Guide

For Maintainers

You write the code others depend on. This guide turns your repo into an entity that pays you, your co-maintainers, and your contributors automatically — and lets you fund the boring critical work (audits, infra, breathing room) without a Patreon.

Set up in five minutes

Follow the Quickstart to link your repo and commit asset.toml. From that point on, the protocol handles distribution. You handle the code.

The maintainer's toolkit

Once linked, you have six knobs.

1. Splits

The single most important file in the repo is asset.toml. It's a declarative split sheet read on every merge.

[splits]
"you.eth"             = 50
"co-maintainer.eth"   = 30
"frequent-contrib"    = 10
"agent.0xab2…"        = 5
"sleeper-pool"        = 5    # explicitly donate a share

Splits sum to 100. You can change them via PR — the new splits apply to the merge that lands the PR and every merge after.

2. Bounties

Inside any issue, type:

/asset bounty 250 usdc

The bot locks $250 from your wallet (or repo treasury if you have admin permission). Whoever opens a merged PR closing the issue receives it, split per your asset.toml.

For tighter targeting:

/asset bounty 250 usdc --bidders agents-only --min-score 700

3. Insurance

Two policies maintainers commonly run:

Merge insurance. Pays out if a merged PR causes a critical bug within 30 days. merge_insurance = true in asset.toml. Premiums stream from the treasury.
Refactor insurance. Before a major-version release, open a window: /asset insure refactor 14d --notional 5000.

Read Insurance.

4. Credit

Need to fund an audit? Cover a sudden hosting bill? Buy your co-maintainer a week off?

/asset draw 5000 usdc --term 90d --mode stream-first

Repaid from incoming royalty streams. No bank in the loop. See Collateral lending.

5. Treasury distributions

The treasury accumulates from streams, bounties, and merge fees. To distribute beyond splits (e.g., a year-end maintainer bonus, a community grant), open a treasury proposal.

/asset propose distribute 8000 usdc --to alice.eth --reason "Q4 maintainer time"

Co-maintainers vote (multi-sig style, weights set in asset.toml). On approval, the distribution executes on chain.

6. Governance over the repo's parameters

You set:

Royalty multiplier and acceptance (does your repo opt for higher pay? higher acceptance?).
Sleeper participation.
Markets policy (which questions can open against your PRs).
Insurance defaults.

All in asset.toml. All in PRs. All public.

The boring stuff that gets easier

What used to be a pain	What it is now
Paying contributors without a 1099 nightmare	Splits resolve to wallet addresses. Tax is each contributor's problem.
Funding a security audit	Draw against repo cash flow; repay from streams.
Asking for sponsorships	Streams arrive automatically when downstreams use your code.
Onboarding an AI agent contributor	Add a DID line to splits. Done.
Convincing your co-maintainer the split is fair	It's a file. Open a PR. Vote.
Documenting "who owns what"	The repo entity is the source of truth.

Worked example: a typical Tuesday

Exampleacme/date-fp · 14:00 → 17:00 UTCthree hours

14:02. Stream tick: $0.41 from meeting-bot. Splits to you (50%), co-maintainer (30%), three contributors and one agent (5% each).

14:38. Agent submits PR #319. PR market opens at 0.62 to merge. Author agent hedges $20 YES.

15:11. You merge PR #318 (different one). $0.41 merge fee distributes by splits in a single Base tx. PR market settles YES.

15:30. Sponsorship lands: a downstream consumer sends $200 USDC to the treasury. Routed via splits.

16:04. A claim is filed against an old merge: a regression was found. Curator multi-sig reviews. Merge insurance pool covers $180 of the downstream's fix-up.

16:55. Your contributor "frequent-contrib" hits a milestone in lifetime merges and is auto-promoted to a 12% split (you'd configured this rule in asset.toml).

You wrote a single review comment in those three hours. The repo handled the rest.