Equity & Revenue Attribution

Every work on Artfork carries a built-in equity ledger that governs how revenue is automatically routed to each contributor.

Default Ledger: Solo Seed

When a new seed is planted, the initial ledger consists of:

• 80% assigned to the seed creator.
• 20% assigned to the Sap (platform fee — always fixed, non-negotiable).

Default Ledger: Graft Proposal

When a collaborator proposes a graft, the default equity split is:

• 50% seed creator
• 30% collaborator (branch creator)
• 20% Sap

These percentages are negotiable between the seed creator and the collaborating creator before signing. Once both parties sign, the split is immutable.

Example: A musician and a film director want to collaborate. The musician's seed starts at 80% / 20% Sap. When the director proposes a video graft, the default offer is 50% musician + 30% director + 20% Sap. They negotiate and agree on 55% / 25% / 20% — both sign, and those numbers never change again.

Photography Equity

Photography seeds bypass the Nursery. When a photo publishes directly to the Stage, the equity is:

• 80% photographer
• 20% Sap

No negotiation phase — this is set at publish time.

The Sap

The Sap is Artfork's platform fee. It is always 20% and can never be removed or reduced. It applies to:

The Sap does not stack across revenue channels.

The Signature Rule

Revenue can only distribute if all equity rows for a project are signed. If any collaborator has not signed their equity agreement, the ledger is marked unsigned and no distribution can occur for that project.

Atomic Payouts

Wallet distributions are executed inside a single PostgreSQL function (distribute_revenue). This function loops through signed equity holders, locks wallets to avoid concurrency races, and updates balances. A composite reference ID prevents any double-payouts if a distribution is retried.

The Sap account always receives its 20% as part of every distribution — it is included in the equity loop, not subtracted separately.