How Kourt works

Kourt is a place to put money behind whether a factual claim is true — without being able to lose the money.

It works in two steps. GNOT buys a court's coin, one way; that coin is what you stake on the court's claims.

You cannot lose your stake

Stake the court's coin on YES or NO and the stake stays yours. It is locked where it is, not handed to anybody: when the claim is answered you withdraw exactly what you put in — 1×, always, whichever side you took and whichever side turned out to be right. No one's stake pays anyone else's winnings.

Then what is at stake? Being right pays you more of the court's coin, out of the reserve it set aside for exactly that — and being wrong pays you none. Nothing of yours is taken either way.

Being right also earns standing, which is a separate thing from a balance: a score you cannot buy, and what actually gives you a voice here.

A court is a subject

A court covers one subject — an epidemic, an election, a company. Each court has its own coin, and coins never cross between courts. Being right about virology earns you nothing in a court about monetary policy. That is the point: standing is earned subject by subject, by the people who follow that subject.

A claim is a statement that can be settled

A claim is a sentence that is either true or false, written so it can actually be answered. You stake YES or NO, and you can move your stake freely until an answer posts.

A claim's page always says where it stands. The wordings you will see:

• settled YES or settled NO — answered, and the page says which way; every stake withdraws 1×
• disputed — a sealed vote is deciding; principal is never withheld
• closed — never answered; every stake exited 1×, the deposit refunded
• closed without a decision — three dispute rounds failed quorum; everyone withdraws 1×, deposit and fee refunded

Comments are where the argument is

Every claim has a comment board. A YES/NO number cannot carry a reason, a source, or an objection; the board is where those go.

Writing takes standing — the score you earned by being right in this court, not the coin you hold. If you have none yet, you can buy a one-off entry pass by burning a little of the court's coin, which is the single place money substitutes for it. Standing sets how many comments a day you get, not how loudly they land: nothing is hidden for being new, and nothing is ranked by wealth.

If you have money on the claim you are commenting on, your comment says so — which side, and how much. The board deliberately does not order by it. You are told, and you decide what it is worth.

Two things you can actually lose

Everything above is about a stake that always comes back. There are exactly two actions here that risk money, and both are challenges — you are putting up a bond to say the court got something wrong.

• Challenging an answer. If you think a claim was answered the wrong way, you can dispute it by posting a bond. Win and the answerer's bond is burned and you are compensated; lose and yours is burned instead. Nothing passes between you — a forfeit is destroyed, a compensation is newly issued.
• Challenging a rating. Every answered claim gets rated low, mid or high, and that rating decides what it pays. Anyone may challenge the rating once, also by posting a bond, which calls a vote on it.

Your stake is never at risk in either. A bond is separate money you choose to put up; the coin you staked on the claim still comes back 1×, whatever the challenge decides.

What things cost

• Staking costs only the stake, which you get back.
• Opening a claim takes a deposit, refunded when the claim is answered or closed.
• Receiving a court's coin takes GNOT on a rising curve. A share of it (10.00% today, set by the platform's governing court within fixed bounds) is burned for good; the rest is held by the court and paid back pro-rata to anyone who returns coin — less than they put in, right after they put it in, and below the next coin's price unless coin has been destroyed by bonds since the last offering. A one-way court burns all of it. The price only rises as more is minted.

Who is in charge

Each court elects its own moderators. They answer claims, organise them into folders, and can hide comments. What they do to a claim or a comment is written to that court's moderation log, which anyone can read without asking. The serious powers need several moderators to agree — one moderator acting alone cannot use them.

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