How OC Cosign works

The whole product is one loop: post → cosign → match → message → update. Nothing here requires a node, a contract, or a lawyer.

1. Post a project

A founder posts what they’re building and — the part that matters — what they need: a co-founder, capital, or both. A project carries a title, a one-line pitch, the team, traction so far, the ask, optional use-of-funds and a target amount, your terms in plain English, and a Lightning address where any sats settle. Every project is content-addressed (a SHA-256 over its canonical fields), so editing a field produces a new id.

2. People cosign it

Anyone signed in can get behind a project three ways:

• join — "I want to build this with you." A request to be a co-founder.
• back — "I want to put capital or weight behind this." A patron pledge; any sats settle peer-to-peer to the founder’s Lightning address.
• zap — a small one-way gesture of conviction.

join and back are requests — they stay private to the founder until accepted. zap is a public, one-way thank-you.

3. You match (double opt-in)

When a founder accepts a join or a back, the cosign becomes mutual and a private 1:1 thread opens between the two people. Neither side can be messaged without both opting in — a founder can’t force a DM, and a backer’s pending interest is never shown publicly until it’s mutual.

4. You talk, then build

Inside a matched thread you message back and forth — front-load the real questions. Founders post updates to a project’s feed (a milestone, a win, what they need next), and everyone behind the project gets notified.

5. Notifications keep the loop alive

A bell in the header carries a live unread count. You’re notified when:

• someone cosigns your project,
• a cosign you sent is accepted (you matched),
• you get a message, or
• a project you’re behind posts an update.

Notifications are in-app only — OC Cosign is no-KYC and never holds an email to spam.

Honest sats: pledged vs settled

When you back with an amount, you pay the founder’s Lightning address directly — OC records the gesture for display and never takes custody of a sat. A backing is a pledge until the founder confirms they received it, at which point it becomes settled. Only settled sats move a project’s goal bar and count toward recognition. The page is honest about the difference — a faint “pledged” trail behind the settled fill — so a number is never inflated by unconfirmed intent. (A cryptographic auto-confirm via LUD-21 is the planned hardening; today receipt is the founder’s named attestation.)

Founders confirm receipts from a “backing to confirm” inbox on their dashboard; backers see each of their backings as settled or awaiting confirmation under “your backings.” See Trust & safety.

Run a time-bound campaign

A founder can open a funding window with a goal and a deadline — and the deadline is a Bitcoin block height, the one clock no founder or platform can fast-forward. The page shows momentum in plain language (“almost there — 560,000 sats to go”, “closing soon”, “goal met · settled”) and an “ends at block N · ~Nd left” line. There is no escrow and no refund leg: closing a window changes nothing about settlement — keep-what-you-raise is the only model, because OC holds nothing.

Reward tiers & stretch goals

• Reward tiers (up to five) let backers back at a level for an off-platform, founder-fulfilled reward — early access, a call, your name in the README. A banned-terms gate keeps tiers on patronage framing: they can never promise equity, a revenue share, or a return.
• Stretch goals are a settled-sats ladder above the base goal — founder commitments (“open-source the firmware”) that unlock as backing climbs. When settled crosses a threshold, a block-stamped milestone posts to the updates feed and notifies everyone behind the project.

Recognition: who’s behind it

Backers earn recognition from settled sats only — never pledged:

• a backer ordinal (“§07” — the order people got behind a project), and
• a conviction tier — supporter / patron / champion — by lifetime settled backing.

It is web-of-trust recognition, not a cap table; it shows on the cosigner list and on profiles next to the verified-Bitcoiner badge.

Back a builder monthly

Back monthly sets a standing intent to send a builder sats each period. It is a reminder, never an auto-pull — OC stores no card and no credential, holds no balance, and never charges you. When a backing comes due you get a nudge to send it from your own wallet; pause, resume, or cancel any time from your dashboard.

Sign your campaign (optional)

A founder can BIP-322-sign their campaign’s content hash, so anyone can verify — offline, against the chain — that they authored the exact bytes of the page. A “founder signed” chip surfaces it. Editing the project clears the signature (the content it attests changed), so the badge always means this campaign. The only trust escalation cosign asks for is a signature — never a document.

Find projects

The directory is built to surface momentum: search and filter, plus curated rails — trending (7-day settled velocity), almost there, closing soon, just launched — and a calm activity pulse of recent settled backings, matches, and launches. Ranking is driven by settled sats moving, not lifetime totals.