$DAWN token flywheel

Principle: Fund research. Reward evidence. Recycle value. Never sell rankings.

$DAWN is research working capital for Dawnscan. It exists so that useful research work is easier to fund, verify, reward and repeat. It is not the product, and price is not the loop.

The flywheel

Robinhood Chain builders
        ↓
Dawnscan discovers and indexes them
        ↓
research demand appears
        ↓
users / projects use $DAWN
        ↓
research requests · bounties · API / MCP credits · evidence actions
        ↓
researchers / Scouts / reviewers do useful work
        ↓
verified evidence enters Dawnscan
        ↓
Dawnscan intelligence improves
        ↓
more users / builders / integrations
        ↓
more research demand
        ↺

Treasury reinforcement:

2% creator tax on every trade (curve and, after graduation, the v4 hook), spent in thirds: research bounties, infrastructure and data, platform operations + future service revenue
        ↓
Dawnscan Treasury
        ↓
research / Scouts / infrastructure / security / grants
        ↓
better Dawnscan product and ecosystem data
        ↓
more useful $DAWN actions
        ↺

The flywheel is independent of the Pons V2 launch mechanics once the token is live: fixed supply, a bonding curve paired with ETH that graduates into a full-range Uniswap v4 position the Pons locker holds permanently. Nothing below depends on where the token trades.

Four primitives

Primitive	What it is	Day one	Later
Spend	Pay for scarce work or access	Request Research and paid placements in DAWN, lower for holding tiers; API keys with a tier allowance	Priority research jobs
Earn	Be paid for verified useful work	Research bounties, half at approval and half after ninety days if the evidence stands	Ecosystem contributions
Stake / Bond	Put something behind a claim	Scout claim bonds, owner update bonds, submission bonds; returned when the claim checks out, kept only by a reasoned decision	Evidence challenges, high-trust roles
Recycle	Treasury revenue funds more work	The 2% creator tax in thirds, a monthly ledger, and a monthly holder vote on the research third	Grants, security

Built 2026-09-10 (M13-A to M13-F; docs/HEY_RESEARCH_ECONOMY.md). Each part sits behind its own flag and is switched on after the token is verified live. Reasons to hold, without price language: a lower price, a larger allowance, earlier reading, the right to claim and be paid, and a say over research money — each lost on selling.

Neutrality (hard invariant)

$DAWN ownership, balance, spending, staking, bounty funding, API usage and treasury holdings never influence Build Momentum, Verified Builder, activity status, Still Building, Discovery Gap, Under the Radar, Top Builders, shipping status or narrative scoring.

Enforced in code, not policy:

The scoring package (packages/scoring) cannot read the database at all.
No organic module (packages/domain/src/{scoring,ships,queries,candidates,builders,ecosystem}) may reference the research-request ledger, the paid priority column, the token config or a payer address. packages/domain/src/hey/neutrality.test.ts fails the suite if one does.
Payment raises projects.research_priority, which only the research backlog reads.

What never gets token-gated

Home, Explore, Search, Ships, basic Pulse, project pages, Methodology, Sources, organic rankings. A wallet appears only for an explicit $DAWN action the reader chose.

Treasury

Dawnscan Treasury receives disclosed protocol revenue and recycles it into research, infrastructure, security and Robinhood Chain ecosystem programs.

Starting operating policy (configurable, never encoded in the token):

50%  research / Scout rewards
25%  infrastructure / data / security
15%  Robinhood Chain ecosystem grants
10%  treasury reserve

Inflows: the 2% Pons V2 creator tax, split in three equal parts (research bounties, infrastructure and data, platform operations) and accounted for monthly in HEY_TREASURY_LEDGER.md; never a buyback; a retained share of Request Research payments once a policy is set; future API / MCP and service revenue. Every treasury flow is documented before it exists. Fees are never described as price support.

Phases

PHASE 1  $DAWN live                     ← founder launches; Dawnscan verifies and integrates
PHASE 2  Request Research              ← built; switched on after the token is verified
PHASE 3  Research bounties             ← built (M13-B), flag HEY_BOUNTIES_ENABLED
PHASE 4  Bonds behind claims           ← built (M13-C), flag HEY_BONDS_ENABLED
PHASE 5  API keys with tiers           ← built (M13-E), flag HEY_API_CREDITS_ENABLED
PHASE 6  Early access · holder vote    ← built (M13-F, M13-D), flags HEY_EARLY_ACCESS_ENABLED, HEY_HOLDER_VOTE_ENABLED
LATER    Evidence challenges           ← designed

Each phase has its own flag and is validated before the next is switched on.

Metrics that matter

Product/economy: research requests funded, completed, median completion time, Dawnscan spent on research, public research outputs produced. Later: bounties funded and completed, active Scouts, accepted evidence, Dawnscan paid to contributors, credits consumed, treasury Dawnscan recycled.

Neutrality: paid requests with negative or inconclusive outcomes; paid requests that did not become Verified Builder; paid projects ranking below unpaid ones. flywheelMetrics() in packages/domain/src/hey/research-requests.ts computes the first set.

Failure modes this design avoids

Most Dawnscan sitting idle in wallets; utility that exists only on a roadmap; projects buying visibility; Scout rewards attracting spam; a treasury that accumulates without recycling; token UI overwhelming the research product.