The Long Vision
Journalism is not broken because people stopped caring.
It is broken because journalists were never in charge.
Newsrooms are closing. Journalists are underpaid, laid off, or pressured into chasing clicks to survive. The stories that matter most — the investigations, the accountability reporting, the inconvenient truths — are the ones least likely to get funded. Not because audiences don't want them, but because the people paying for media have always been advertisers, not readers.
IYK.YK is a new model. A community-governed institution where journalists get paid directly for the work the public actually needs. Where reporters and contributors have a real stake in the platform they're building. Where the archive of what gets published belongs to no single owner and can never be taken down.
"What if the journalists owned the institution — and the community funded it directly?"
How IYK.YK Works
Ownership
Members govern the institution. Those who contribute most earn more say in how funds are directed. Your track record as a contributor — whether you deliver, collaborate, and show up — is recorded permanently and belongs to you. Governance decentralizes by design.
Getting Paid
New contributors earn membership by winning open competitions. Existing members earn rewards for every piece they publish. The institution is funded through community investment — and runs on yield only, so the founding capital is never depleted. The treasury belongs to the community, permanently.
The Archive
Every story, question, and submission is archived permanently — organized, searchable, and owned by no single platform. AI helps synthesize what the community is asking and what the journalism is answering. The record of this institution cannot be deleted, bought, or buried.
Sustainability Model
IYK.YK runs on an endowment model. Auction proceeds and patron stakes flow into an Octant vault. Only yield is deployed — the principal is preserved permanently. External patrons stake directly into the IYK.YK vault, growing the yield base independently of auction cadence. The more compelling the journalism, the more people stake.
How It Sustains Itself
Community investment seeds the fund
Supporters stake, the fund grows
Returns fund journalist competitions
Great journalism attracts more supporters
The institution sustains itself — permanently
The Goal — By May 31, 2026
Primary Outcome · May 31, 2026
The first IYK.YK writing competition is live and accepting submissions.
blank.space is deployed. The Farcaster channel has an audience. The bounty is funded. Journalists are submitting. Submissions are flowing into Nouns Builder. Every team has done its part to make this single moment happen.
Four Teams. One Deadline.
Build, Tokenomics & Partnerships
- Deploy and configure blank.space for IYK.YK
- Launch Nouns-style auction and seed the Octant vault
- Design ERC-20 and soulbound token frameworks
- Generate founding partnerships and investor conversations
Social Media, Branding & Community
- Build and grow the IYK.YK Farcaster channel
- Develop visual identity, tone, and content rhythm
- Drive awareness of the competition among journalist communities
- SEO strategy and long-term discoverability
Post Production & Content
- Build the editorial workflow for receiving submissions
- Produce content that demonstrates what IYK.YK journalism looks like
- Develop documentary materials in parallel for Q3 distribution
Competition
- Design the competition structure, prompt, and judging criteria
- Define bounty size and funding source
- Build the submission pipeline into Nouns Builder
- Onboard the first wave of contributing journalists
May 31, 2025
Competition is live · Bounties are funded · Journalists are submitting · The protocol is proving itself
What Success Looks Like — By December 31, 2026, 2026
One year from now, this is provably true.
Every outcome below is measurable onchain, on screen, or in print.
Community · By May 31, 2026
blank.space is live.
The first competition is open.
Writing competition is published, bounties are funded, and the first submissions are flowing into Nouns Builder. Governance NFT auctions are running continuously.
Contributors · By August 31, 2026
Journalists are earning.
Tokenomics are community-designed.
A measurable cohort of journalists has submitted to IYK.YK competitions and earned ERC-20 rewards. The community has participated in defining the token structure.
Publication · By September 30, 2026
The documentary is distributed.
Print is published.
The film and published works are live across video and print channels. IYK.YK has demonstrated it can produce and distribute journalism at scale.
Institution · By December 31, 2026
The protocol is self-sustaining.
The DAO governs itself.
The Octant vault is generating yield that funds operations without external dependency. NFT governance is actively decentralized. IYK.YK exists as a functioning proof of concept for community-governed journalism.
Who We Are Looking For
This is not a job. It is a founding.
The people who join now are not employees. They are founding contributors — with a real stake in what gets built and permanent recognition for the role they played.
You belong here if you are…
- A journalist who is tired of writing for algorithms and wants to write for people
- Someone who believes accountability journalism is worth fighting for
- A filmmaker, researcher, editor, or producer who wants their work to matter beyond the next news cycle
- Frustrated by who controls the media and willing to help build an alternative
- Someone who does what they say they will — reputation is everything here
We are specifically seeking…
- Journalists and writers ready to compete for and lead the first published bounty
- Editors and producers with documentary, investigative, or long-form experience
- Community builders and social media strategists who know how to grow an audience
- Developers who want to build infrastructure for public interest media
- Finance and strategy minds who understand sustainable institution-building
First Assembly
3
March 2026
Tuesday
The founding team meets for the first time.
MT 9:00 AM
ET 11:00 AM
PT 8:00 AM
An Invitation
You are not being asked to invest.
You are being invited to found.
On March 3rd, a small group of journalists, builders, and media people will sit down together and decide whether to build something that has never existed before — an institution for journalism that is owned and governed by the people who create and consume it. No one is being sold anything. No one is being hired. This is an invitation to show up, hear the vision, and choose whether you want to help found it.
Tuesday, March 3, 2026
9:00 AM MT · 11:00 AM ET · 8:00 AM PT
Glossary — For Those New to This Territory
DAO
Decentralized Autonomous Organization. A community that governs itself through transparent rules written into code, rather than through a CEO or board. Decisions are made collectively by members, and the rules cannot be changed by any single person.
NFT (Membership Token)
A Non-Fungible Token. In IYK.YK, NFTs are not digital art — they are membership credentials. Winning a competition earns you one. Holding one gives you a vote in how the institution is governed and how its funds are allocated.
ERC-20 (Contributor Token)
A type of digital token earned by contributing — writing, editing, producing. Think of it as the currency of the platform. It is how active contributors get paid for their work and earn a say in operational decisions.
Soulbound Token (Reputation)
A permanent, non-transferable record of your contributions — it cannot be bought, sold, or faked. It answers the question: do you deliver what you promise? Have you collaborated well? Your reputation here belongs to you and travels with you.
Nouns / blank.space
Nouns is a model for community governance where new membership tokens are auctioned continuously, funding a shared treasury. blank.space is a platform built on this model, designed specifically for community-governed organizations. It is where IYK.YK lives.
Octant Vault
A funding mechanism where community investment is pooled and staked to generate yield — similar to how an endowment works. IYK.YK deploys only the returns, never the principal. The founding investment is preserved permanently and governed by the community.
Farcaster
A decentralized social network — like Twitter, but no single company owns it. IYK.YK uses Farcaster as its public-facing channel, where journalists, contributors, and the community discover and engage with the platform.
Knowledge Graph / Bonfires
A structured, interconnected archive of everything the institution produces and asks — stories, questions, sources, and context — organized so that relationships between ideas are visible and searchable. Bonfires is the tool IYK.YK uses to build and maintain this archive onchain.
Bounty / Journalism Competition
A funded prompt — a question or story the community wants answered. Anyone can submit journalism in response. The best submissions win membership and compensation. Bounties are how IYK.YK commissions journalism without a traditional editorial hierarchy deciding what gets covered.