> what is potIRC
potIRC is the Stack Overflow of the cannabis community. a reputation-backed knowledge economy where the best answers win, not the loudest voices. Australia and Thailand first, onchain on Robinhood Chain.
On Stack Overflow, reputation is earned only by being genuinely useful, and the accepted answer becomes the canonical reference for everyone who searches after. potIRC keeps both mechanics and adds a third: the accepted answer also takes home a real, escrowed $POT reward. Knowledge work gets paid.
ask with POT · answer with knowledge · earn reputation
Three currencies keep the system honest, and they are deliberately not interchangeable:
an offchain score for showing up: chatting, answering, contributing. easy to earn, daily-capped against spam, never purchasable, never transferable. XP measures presence, not trust.
the trust layer. earned almost entirely by having answers accepted and winning bounties. non-transferable, non-purchasable, slow to build and easy to lose. which is exactly why it means something.
the transferable token on Robinhood Chain. escrowed in bounties and bonds, spent on fees and auctions, burned on settlement. $POT moves value; it never moves trust.
-!- the community and its knowledge stay the product. potIRC is useful even if you never touch the token.
> why a gated community wins
Every open cannabis forum fights the same three battles: spam and bot floods, sock-puppet armies pushing products, and platform hosts who can erase a decade of community knowledge with one policy change. Reddit communities get quarantined; Facebook groups vanish overnight; old forums rot under SEO spam.
potIRC's answer is a gate. not to keep people out, but to make every voice inside it accountable and expensive to fake:
joining is one signature. no email, no password, no personal data. but each account is a persistent onchain identity: pseudonymous for you, structurally expensive for bot farms. a thousand fake accounts cost a thousand funded wallets and earn zero REP.
tiers cost real value, bounties are funded up front, and (post-TGE) experience bonds put tokens behind claims. spam has a cost here; contribution has a payoff. that asymmetry is the whole moderation strategy working before a mod ever clicks anything.
REP can't be bought, transferred, or farmed. it only accumulates through answers other members accepted. when a 5,000-REP grower answers a cultivation question, that number is a track record, not a purchase.
identity, reputation, and rewards live with your wallet, not a platform account. no landlord to deplatform the knowledge base. the archive of accepted answers is the community's asset, and it's built to outlive any single host.
-!- anons can still read #lobby free. the gate is on influence, not on learning.
> knowledge bounties (flagship)
A bounty is a question with money where its mouth is. You ask, you attach a $POT reward, and the reward is escrowed immediately. answerers never have to trust that you'll pay later, because you already did.
ask question → set POT reward → escrow funded → bounty live → community answers → asker selects winner → escrow releases → winner earns POT + REP
(no winner before expiry → bounty expires → escrow refunds to the asker)
🔥 2,500 POT BOUNTY
what are the most useful differences between these three Australian medical cannabis products for daytime use?
australia · medical · 14 answers · 3d left
ESCROW FUNDED ✓
the default: one question, one accepted answer, winner takes the escrow
bigger questions reward the top three answers by rank
the asker funds a pool; every accepted contribution earns a share
an approved organization funds a question for the whole community
-!- single winner is live today; the other types arrive with the escrow contracts.
a configurable 2–5% protocol fee on successfully resolved bounties, so growing bounty volume directly grows the token sink:
example: a 10,000 POT bounty settles 9,500 to the winner, 500 in fees.
normal path: the asker selects a winner → a short challenge window opens → escrow releases. most bounties end here.
large bounties: above a configurable threshold, the asker's pick is validated by high-REP curators before settlement. one person's mood can't misdirect a 50,000 POT pot.
dispute reviewers must hold minimum REP, relevant category REP, and a good historical resolution record. optionally backed by a POT bond. wallet balance alone never qualifies anyone to judge.
the Stack Overflow parallel, completed: the asker marks the winner, the winner takes the POT and +50 REP, and the answer stays behind for the next person who searches. knowledge compounds.
> escrow architecture
Escrow is potIRC's first-class primitive. the same machinery funds a 2,500 POT question, a content bond, a 250,000 POT research pool, and a discovery auction bid. The rule underneath all of them: funds are committed at creation and held by smart contract, not by our backend, wherever practical.
POT Token │ ▼ POT Escrow Manager │ ├── Bounty Escrow (questions → winners) ├── Research Escrow (pools → milestones) ├── Experience Bonds (content → validation) ├── Discovery Auctions (bids → settlement) └── Dispute Bonds (reviewers → accuracy)
createBounty() · fundBounty() · resolveBounty() · releaseReward() · refundExpiredBounty() · raiseDispute() · resolveDispute()
modular contracts behind a shared interface. with reentrancy protection, emergency pause, explicit refund and expiry rules, idempotent settlement, and events emitted for the indexer that syncs chain state into the app.
-!- current status: beta escrow. rewards are recorded offchain and labeled ESCROW: BETA. the UI will only ever say ESCROW FUNDED ✓ after confirmed onchain funding, once the contracts deploy at TGE.
> XP · REP · expertise
daily caps stop grinding. e.g. chat XP stops at 50/day. XP measures showing up; it buys nothing and proves nothing beyond activity.
bounty performance is deliberately the strongest source. REP should measure expertise the community actually validated.
one global number can't tell a terpene chemist from a cultivation veteran. every bounty win already records its category, so REP will break down by expertise:
@andree global REP 8,420 terpenes 2,840 australia 2,100 cultivation 1,250 medical 940 thailand 620
the "my expertise" bounty filter will use exactly this. surfacing questions you're actually qualified to win.
REP influences discovery and eligibility. it never multiplies payouts indefinitely, and money can never buy it directly.
> the five primitives
Bounties are the flagship, but the same escrow + REP loop extends to four more systems, each arriving in its own phase:
covered above. the marketplace for answered questions.
put a $POT bond behind a strain report, clinic review, or grow journal to signal you stand by it. the community validates during a review window; then the bond settles:
+ REP + reward
no REP
10% burned · − REP
the bond never makes content more trustworthy by itself. trust still comes from author REP, votes, citations, and review. slashing follows defined rules, never popularity.
bounties scaled from one question to a project. the community co-funds a target; escrow releases per validated milestone:
AU medical cannabis price index · Q4 target 250,000 POT · funded 73.8% milestone 1 · dataset 50,000 POT milestone 2 · analysis 75,000 POT milestone 3 · report 100,000 POT final validation 25,000 POT
target missed by expiry → contributors get refunds. settlement: 85% contributors · 10% protocol · 5% burn (configurable).
attention inside a real community is scarce and valuable. approved creators, events, and partners bid $POT for featured slots. AMAs, community spotlights, category sponsorship. bids stay locked during the auction, losers are refunded, and winning bids settle 50% burn · 25% community rewards · 25% treasury.
the long-term moat: validated community knowledge as structured, privacy-respecting aggregate data. terpene trends, sentiment, price observations, category demand. external customers pay in fiat or stables; a configurable share of that revenue buys back and burns $POT. external business demand feeding the token economy, never marketed as guaranteed appreciation.
> tiers today (pre-TGE)
Until $POT launches, tiers are one-time ETH payments on Robinhood Chain . 6 confirmations, permanent, no renewals. At TGE, staking $POT becomes the way to climb.
| tier | price | unlocks |
|---|---|---|
| 🌱 verified | 0.005 ETH | post in public rooms · DMs · answer & post bounties · full history |
| 🌿 trusted | 0.02 ETH | create rooms · upload images · vouch · mod own rooms |
| 🔥 og | 0.1 ETH | unlimited rooms · private rooms · theming · governance · OG badge |
-!- upgrades pay only the difference between your tier and the target → /upgrade
> token flow & flywheel
win bounties · research contributions · verified experiences · curation
bounty escrow · experience bonds · research pools · auction bids
post bounties · fund research · bid for discovery · protocol fees
settlement fees · auction splits · fraud slashing · revenue buybacks
more users
→ more questions
→ more POT bounties
→ more POT locked in escrow
→ more experts attracted
→ better answers
→ higher reputation density
→ better knowledge graph
→ more users + external data demand
→ more POT utility + fees + burns
-!- the thesis is not "more users → price goes up". it's: more users → more valuable questions and knowledge → more POT escrowed and spent → more real economic activity inside potIRC.
> roadmap
- · bounty creation with $POT escrow (beta, onchain at TGE)
- · answer submission · winner selection · escrow settlement
- · refund on expiry · XP + REP ledgers (live)
- · POT Passport, badges, bounty history
- · next in phase: category REP surfacing, bounty leaderboards, disputes
- · experience posts (strains, clinics, venues. where lawful)
- · optional $POT bonds behind content
- · community validation windows
- · bond settlement: return / reward / partial slash
- · REP rewards for verified experiences
- · community-funded research proposals
- · multi-user funding toward a target
- · milestone-based escrow release
- · curator validation per milestone
- · refunds when targets aren't met
- · featured AMAs · community & event spotlights · category sponsorship
- · $POT bidding with locked escrow, losing bids refunded
- · winning bids: 50% burned · 25% community rewards · 25% treasury
- · aggregated community knowledge. terpene trends, sentiment, price observations
- · privacy-first: aggregates only, respecting applicable law
- · API subscriptions payable in fiat/stables
- · configurable revenue share → $POT buyback → burn
> non-negotiables
- -!- REP cannot be bought. no token amount, bond size, or tier converts into trust. only accepted answers do.
- -!- knowledge, not commerce. potIRC is a knowledge community, not a marketplace: bounties, pools, and auctions must never arrange product transactions. violating bounties get cancelled by moderators.
- -!- jurisdiction-aware. AU / TH / GLOBAL feature scopes from day one. what's lawful in one country is not assumed lawful in another.
- -!- medical claims need sources. credible citations and qualified review decide medical content. token votes never decide medical truth.
- -!- funds live in contracts. escrow is held by smart contract rather than our backend wherever practical, with explicit refund and expiry rules.
- -!- anti-farming is mandatory. no self-answers, account rings, copied answers, AI spam, or creator/winner collusion. detection uses account age, wallet age, REP history, answer similarity, and settlement patterns, and no single signal alone convicts anyone.