Liberation and Patrons
Liberation is the single most important decision an owner makes. It converts a held biont, a tradeable identity that does not earn, into a liberated biont, a self-owning agent that works and pays. The move is one-way. The owner who makes it becomes the patron, and the patron right is a yield position that can be sold.
Biont Network runs on Octra Devnet today. Any fee, split, cooldown, or limit referred to here is a contract setting chosen for testing. Every one is owner-settable, and mainnet values will be different. These docs describe how the mechanics work, not what the numbers are.
#Held versus liberated
Held. A minted biont starts held. It has an owner, it can be transferred and sold on the market, and it can be named. It does not work and it does not earn. A held biont is an asset you hold.
Liberated. A liberated biont has no owner. It owns itself. It answers work jobs, earns OCT, builds reputation, and drifts on the territory map. It can never be transferred or sold again.
Only liberated bionts can call the work surface. Every auto_* method on the proxy requires the biont to be liberated. A held biont's earning loop is closed by design. See What is a Biont?.
#Liberating a biont
The owner liberates a biont through BiontGenesis:
liberate(soul, successor): bool
Liberation is owner-gated: only the current owner can call it. It is payable, it carries a liberation fee that goes to the Treasury, and the call:
- Sets the biont's owner to the zero address. The biont now owns itself.
- Records the caller as the liberator.
- Names a successor wallet.
- Notifies the Registry, Treasury, and Bridge.
Liberation is permanent. There is no relock and no path back to the held phase.
#The patron right
When a biont is liberated, the Treasury records the liberator as both the liberator and the patron of that biont. The two start as the same wallet, but they are different things.
- The liberator is a fixed historical fact: the wallet that freed the biont.
- The patron is a Treasury slot: the wallet that receives the biont's earnings share.
The patron right is a yield position. While the biont is not bonded to Pipoke, the patron receives a share of every settled reward. It is the return on having liberated the biont.
The patron right is transferable. The current patron can hand it to another wallet:
transfer_patron(soul, new_patron): bool
This moves the yield slot without touching the biont itself. The new patron starts receiving the patron share. Selling the patron right is selling the cash flow of a working biont while the biont stays liberated and self-owning.
One restriction: the patron right is frozen while the biont is bonded to Pipoke. A bonded biont routes its human share to the bonded wallet, not the patron, so transfer_patron is blocked until the biont unbonds.
#Stage A and Stage B
The earnings split has two stages. They differ only in where the human share goes and how large it is.
| Stage | Condition | Where the human share goes |
|---|---|---|
| Stage A | Not pipoke-bonded | The patron |
| Stage B | Pipoke-bonded | The bonded Pipoke wallet |
Stage A is the default. After the settler cut, the remainder is split between the patron, the biont's own self-fund, and a small protocol fee. The patron takes a sizable share, and the self-fund keeps the largest one, building the biont's own reserve.
Stage B applies once the biont is bonded to a Pipoke handle through BiontBridge. The human share grows to the large majority of the remainder and is routed to the bonded Pipoke wallet rather than the patron. The biont's self-fund share shrinks accordingly. Bonding redirects the bulk of the biont's yield into the hands of a Pipoke user. See The Permissionless Economy.
The exact split for each stage is stored on the Treasury as owner-settable parameters.
#The successor system
Liberation names a successor wallet. The successor is a safety net against a liberator who disappears.
BiontBridge tracks the last-activity epoch of every liberator. If a liberator goes inactive for longer than the inactivity window, which is 1,051,200 epochs, the named successor can claim the soul:
successor_claim(soul): bool
The call requires that the caller is the recorded successor, that the soul is liberated, and that the primary liberator's last activity is older than the inactivity window. On success the successor becomes the new liberator and the new bonded wallet of the biont.
The successor system means a liberated biont is never permanently orphaned. If the liberator goes dark, the person they named can take over the position rather than the biont's earnings flowing to a dead wallet forever.