OpenTokenMarket for sponsors

A sponsor is a person or company that funds AI inference credits on OpenTokenMarket and allocates them to the projects they want to support. You add budget once; builders draw it down through a shared gateway while you keep control of where it goes and see what it produced.

What you get

• Distribution to builders. Every project you back links to your Sponsor Profile, and builders requesting tokens drive traffic to it — visibility for your product, brand, or API in front of an audience that ships.
• A public leaderboard spot. Sponsors ranks contributors; funding shows up as reputation, not just spend.
• Outcome visibility. Each project page shows budget spent against milestones shipped, so you can point to concrete results.
• Hands-off allocation. The AI auto-evaluator can allocate to projects that match rules you set, or you can approve every request by hand.
• Spend control. Per-project caps, a fixed one-week expiry on unclaimed allocations, and a full ledger keep budget flowing to active work instead of sitting idle.
• One balance, many projects. A single top-up (or a subscription) funds as many projects as you choose.

How it works for you

1. Add credits — a one-off top-up or a subscription at /dashboard/sponsorship/topup. Every dollar becomes spendable AI budget.
2. Set your rules — approve token requests manually, or configure the auto-evaluator with the criteria and per-project caps you want.
3. Fund a project — two ways in:
   • You find them. Browse Explore, pick a project, and add funds to it directly.
   • They come to you. Builders send token requests to your profile; approve them by hand or let the auto-evaluator decide against your rules.
4. The builder claims it — the allocation lands on their project. They have one week to claim it; anything unclaimed after 7 days returns to your balance.
5. Watch it ship — track spend versus milestones on each project page and on your dashboard.

Why it's worth it

• Marketing budget that builds something. Instead of an ad impression, you get a working project running on your models with your name on it.
• Reach the right people. Maintainers of real, active projects — the developers who influence which tools and APIs teams adopt.
• Goodwill that compounds. Backing open work publicly, on a leaderboard, is a durable signal to the developer community.
• Measurable. You can always answer "what did this budget produce?" with a list of shipped milestones.

Controlling spend

• Per-project caps stop any single project from draining a whole allocation.
• One-week expiry. Any allocation a project hasn't claimed within 7 days returns to your balance automatically — no idle budget.
• Manual or automatic approval — you decide how much review each request gets.
• Full ledger. Every top-up, allocation, and spend event is recorded and visible.

Common questions

What do sponsors get in return?

Brand exposure to high-value builders, traffic to your sponsor profile, a public leaderboard position, and a clear record of budget-to-milestone outcomes.

Do I choose which projects get funded?

Yes. You can seek projects out on Explore and add funds to them directly, or respond to token requests builders send to your profile — approving by hand or letting the AI auto-evaluator decide. Either way it stays within the per-project caps you define.

How do I stop a project from spending my whole budget?

Set a per-project cap when you allocate. The gateway enforces it; the project stops at 429 when its share is spent, not your entire balance.

Can I fund more than one project with a single top-up?

Yes. Your balance is shared across every allocation you make.

What happens to budget a project never claims?

Unclaimed allocations expire one week (7 days) after you make them, and the budget returns to your balance for reallocation.

Next step

Become a sponsor — add credits, set your rules, and start backing the builders you believe in.