Bounty Mode

In bounty mode, a brand stops paying RSNC per event. Instead, every event emits Activity Score, and once a week the brand's RSNC budget is split across every qualifying member by AS share. One payout, paid Monday 00:01 UTC.

This is the new default for brands on Resonance — most will flip in the weeks following the canary launch.

Canary launch: Monday 2026-05-18

Resonance Official is the first brand to flip to bounty mode, on Mon 2026-05-18 at ~00:30 UTC (just after the W21 cron). Other brands will follow once the canary's first full week (W21) settles cleanly.

The three modes a brand can be in

Mode	Per-event payout	Weekly bounty	When you'd see it
bounty_only (new default)	0 RSNC, AS only	Brand's full weekly budget → pro-rata to qualifying AS	Most brands post-canary
additive	Normal RSNC per event	None	Pre-pivot brands, legacy path
split	Reduced RSNC per event	Smaller bounty pool from the difference	Hybrid configs (rare)

You can tell which mode a brand is in by running /cooldowns on their server. If you see a Projected Weekly Bounty section in the embed, that brand is on bounty_only or split. If not, it's additive.

How the math works

Each brand sets two knobs:

Knob	Meaning	Default
Weekly budget	Total RSNC the brand commits per week	Set per brand
Bounty pool %	Share of weekly budget allocated to the bounty pool	5% under canary; will rise as confidence grows
Floor AS	Minimum AS / week required to qualify for any share	50 AS

The pool for the week is:

pool = weekly_budget × bounty_pool_pct

And each qualifying member's payout is:

your_payout = floor(your_AS / sum_of_qualifying_AS × pool)

Resonance Official's W21 pool: 1,000,000 weekly_budget × 5% = 50,000 RSNC.

If you earned 1,000 AS during W21 and total qualifying AS across the brand was 200,000, you receive floor(1,000 / 200,000 × 50,000) = 250 RSNC. Sustained beats spiky — there's no per-day reset, so a steady week with broad participation outperforms a single-day push.

The Monday cron

Every Monday at 00:01 UTC, a cron called bounty-payout-cron runs for every brand in bounty_only mode. It:

Computes week_iso for the just-finished ISO week.
Sums user_activity_scores for that brand and week.
Filters out anyone below the brand's floor (default 50 AS).
Computes each qualifying user's payout (one row per user in bounty_payouts).
Mints RSNC to each recipient via the existing transaction sequencer.
Posts a single summary to the brand's notification channel (never a DM).

You don't have to claim — payouts land in your balance automatically. Check /balance after Monday 00:05 UTC.

What happens if you don't hit the floor

You earn 0 RSNC from the bounty for that week — but your AS is still recorded. It still feeds your Tune-In Hz progress, and it still counts toward your lifetime AS. The floor exists to keep the pool from being diluted to dust across thousands of one-message contributors.

If you regularly fall just below the floor, the cheapest path to qualifying is to grow into the gated event categories you can unlock with Quest Packs — they multiply the number of AS-emitting events available to you without requiring more time.

Per-recipient cap

A single user can't receive more than 1,000,000 RSNC from a single brand in a single week, even if their AS share would compute higher. This is the same validateRewardAmount cap that protects the legacy per-event path; it carries over to the bounty cron. At current pool sizes (50K) it's not a binding constraint — it kicks in for much bigger pools.

Tune-In discount applies to spending, not to bounty payouts

Your Tune-In level gives you a discount on RSNC you spend (up to 20% off at L90 Resonate — see Pay-or-Play Parity). It does not scale your bounty payout up — that's purely your AS share. Tune-In's role in bounty mode is gating Quest Packs and unlocking more event categories, which lets you earn more AS.

Why this exists

The pre-pivot model paid RSNC per event, which incentivized farming volume regardless of contribution quality. The bounty model pays for share of total contribution — your work is judged against your peers' that week, not against a fixed rate.

For brands, it means the weekly cost is bounded and predictable (the pool is fixed, regardless of how many users participate). For users, it means a healthy week of participation always pays — and a slow week pays less, instead of a steady drip of small per-event rewards that don't add up to anything.

The three modes a brand can be in​

How the math works​

The Monday cron​

What happens if you don't hit the floor​

Per-recipient cap​

Tune-In discount applies to spending, not to bounty payouts​

Why this exists​

See also​