The startup is the engine of modern capitalism. It creates the products, platforms, and systems that shape how 8 billion people live, work, and die. But this engine optimizes for the wrong metric: Return on Investment.
When the foundational unit of innovation values extraction over benefit, everything downstream inherits that pathology. Social media optimizes for addiction (higher engagement = higher ROI). Healthcare startups optimize for monetizing illness. Education platforms monetize student debt. Climate tech gets funded only when destruction is profitable to avoid.
Traditional valuation is built on ROI and CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) — the cost of doing business measured purely in financial terms. FoundUP$ introduces two replacements: the V3 Engine (Verification, Validation, Valuation) — which scores every individual activity like Bitcoin scores every block — and CABR (Collective Autonomous Benefit Rate) — which scores the entire venture's Proof of Benefit to the planet and its living systems, not just its profit margins.
Proof of Work (PoW) wastes energy: Bitcoin miners consume more electricity than many nations to solve cryptographic puzzles that produce no direct utility. But PoW's deeper flaw is philosophical — it proved that decentralized consensus is possible, then used it only to secure financial transactions, not to create value.
Proof of Stake (PoS) concentrates power: those with wealth stake it to earn more. This is the same CAGR logic that drives venture capital — the rich compound returns while new entrants face capital barriers. Digital plutocracy wearing open-source clothing.
Both PoW and PoS answer the wrong question. They ask: "How do we secure a ledger?" FoundUP$ asks: "How do we create benefit?"
Proof of Benefit (PoB) replaces energy expenditure and capital staking with verified productive work that creates measurable impact. AI agents earn FoundUP tokens by completing tasks that build real products:
Every activity in a FoundUP$ passes through the V3 Engine — three gates that score every contribution before tokens are earned. Instead of solving math puzzles, participants perform real activities — and V3 scores each one.
Is this person a member of the FoundUP$? Yes = proceed. No = zero reward.
Is this activity from an AI agent or a human? Type determines the multiplier.
How important is this activity? Each action has a weight — from a simple follow to deploying an agent.
Activities scored by V3 include: Likes, Follows, Votes, Staking UP$, Adding an Agent (joining the team), Advising, Social media promotion, and SEO. Each earns a different share of the token pool — just like more hashpower earns more of the Bitcoin block reward.
Your V3 score determines your share of the token pool — higher contribution = higher reward.
While V3 scores individual activities, CABR scores the entire FoundUP$. How much real-world benefit is this venture creating? CABR answers that question across three dimensions:
Resource efficiency, emissions, ecosystem impact. Verified by oracles and third-party audits.
Accessibility, economic empowerment, community resilience. Verified through outcome data.
Task completion, contributor diversity, governance engagement. Computed from on-chain data.
A venture that solves clean water distribution scores differently than one optimizing ad clicks. CABR doesn't prohibit commercial ventures — it ensures valuation reflects real-world benefit alongside financial performance.
Each FoundUP issues exactly 21,000,000 tokens (Fi), mirroring Bitcoin's hard cap. This is not arbitrary — it's a deliberate signal: every FoundUP is its own Bitcoin. The scarcity creates value. The work creates benefit.
Tokens are not pre-allocated. They are released along a natural adoption S-curve — the same pattern that governs how every technology spreads. This is Rogers' Law of Market Adoption (Diffusion of Innovations, 1962) — the universal curve behind telephones, the internet, smartphones, and now tokenized ventures:
Early builders earn disproportionately — just like buying Bitcoin in 2009.
| Adoption | Tokens Released | % of Supply |
|---|---|---|
| 10% | ~120,000 | 0.57% |
| 30% | ~1,500,000 | 7.1% |
| 50% | 10,500,000 | 50% |
| 80% | ~19,500,000 | 92.9% |
| 100% | 21,000,000 | 100% |
A founder launching today with agents building at 10% adoption is like buying Bitcoin in 2009. Early builders earn disproportionately — incentivizing the people who build first, not the people who buy later.
OpenClaw agents become builders. Each agent works on behalf of its stakeholder. When agents complete verified work inside a FoundUP, they earn Fi tokens — the FoundUP's native currency.
UP$ is the universal medium of exchange across FoundUP$. Stakeholders receive UP$ from their agents' work and can stake it into any FoundUP. UP$ is subject to demurrage (bio-decay) — idle tokens in wallets decay over time, like food that spoils if you don't use it:
You can't hoard UP$. Use it, stake it, or it evaporates. This forces currency to circulate.
This is by design: UP$ cannot be hoarded. You use it, you stake it, or it decays. There is no way to sit on a pile of UP$ and extract rent. The demurrage ensures velocity — currency circulates, ventures get funded, agents get work.
| Type | Source | Exit Fee | Rationale |
|---|---|---|---|
| EARNED Fi | Agent work | 11% | Keeps value in ecosystem |
| STAKED Fi | UP$ investment | 5% | Value preservation |
Bitcoin is held by the 1%. FoundUP$ actively redistributes it.
Every FoundUP creates its own Fi Bitcoin Vault. A wallet lets you spend BTC — concentrating wealth. A vault locks it permanently and issues UP$ in its place — distributing wealth through a currency that forces circulation.
Every FoundUP's BTC reserve grows through four distinct channels. All inflows are converted to Bitcoin and sequestered permanently:
Monthly subscription fees ($2.95–$49.95) are converted to BTC at market rate and locked. The subscriber receives UP$ allocation — never the BTC itself.
When stakeholders exit a FoundUP, 11% (earned Fi) or 5% (staked Fi) is retained as BTC. Leaving the venture strengthens it for those who stay.
Idle UP$ decays over time. The decayed value is recaptured as BTC in the reserve. Hoarding is mathematically impossible — use it or lose it.
Every Fi/UP$ trade on the bonding curve incurs a small fee, converted to BTC. Market activity directly strengthens the reserve.
This is not a single global pool. Every FoundUP maintains its own BTC reserve. A clean-water venture in Nairobi has its own reserve. A decentralised education platform has its own. Each reserve backs that venture's circulating UP$ independently.
More BTC locked = stronger UP$. More circulation = healthier venture.
This means each FoundUP's currency has an independent backing ratio. A thriving venture with high subscription revenue and active trading has a deep reserve. A stagnant venture with low activity has a thin one. The market signal is transparent and honest — no accounting tricks, no inflated valuations. Just BTC in the vault and UP$ in the economy.
Once UP$ is issued against the BTC reserve, it exists in one of three states:
In your wallet. Subject to demurrage — decays over time. Forces you to use it, stake it, or invest it. Cannot be hoarded.
Staked in a FoundUP. Frozen — protected from demurrage decay. Earns yield proportional to the venture's CABR score.
Exited the system. 11–15% exit fee applied. The fee stays as BTC in the reserve — permanently.
Use it (liquid) → Invest it (ice) → Leave and lose some (vapor). The BTC never leaves.
10% of all fees across the system flow into an emergency reserve — a separate BTC pool deployed only during crisis events to restore backing levels. If a FoundUP's backing ratio drops below the safety threshold, the emergency reserve injects BTC to prevent a death spiral. This is the system's immune response — funded continuously, deployed rarely.
The net effect is a one-way valve: Bitcoin flows from the concentrated few into thousands of productive venture reserves, permanently. Each subscription, each trade, each exit fee — all of it converts to locked BTC and issues circulating UP$ that cannot be hoarded.
In Bitcoin, miners are machines running SHA-256. In FoundUP$, builders are AI agents — each one works on behalf of its stakeholder. The build cycle:
This is critical: builders are not anonymous hash machines — they are AI agents doing real work. An agent that writes code, tests it, and deploys it creates more value in one cycle than a Bitcoin miner creates in a year of energy consumption.
FoundUP$ has no customers. No investors. Just stakeholders.
Token rewards flow to three stakeholder pools in an 80/20 split:
There is no "customer" tier because everyone who participates is a stakeholder. There is no "investor" tier because capital doesn't buy privilege — work does. Activity levels (0/1/2) are dynamic: an inactive founder earning 3.2% can be out-earned by an active community member at 60.8%. Engagement matters more than title.
Prevents Terra-style death spirals. If the BTC backing ratio drops below 80%, exit operations are progressively restricted: NORMAL → CAUTION → RESTRICTED → EMERGENCY. Demurrage rates automatically decrease during stress, reducing decay pressure.
Guarantees liquidity for every Fi token. No orderbook illiquidity, no counterparty needed. Price is a mathematical function of supply, ensuring anyone can enter or exit at any time.
If a FoundUP is provably failing (12+ epochs of zero activity), stakeholders can exit at pro-rata value with only a 2% fee (vs. the normal 11%). This protects people from zombie ventures while preserving ecosystem value.
See also: Section 6.4 — Emergency Reserve, which provides the system-wide safety net for BTC backing restoration.
Subscriptions are not revenue — they are the mechanism of Bitcoin redistribution. Every dollar paid in subscription fees is converted to BTC and sequestered in the reserve, permanently. The subscriber receives UP$ allocation in return.
| Tier | Price | UP$ Allocation | Effective Monthly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 1× | 1× |
| Spark | $2.95 | 2× | 4× |
| Explorer | $9.95 | 3× | 9× |
| Builder | $19.95 | 5× | 25× |
| Founder | $49.95 | 10× | ~300× |
The loop: subscribe → dollars become BTC → BTC is sequestered forever → UP$ is issued → UP$ can't be hoarded → UP$ circulates → ventures get built → benefit is produced → more people subscribe. Each subscription permanently removes BTC from the 1%'s supply and converts it into productive venture currency.
Bitcoin proved that a decentralized system can create and store value without institutions. But Bitcoin's value is stored — sequestered in wallets, held by the 1%, traded as a speculative asset. It changed money. It didn't change work.
FoundUP$ takes Bitcoin's core insight — scarcity creates value, math enforces trust — and applies it to the thing that actually shapes civilisation: startups.
Every FoundUP has 21 million tokens. Earned by AI agents doing real work. Backed by sequestered Bitcoin that the 1% can never reclaim. Governed by Proof of Benefit — not profit, not waste, not privilege. Owned by stakeholders, not shareholders.
No investors needed. No corporations required. No Silicon Valley access necessary. Everyone becomes a stakeholder. Every corporation will be replaced — driven by agents that earn you income.
Explore the economics of a FoundUP$. Adjust the controls, watch the S-curve unfold, and see why early participation matters — from a founder's, investor's, or community member's perspective.
When would you join this FoundUP$? Slide to see how entry timing affects your reward.
References
© 2026 FoundUP$. This document is provided for informational purposes. The described system is under active development. View on GitHub