CRPS — Your Stake in the System
Nothing described on this page is implemented yet: not organisationally, not legally, not technically. CRPS is the design CORPUS is committed to, and this page describes how it is intended to work. The legal form is under active evaluation; the issuance mechanism, the wallet, and any participation rights ship together with it. Treat everything below as design intent, not current capability.
Every contribution to CORPUS generates two distinct things. The first is a royalty entitlement: a share of the revenue that licensed models produce in the present. The second is a Corpus Participation Right (CRPS): a share in the value of the corpus itself as it grows. The royalty pays you for what your work is doing right now. The CRPS makes you a co-owner of what your work helped build.
The protocol-level mechanics are in CRPS — Participation Rights. This page covers what a contributor actually gets, and what is still open.
Royalties and CRPS, side by side
| Royalties | CRPS | |
|---|---|---|
| What they pay | Share of payouts from licensed models | Share in the corpus's long-term value |
| How they're issued | Per distribution round | Per contribution, at ingest |
| Time horizon | Current payouts | Permanent |
| Affected by withdrawal | Past contributions still pay | Already-issued CRPS remain |
| Affected by diversity decay | Yes, after 5-year protection | No, never |
Why early contribution matters
Diversity scores get harder to achieve as the library fills up. A track that fills a sparse area in 2026 may sit in saturated territory by 2031, so early contributors accumulate more CRPS per contribution than later ones. This is intentional: early contributors take on the highest risk, and CRPS recognise that risk structurally rather than as a marketing gesture. CRPS issuance is not rebalanced backward.
What CRPS will give you
Two dimensions, both still being implemented through the legal form:
Economic participation. A claim on the long-term value of the corpus, including its appreciation in a liquidity event such as a sale or restructuring. This is the layer that separates a co-owner from a supplier: contributors share not only in the flow of current payouts but in the stock of value their work helped accumulate.
Governance participation. The right to influence how the corpus is managed: licensing terms, scoring dimensions, protocol evolution. This will take concrete form through voting rights, advisory representation, or veto mechanisms on decisions that materially affect contributor interests. The governance structure is being built in parallel to the CRPS legal form; see the Governance chapter for where that stands.
What is still open
The legal form is under active evaluation. Three pathways, each with trade-offs:
- Profit participation rights (Genussrechte) under German law: established mechanism, can be made transferable, no gift tax when issued as consideration for a contribution.
- Tokenised participation rights under Swiss DLT legislation: regulated digital securities, broader transferability, requires a Swiss entity and FINMA-compliant issuance.
- Cooperative membership: closest to the founding vision (every contributor a member), but current cooperative law limits transferability and may not match the speed the AI sector demands. A hybrid model — cooperative membership for governance, Genussrechte for economic participation — is also on the table.
No final structure chosen. What is fixed: contributing must generate lasting participation, not merely periodic payment. CRPS issuance, the wallet, and transferability begin once the legal form is selected.
What CRPS do under withdrawal
If you withdraw from CORPUS, the CRPS you have already earned remain yours. They reflect a historical fact — your contributions shaped the corpus during their active period — and that fact does not change when you stop contributing. See Withdrawal and Rights for the full picture.