Picture this

Who it is for

Ines found five indie games before they blew up. Taste Graph timestamps her picks; when later curators add them, a slice of their list fees flows back to early spotters like her.

Two ways to own it

What you get

Base$199

$50 deposit to reserve

List builder, pick timestamping, discovery order fee splitter, curator profiles

You choose: chain
You choose: name and logo
You choose: accent color
You choose: fee split

Customfrom $1,500

Built around you

Reshape it entirely: new features, your flows, your brand end to end, integrations you need. We scope it with you.

Everything in Base
Custom features and design
Priority build

Why it is new

What exists today, and what this does differently

What is new

Curation rewards exist; tokenless fee share by discovery order is an uncommon variant.

Closest things out there

The Graph pays curators query fees via curation shares, CurateDAO rewards board curators in AVAX, and Zora uses per-item mint tokens; none found paying by discovery order without item tokens.

Checked with web searches in October 2026. A search is not proof that nothing similar exists, and the market moves fast, so we recheck before every build.

What it unlocks

The human in it

Proves and rewards your eye for what is good.

The Regatta Board

Races it can enter

buildathon · Base · upcoming

Onchain Summer

seasonal (summer); 2027 dates unknown

Official page ↗

Consumer app; eligibility unknown

Their rule on existing code: unknown

hackathon · Colosseum · open

Colosseum Solana fall hackathon 2026

Sep 28 - Nov 2, 2026 per Colosseum schedule post

Official page ↗

Existing work allowed if new progress is disclosed

Their rule on existing code: Colosseum historically allows projects started before the event if new progress is shown and disclosed; verify current rules page

What you own

The whole app, not a starter kit.

The complete Taste Graph app: spotters timestamp picks on Base, later paid lists pay a slice back by discovery order, with First Light digests, item matching, receipts and a Curator paywall built in.

Base price · $199

The user app, complete

Every buyer gets the same finished app. Basic branding and copy changes come through a quick form.

Three step onboardingHome

Shown once: pin it first, later lists pay you back, no tokens and no promises.

Next action and spotter statsHome

First Light, October split or your wall, plus wallet, picks and best spotter number.

Sunday First Light digestDiscover

Five games with under 10 spotters, a one line note and a pick attested on Base with a spotter number.

Item matching that asksDiscover

Matches by store page and developer; two games called Drift trigger a which one did you mean sheet.

Spotter radarDiscover

What the top 50 spotters pinned this week. Gated behind Curator.

Pick wall and constellationWall

Every pick as a star with status: paying, on 30 day hold, waiting for lists, ring flagged.

Pick receiptsWall

Attestation hash, spotter number and what is and is not onchain for each pick.

Paid lists and reader checkoutLists

Read later lists for a monthly USDC fee via the shared checkout; a slice goes to early spotters.

Charge readers for your listLists

Set a price and open your own list to paid readers, with reader stats. Gated behind Curator.

Monthly spotter splitEarn

Per pick breakdown under the owner's rules, run the split, onchain receipt, past splits and send to exchange.

Plans, profile and share cardMe

Pricing from the owner paywall, notification settings, share card, permissions and vision.

Open the full app demo

Add-on

Owner console

Your admin side: revenue, paywall editor, users, rules and the agent log.

Revenue and paywall editorRevenue

MRR, app fee on list fees, live tier names, prices and gates, USDC payments and payment methods.

Split rulesRules

Spotter slice, discovery curve, list price, list age, 30 day hold, paid only lists, Base or Solana.

Integrity and ring simulatorIntegrity

Simulate 30 fresh lists boosting one game and see the guardrails pay nothing.

Index agent log and roadmapAgent

Failures and adaptations of the matching index, running costs, plus the priced Roadmap screen.

Top-up

Growth and referrals

Referral and growth mechanics, switched on when you are ready to grow.

Growth loops and cohortsGrowth

Send Sunday First Light, curator invites, referrals, payout share cards and cohort retention.

The money path, built in

How it earns for you

Spotting and splits are free. The app keeps a fee on paid list subscriptions, curators pay for paid list tools, and communities pay for their own branded taste graph.

SpotterFreeTimestamped picks, First Light digest, monthly spotter splits, share cards

Curator$5 a monthCharge readers for your list, Spotter radar, reader stats. The app keeps 10% of list fees.

Community$49 a monthA branded taste graph for a forum, Discord or zine, with its own lists, digest and split rules

10% app fee on list subscriptions (owner adjustable). A spotter slice, 15% by default, of every list fee goes to early spotters. Pick attestations cost well under $0.01 each on Base.

Prices are yours to set. Illustrative, not a promise of income.

Growth loops, built in

How it spreads

Sunday First Light digest: a reason to come back and be first
Payout share cards: spotter #3, 41 days early
Curators bring their readers when they open paid lists
Curator invites from existing curators
Spotter referrals worth a month of radar for both

Roadmap · build the next phase with us

Where it goes next

v1 included

The full spotter app

Timestamped picks with spotter numbers
First Light digest and streaks
Item matching that asks when unsure
Paid lists and the monthly spotter split
Receipts, share cards, Curator paywall

Included

Beyond games, and Solana

Music, books and tools as item types
Store page matchers for Bandcamp and bookshops
Solana deployment option
Curator storefront pages with SEO

Add-on from $400

Community graphs and taste API

White label taste graphs for Discords and zines
Taste API: early signal for studios and labels
Spotter reputation that travels between graphs
Seasonal First Light events with partners

Add-on from $900

For investors and grant reviewers

The pitch, ready

A paid taste graph: spot things early, and later paid lists pass a slice back to you in discovery order. No tokens.

Problem: People with a good eye find games, music and books long before lists and algorithms do, and get nothing for it, often not even credit.

Solution: Every pick is timestamped on Base with a spotter number. When later curators add the same item to paid lists, a slice of reader fees flows back to earlier spotters, weighted by order.

Why now: Cheap attestations on Base, embedded email wallets, USDC subscriptions and small models for item matching make tokenless curation rewards practical.

Market: Indie game, music and book communities, list curators and newsletter writers, and studios and labels that want early signal.

The ask: Pilot curators with paying audiences, one indie game community for a Community graph, and hackathon tracks on Base and Solana.

Funding is never guaranteed. Check each program's rules.

For hackathons and demo days

Your 2 minute demo

Home: meet Ines, 24, Lisbon, spotter #3 on Lanternfish, 41 days early.
Discover: pick Ghost Kiln from Sunday First Light, write one line and pin it as spotter #2.
Discover: search Drift, the index asks which of two games she meant.
Wall: see every pick as a star, with holds, payers and a flagged ring.
Earn: run the October split, see Lanternfish do most of the work, open the receipt.
Owner Integrity: simulate a ring of 30 fresh lists that pays nothing.
Owner Revenue and Rules: change the Curator price and the spotter slice, watch the user app update.
Owner Growth and Roadmap: send First Light, then request the v2 build.

Many hackathons require code written at the event. See the Regatta Boardfor each race's rule.

Make it entirely yours

Custom work from $1,500: new item types and matchers, your own split curves, community branding, integrations with Discord or a newsletter platform. Scoped on a call.

Custom from $1,500

BLUEPRINT

Why it matters and how it really works

The need

People with a good eye find games, music, books and tools long before lists and algorithms do, and get nothing for it, often not even credit. Curators who come later and monetise those picks owe nothing to the person who spotted them first.

What exists and what is new

Curation rewards already exist: The Graph pays curators query fees through curation shares, CurateDAO rewarded board curators in AVAX, and Zora lets people collect per-item mint tokens. Research found none that pays by plain discovery order without creating a token per item. Research verdict: rare, medium novelty; curation rewards themselves are not new, the tokenless discovery order fee share is the uncommon part.

The data it runs on

Timestamped picks (item, list, curator, block time) attested on Base, an item matching table (store page and developer), list subscriptions as totals per list, and monthly split results. Who subscribes to which list stays private.

1.The mission

Being early on something good should leave a record, and the people who later profit from that discovery should pass a little back to whoever saw it first.

2.Why people can't resist it

On the record Every pick gets a timestamp and a spotter number. You can finally prove you found it first.

Later lists pay you back When paid lists add a game you spotted early, a slice of their fees flows back by discovery order, every month.

First Light on Sundays A weekly digest of five small things with under ten spotters. Pin one, write one line, keep your streak.

3.How it works for real

Wallets: Privy embedded wallets on Base (or Solana for an owner who prefers it). Curators sign in with email; no seed phrase.

Pick attestations: Each pick is an EAS attestation on Base with the item id, list id and curator. Block time sets discovery order; removals are new attestations, never edits.

Item matching: An indexer normalises items by store page and developer. A small model tier (for example a Haiku class model via OpenRouter) resolves ambiguous names and asks the curator below 90% confidence.

Subscriptions: Readers subscribe to lists in USDC on Base (monthly pull via a subscription contract or a card on ramp that settles in USDC).

Splitter: A monthly job computes each list's spotter slice, weights earlier spotters by the chosen curve, and pays through a splitter contract. Only lists with paying subscribers and older than 14 days count.

Notifications: Email and web push for monthly payouts and the Sunday First Light digest.

4.Cost per use and pricing

Per pick: one EAS attestation on Base, typically well under $0.01 in gas. Matching: a small model call on about 1 in 10 picks, roughly $0.0005 each. Monthly split: one batched payout transaction per list, a few cents. Example: 5,000 curators making 60,000 picks a month and 2,000 paid lists cost roughly $300 to $600 a month in gas, models and hosting.

Spotter Free

Make lists, timestamp picks, earn as an early spotter.

Curator 10% of list fees

Charge readers for your list. The app keeps a 10% fee; the spotter slice you set goes to early spotters.

Community $49 a month

A branded taste graph for a forum, Discord or zine, with its own lists, digest and split rules.

5.Growth loop

Every payout is a shareable proof: spotter #3, 41 days early. Curators who join to monetise lists bring readers, and early spotters bring the picks those lists need. The Sunday digest gives people a reason to return before anyone else notices a thing.

6.Risks and guardrails

Sybil rings: Fake lists adding an item to boost it. Guardrail: only lists with paying subscribers and at least 14 days old count, and patterns are flagged.

Flipping: Adding trending items, collecting, and removing them. Guardrail: a 30 day hold before a pick counts.

Small payouts: Most picks pay little or nothing. The app says so plainly and never presents spotting as income to rely on.

Mismatched items: Two items with the same name can send credit to the wrong people. Guardrail: matching by store page and developer, curator confirmation, corrections as new attestations.

Legal and tax: Fee sharing may count as income for spotters and needs clear terms; the owner should check local rules on payouts and sanctions screening.

7.Build order

List builder with picks and Privy sign in
EAS pick attestations and spotter numbers
Item matching by store page with curator confirmation
Paid list subscriptions in USDC
Monthly splitter with discovery order curve and 30 day hold
Sunday First Light digest and share cards

8.Where this is going

Now
Indie game lists where early spotters get a slice of later list fees.
Next
Music, books and tools, each with its own taste graph and curve.
Later
A portable spotter record you can show any label, publisher or studio hiring scouts.
The world it builds
Taste becomes visible work: the people who find good things early are known and paid, not just the people who repost them.

Costs and tools are estimates at the time of writing. General information only, not legal or financial advice.

OWNER PLAYBOOK

Own it, then chart your voyage

Nine routes from one vessel. Tap a port to open its chart.

Why own Taste Graph

On someone else's curation platform, your early picks build their audience and their brand, and you get a like. When you own Taste Graph, your lists are timestamped from your wallet, the fee split that pays early spotters runs on your contract, and the curators you attract are your community. Your eye becomes a record you own and a small income you control.

What’s stopping you?

“Will curators actually earn anything?”

Only if later curators pay list fees, and early on they will be small. Be honest with your community that payouts start tiny and grow only if the niche grows. The timestamped record of who spotted what first has value from day one; the money comes later, if at all.

“I can't code.”

You do not need to. Lists, timestamps and the fee splitter come built. Your job is choosing the niche, seeding the first lists and inviting curators with taste.

“What if people game it by adding everything early?”

Set a list size limit and a small fee to add picks, so spraying hundreds of items costs money. Payouts flow only when later curators include the same item, so spam picks that nobody else adds earn nothing.

“Is a fee share legal, or is it a security?”

Taste Graph pays from list fees for a service, with no tokens sold as investments, which keeps it simpler. Rules still vary by country, so do not market it as an investment or promise returns. If you plan to scale large, talk to a lawyer about your specific setup.

“What if nobody uses it?”

Start with a niche where taste already has social status, such as indie games, small bands or new recipes. Ten curators who already argue about who found something first is the right starting group.

The million-dollar ladder

Curators pay a small fee to publish or join a list, part of each fee flows to earlier spotters, and you keep a platform cut. Add paid sponsored discovery slots and paid data reports for studios and labels who want to know what early curators are spotting.

$100

$2,400

$15,000

$85,000

First niche

20 paying curators

$5 per month in list fees

Niche community forms

300 paying curators

$8 per month

Studios pay for early signal

50 studio or label subscribers

$300 per month

Business at about $1M a year

170 studio, label and brand subscribers

$500 per month

Own one niche completely before adding a second.
Sell a weekly 'what early curators spotted' report to studios, labels or publishers.
Publish leaderboards of best early calls; status pulls curators in.
Tune the fee split so early spotters earn enough to brag about.

Illustrative stages, not a forecast. Results depend on you and the market; nothing here is guaranteed.