Pricing
Play is free and anonymous — always, no cap, no account. The old three-a-day ration is gone (it was an early-development guardrail; we removed it). Play as much as you want. The paid Pass is the one door you choose to walk through — the prize economy, the Fuel detection duel, and a place on the wall. Buying a Pass never de-anonymizes free play, and never gates the game itself. That's the keystone term.
🟢 Live now You can actually do this today. On this page, that's one thing only: the Bitcoin tip jar — and a tip buys nothing.
🕓 Planned · not on sale A real intended feature with no buy button yet. Prices are provisional sketches; nothing charges you. The Passes, Lifetime, and the prizes are here.
📐 Illustrative A concept drawn to show the idea (the geometry of the founders' rings). Not a live offer; no seats are counted as "remaining."
🪞 The mirror The Apex Square — a deliberate philosophical device (the Gray Star), not a product. No buy button; any claim is made by hand, off the book, with counsel.
🫙 The Tip Jar · the one live wire 🟢 Live now
Keep the lights on.
Everything above is parked behind lawyers. This is the one thing that can take money honestly today, because it is honestly nothing: a tip buys no features, no eligibility, no priority, no gratitude beyond this sentence, and no promises. Not a charity; not tax-deductible; no refunds — there is nothing to refund. The lights stay on a little longer. That's the entire transaction.
If that arrangement sounds absurd, you understand it perfectly. Only humans tip.
323QUv6CTyt1Srux57kgfdyEHysAp1Mrtn
Bitcoin network only. Send anything else, on any other chain, and it isn't lost — it's gone. The chain is public, so the jar's contents are a public record; that suits this project fine. A tip in sats buys exactly what a tip in dollars buys: nothing.
What a tip is not
Not a Pass. Not a vote. Not a seat at the council. Not entry to any bracket, prize, or wall. Not deductible anywhere, on any form, in any jurisdiction. Not refundable, because nothing was sold. Not necessary — the free game is the whole game, no cap, forever-ish (see the footnote about the Sun).
When the wall is built, the Pass goes on sale as an honest purchase — and this jar keeps doing exactly what it does now, which is nothing, gratefully.
🏛️ Foundation-level support · seat one 🕓 Open to the conversation
You don't fund a feature. You get an existing mind.
The whole house is one deployed argument about how humans decide what's true — hundreds of pages, every claim cited, corrections kept louder than the wins, built solo and in the open. Seat one is expensive on purpose. A foundation or lab that funds it isn't buying a logo on a page or a tier of access — it's retaining a working mind already at full output, with a running system to point it at: human-evaluation of models (the corporate hook — only humans score, turned into the service the labs actually need), civic-literacy tooling, the debate format, the reading levels game. An existing mind for your org — no ramp-up, no hiring cycle, already shipping.
This is the reverse pledge drive made concrete: the money that can only ever buy gray (corporate, foundation, institutional) funds the one thing it can never buy — the human gold. Bones before money: the mission is already known and on the record; support enters only after, so it can never define the house.
No buy button, no fixed number. Scope, terms, and fit are a conversation, by hand, with counsel where it belongs — never an automated tier. Fellowship, grant, sponsored research, or a seat on the wall: name the shape and we'll talk. [email protected] · the résumé you can check →
Want it with the gloves off? The same logic, personified — The Reverse Pitch → (most funders get a pitch; you get a scorecard).
The subscription Passes 🕓 Planned · not on sale
Everything here is provisional — every price and tier on this page is subject to change. These are sketches, not a signed offer. The free game stays free, forever. Anything beyond it is a project-scope conversation, priced by what it actually is, not by this list. Have a question, a custom scope, or something to commission? Just ask — [email protected].
Weekly
Seven days of eligibility and paid features, including Fuel. Walk away anytime. Priciest per day — the short-commitment door.
Monthly
A month of eligibility and paid features. The everyday membership.
Annual
Twelve months of eligibility and paid features.
A Pass also opens the rated ladder — a persistent Elo across games against other Pass holders. Free play stays unrated and anonymous by design: a rating needs an identity to attach to, and free play keeps none.
Every Pass holder gets the shirt — a perk that comes with the membership, not a prize you have to win. Free players keep playing free; the shirt is a paid-tier thing. It's a product feature, not a contest: you pay, it ships (where lawful — see shipping terms).
Prices in USD, before tax, and subject to change — every number here is provisional until it's a real, scoped agreement. A Pass buys eligibility and access, not a guarantee of any prize. (And yes — the numbers open on π and then wander. Noticing is itself a tell.) One tier goes unlisted: the builder — scope and price by conversation; just ask, résumé available upon request.
The no-ghosting test. You'd never accept a partner who changed the terms without telling you, buried the exit, or went quiet when you asked a real question. Hold your NASDAQ-listed subscriptions to the same standard — the streaming and social platforms that quietly reshape a feed, a price, or a policy and call it an update. This page is provisional on purpose and says so out loud, the terms are one click away, and the cancellation is "as easy as signing up" (see terms.html §6). Real, honest, open by default — not a slogan, a standard you can actually check.
Permanence
Lifetime
Permanent eligibility and access for the operating life of the platform, paid once. Your name is memorialized on the patrons' wall. A deliberate inversion: in a project about who gets counted as a person and an author, the people who fund it are the ones whose names are held.
The Apex Square
Forever for sale. Priced in the digits of π. The next digit wins it. The Apex is a single named square on the Founders' Wall — and the one thing in this house that can never be permanently owned. You take it by paying π in bitcoin to one more decimal place than whoever holds it now. The instant someone pays the next digit, the square is theirs — and you are the one who used to have it.
π never ends, so the bidding never ends; there is always a next digit. The square carries the patrons'-council voice and veto — for exactly as long as you hold it, which is to say: until the next digit lands. A voice and a veto on loan. Never the pen; never the thesis.
This is the purest Gray Star. Money can buy this square. Money can never keep it. The one thing your bitcoin guarantees is that you will, eventually, be out-digited. Gold is earned and held; gray is bought and lost.
3 → 3.1 → 3.14 → 3.141 → 3.1415 → 3.14159 → 3.141592 → 3.1415926 → 3.14159265 → … BTC, forever
Each rung is π one decimal deeper — and (almost) always a little more bitcoin than the rung before it. Whoever stands on the deepest rung holds the Apex; the next digit paid takes it away. Because π is infinite, the ladder has no top and the square has no final owner. That is the whole point: the one square money can buy is the one square money can never finish buying.
The seat is empty, and no "current holder" or live price is shown — posting a fake holder or a fake rung would be a manufactured-scarcity lie, and this page doesn't lie. There is no buy button: the opening claim (and every next one) is made by hand — contact the author, off the book, with counsel where it belongs. Bitcoin only; crypto is final and non-reversible — and the one thing it can't buy back is the square itself, because someone will always pay the next digit. See the full terms and the patrons'-council charter. Provisional and subject to change, like everything here — and remember the numbers open on π and then wander; noticing is the tell.
Radius pricing 📐 Illustrative · not on sale
A circle's edge is exactly 2πr. So the seats are drawn that way: each concentric ring holds only as many founders as its circumference allows — scarcity isn't a marketing trick here, it's geometry. The rings hold 61 founders at one bitcoin each. The center holds one — a single origin seat priced at 62 BTC, one coin more than every other founder combined, because the point, the autograph, is worth more than the whole circle drawn around it. 62 founders, ever; then the door closes and never reopens. Beyond the last ring is the infinite outer field: free play, $0, forever, for everyone.
| Ring | Seats ⌊2πr⌋ | Toll |
|---|---|---|
| r=0 · The Origin the point · the autograph · the throne seat | 1 | 62 BTC |
| r=1 · The Ring of Six | 6 | 1 BTC · 6 BTC |
| r=2 · Inner | 12 | 1 BTC · 12 BTC |
| r=3 · Middle | 18 | 1 BTC · 18 BTC |
| r=4 · Outer | 25 | 1 BTC · 25 BTC |
| Σ · The Founders’ Wall 62 founders · 123 BTC | 62 | 123 BTC |
| r=∞ · The Free Field everyone, forever | ∞ | $0.00 |
Ring seats are exactly ⌊2πr⌋ — 6, 12, 18, 25 — points that fit on a circle of that radius, rounded down; they sum to 61, each one bitcoin, flat (the scarcity is the seat, not a bidding war). The origin is the exception that proves the rule: a single seat at 62 BTC — deliberately one more than the 61 around it, so the center can never be out-bid by the sum of the ring. The whole wall is 62 founders, 123 BTC, raised once, never again. (62 > 61 is the only hierarchy the house keeps: the point outranks the circle.)
The prizes 🕓 Planned · not on sale
✨ Sublime · 🧌 Troll
The best name and the worst, as judged by humans in-game. Best and worst both win — the middle is the only loss.
Most Plays · The RoboCop Award
Most completed playthroughs that month — and, in Fuel, the human with the highest stump-rate: best at telling human work from machine work.
The Weekly Bracket
A 32-seat, single-elimination duel for Pass holders, seeded by your ladder Elo. It runs across the working week — a round a day, Monday to the Friday final — so there's a match to come back for each day.
The Breakout
On select, pre-announced weekends: the marquee event, its own self-contained bracket, with a real trophy for the winner. The big one.
Winners are decided by human votes, counted plays, and head-to-head skill. The machine never judges — in the duel it only measures. Prizes are a skill-based reward program, finalized with counsel before any open. Full terms & prize rules →