/month (shared within team as Lead Builder decides)
• Universal Pool (10%): $174,000/month
• Users’ 89%: $1,548,600/month

Mission Builder

Products that serve society but don’t charge users.

Compensation: Funded through the Universal Pool and voluntary Family contributions. No direct revenue to distribute. Builders may receive grants from the Universal Pool, approved by ecosystem-wide governance.

Examples: Open-source AI models, public health tools, educational platforms, civic infrastructure.

Part 3 — Money Flow

For a standalone product

User Payment
  └── Processed centrally by the Your 99 Platform
        └── Platform pays verified infrastructure costs directly
        └── Builder Fair Compensation (user-approved)
        └── Distributable profit
              ├── 1%  → Builder (permanent ownership)
              ├── 10% → Universal Pool (all Your 99 members)
              └── 89% → Issued as Your 99 Credits to users

For a product in a Family

User Payment
  └── Processed centrally by the Your 99 Platform
        └── Platform pays verified infrastructure costs directly
        └── Builder Fair Compensation (user-approved)
        └── Distributable profit
              ├── 1%  → Builder (permanent ownership)
              ├── 5%  → Family Pool (shared among related products' users)
              ├── 10% → Universal Pool (all Your 99 members)
              └── 84% → Issued as Your 99 Credits to users

The Universal Pool distribution

Universal Pool (all product contributions)
  ├── 70% → Distributed to all Your 99 members (by total cross-product stake)
  ├── 20% → Mission product funding (governance-allocated)
  └── 10% → Your 99 infrastructure and platform operations

Why 10%

The Universal Pool is not a tax. It is not overhead. It is solidarity infrastructure — the mechanism through which every participant in the Your 99 ecosystem shares in the collective mission.

A plumber who uses one Your 99 product doesn’t need twenty apps. But they are part of a movement that includes AI health tools, music platforms, education software, creative tools. The Universal Pool means their participation in one product connects them to the success of all products. Every member benefits from every breakthrough — whether it’s a tool they use daily or one they’ll never open.

Without the Universal Pool, Your 99 is just a licensing agreement — a collection of individual products with a common contract. With it, Your 99 is a movement.

Part 4 — Governance

What users control

Users with Living Stake have voice in decisions that affect them. Voice is stake-weighted — the people who contribute most have the most influence.

Product-level decisions (voted by product’s user-owners):

• Changes to the Contribution Map
• Approval of builder Fair Compensation
• Major product pivots
• Family membership
• Operating cost challenges
• Any change to the product’s Your 99 Agreement implementation

Ecosystem-level decisions (voted by all Your 99 members):

• Universal Pool allocation to mission products
• Your 99 platform governance
• Ecosystem-wide policy changes

How voting works

1. Proposal — any user above a minimum stake threshold may propose
2. Discussion — minimum 7 days, open to all stake-holders
3. Vote — minimum 7 days, stake-weighted, 15% quorum required for validity
4. Standard decisions — 50%+ approval
5. Constitutional decisions (changes to the Agreement, sale of product) — 75%+ approval

Users may delegate their vote to trusted community members (proxy voting), ensuring effective participation without requiring every user to evaluate every proposal. Delegation is revocable at any time.

What the Builder controls

Day-to-day operations: what to build next, how to build it, design decisions, hiring team members, infrastructure choices. The Builder is the executive. Users are the board. The Builder runs the product. Users set the boundaries.

Dispute resolution

When builder and users disagree on whether a decision is operational or structural, either party may request ecosystem-level arbitration — a review by an independent panel of builders and high-stake users from other Your 99 products.

Part 5 — Anti-Gaming Defenses

The system is designed so that genuine participation is always easier and more rewarding than gaming.

The fundamental principle

Every anti-gaming defense follows one rule: make the cost of faking higher than the cost of being real. Decay, probation, transparency, and governance together create a system where the easiest path to earning is genuine participation.

Part 6 — Strict Unit Economics

What “building costs nearly nothing” means

AI reduced the cost of development labor — the engineers, designers, and product managers who used to consume 70-80% of a product’s total budget. That cost has collapsed. A single builder with AI tools can now create what a team of fifteen built in months.

What has NOT gone to zero: hosting, infrastructure, API costs, compliance, customer support, and third-party services. These are real operating costs. But they are a fraction of the old total cost structure. The revolution is not “everything is free.” The revolution is “the biggest cost — human labor to write code — is no longer the barrier.”

Products must be economically viable from Day 1

Your 99 products are built on strict unit-economic viability. If an AI video product costs $5 in compute per video, the user pays $6. We do not subsidize unprofitable compute costs with venture capital or ecosystem funds. Capital is no longer needed for code, but compute still costs money. A Your 99 product must generate more revenue than it consumes in operating costs. We build sustainable businesses, not subsidized illusions.

Part 7 — Product Families

What they are

Voluntary groupings of related products that share an additional stake pool. Families create natural collaboration between products that serve overlapping user bases.

Example: Health Family

• MedNotes — patient records tool (50,000 users)
• TeleHealth99 — telehealth platform (200,000 users)
• MindTrack — mental health tracker (100,000 users)
• PharmRef — medical reference app (30,000 users)

Each contributes 5% of distributable profit to the Health Family Pool. A nurse who uses MedNotes benefits from the success of TeleHealth99. A therapist using MindTrack benefits from PharmRef’s growth. The Family creates an incentive for products to work together — shared APIs, data interoperability, cross-referrals — because their users are shared owners.

How Families form

1. Two or more products propose a Family
2. Each product’s user governance votes on joining
3. All existing Family members must approve new members
4. Products may leave a Family through their own user governance vote

No forced hierarchy

Families are flat, voluntary associations. There is no parent-child relationship. No product controls another. The Family Pool is distributed equally by stake across all Family products’ users.

Part 8 — Ecosystem Competition

Multiple Your 99 products may compete in the same category — two note-taking apps, two messaging platforms, two social networks. This is expected and healthy. Products within the ecosystem compete on quality, features, and user experience — not on ownership model. The Universal Pool aligns everyone at the ecosystem level: every product’s success contributes to the pool that benefits all members. Competition makes products better. The ecosystem wins regardless of which individual product leads a category.

Part 9 — The Math That Changes Everything

Why 1% is enough for builders

(1% of distributable profit after ~10% operating costs and 10% Universal Pool)

Why 99% ownership is better than 0%

The per-user amount seems modest for any single product. But a person using ten Your 99 products — a social network, a messaging app, a note-taking tool, a music service, a fitness tracker, a news reader, a banking app, a learning platform, a marketplace, a creative tool — earns from all of them. And the Universal Pool means they earn from every Your 99 product in existence, including the ones they don’t personally use.

The real shift

In the old economy: you use ten products and pay $100/month total. Companies earn from you. You own nothing.

In the Your 99 economy: you use ten products, some paid, some free. You earn stake in all of them. You receive monthly profit distributions. You have governance voice. You own 99%.

The money flows to you instead of away from you. Not because someone decided to be generous. Because the math changed.

Part 10 — What This Is Not

This is not crypto. No blockchain, no tokens, no trading, no speculation. Stake is a database entry, like your balance at a bank. It represents a relationship, not an asset.

This is not communism. Ownership is proportional to contribution, not equal. People who contribute more own more. Builders who create more successful products earn more. Meritocracy, not equality of outcome.

This is not a cooperative. Traditional cooperatives have one-member-one-vote governance. Your 99 has stake-weighted governance — the people who contribute most have the most voice. This prevents the problem of disengaged members controlling active products.

This is not charity. Builders earn from their 1%. Users earn from their 99%. Everyone is economically motivated. The system works because incentives are aligned, not because people are altruistic.

This is not a DAO. DAOs failed because they were governance without products. Your 99 is products first, governance second. The product works. The ownership model is layered on top of a working product. The order matters.