Request Bounty Terms

Last Updated: July 9th, 2026

Eligibility

To earn Requests for Reporting Bounties ("Bounties"), users with active publications will need to attach published Aemula posts to specific Requests for Reporting ("Requests"), either by publishing a new post directly to a Request or attaching an existing post to a Request.

To be eligible to earn Bounties from posts attached to Requests:

You must be based in the U.S.
You must be 18 years or older

Total Bounty Pool

Currently, Bounties are funded from a collective, monthly bounty pool set by Aemula (the "Total Bounty Pool"), which is allocated among each Request based on the below methodology.

For each month that Aemula is funding the Total Bounty Pool, a minimum of $500 will be added to the Total Bounty Pool. Aemula, in its sole discretion, with accepted input from the community, will be able to increase the size of the current Total Bounty Pool based on the volume of submitted and fulfilled Requests. Increases to the size of the current Total Bounty Pool will be considered to have been active for the entirety of the month, regardless of when the increase was implemented.

In the future, the intent is for the Total Bounty Pool and individual Request Bounties will be funded with independent contributions in order to decentralize the funding of Bounties.

Request Bounties

Each Request will be allocated a share of the Total Bounty Pool, creating a Request Bounty for that specific request. Publishers that fulfill the Request will be able to earn from that Request Bounty. At the end of each month, the accrued Request Bounty for each Request will be paid out to the publishers that attached posts to fulfill that Request.

Requests have a default active lifespan of 30 days. A Request starts its active lifespan on the day it is submitted, and it will be considered to be active for the entirety of the day it was submitted (with days determined as of 4am UTC). Requests can be active across multiple months, with Bounty payouts occurring at the end of each month in which the Request was active, taking into consideration the relative number of days the Request was active in each month.

A Request Bounty's share of the current month's Total Bounty Pool is determined by its Request Score, as calculated using a combination of total upvotes received since creation and the number of days the Request was active during the current month.

\text{Request Score} = \sqrt{\text{upvotes}} \times \text{active days}

upvotes: Signal community interest in the coverage of a topic, increasing the associated Request Bounty
active days: Ensure the Request Bounty paid in a given month aligns with the amount of time the Request was active, giving journalists time to fulfill Requests submitted near the end of a month

Note: The square root of upvotes is used to create diminishing returns for each additional upvote. This smoothes out variation in the event of low upvote counts during a month and diversifies incentives more evenly across requests.

If a Request has no upvotes, its Request Score is automatically set to 0.

For a given month, the Request Scores for each Request active during the month will be totalled to calculate the Total Request Scores. A Request's share of the month's Total Bounty Pool is then determined by its percentage share of Total Request Scores for the month.

The Request Bounty for a given month is the product of the Total Bounty Pool value and the Request's percentage share of Total Request Scores.

\text{Request Bounty} = \text{Total Bounty Pool} \times \frac{\text{Request Score}}{\text{Total Request Scores}}

Earning Bounties

When you attach a post to a Request, your post becomes eligible to earn from the Request Bounty as long as you meet the above eligibility requirements. The Request Bounty for a given month is split among all posts attached to the Request based on effective interactions received the month.

For all posts attached to a Request, the total effective interactions on the month are calculated. Your share of the Request Bounty for the month is then calculated as your post's percentage share of total effective interactions.

\text{Post Bounty Earnings} = \text{Request Bounty} \times \frac{\text{Post Effective Interactions}}{\text{Total Effective Interactions}}

Earnings from Request Bounties are in addition to the earnings your post receives from Author Payouts, which are also based on effective interactions.

Additional Terms

Unfulfilled Requests

Requests that receive upvotes and are active during given month will have an associated Request Bounty. If a Request with a Request Bounty does not have any attached posts at the end of a given month, the Request Bounty will not be paid out and will carry over to the following month's Total Bounty Pool.

Detaching Posts from Requests

You can detach your posts from Requests by clicking the Detach button on the Request's page. Only posts that are attached to a Request at the end of the month will eligible to earn a share of the Request Bounty.

Reported Requests

Any Request that is taken down for reports of containing harmful or spam content will considered to be void. The Request will forfeit its share of the current Total Bounty Pool, and all attached posts will not receive any earnings from the reported request.

Reporting requests is a community-moderated process at the discretion of the Aemula community.

Determining Eligibility

Aemula does not actively collect or store the information required to determine if a user meets the Request Bounty eligibility requirements. Determining eligibility is up to the user.

If you do not meet the eligibility requirements, do not attach posts to fulfill Requests. If Aemula suspects a publication that has earned Request Bounties does not meet these eligibility requirements, we will attempt to make contact with the publication owner to confirm prior to Bounty payouts. If unable to make contact, Aemula has the right to withhold or deny payment of Request Bounties until confirmation is completed.

In the event a Request Bounty is paid out to an ineligible recipient, the recipient must return the Request Bounty to be redeposited into the current Total Bounty Pool.

Updates to Terms

The Requests for Reporting feature is currently under beta testing and is subject to change in order to correct bugs and/or flawed mechanics, as well as to incorporate community feedback to improve the process. During testing, Aemula holds all governance voting rights to implement changes. Aemula will take measures to ensure any updates to Request Bounty Terms during a given month do not negatively impact the ability for the publisher community, as a whole, to earn Request Bounties.

The Request Bounty Terms are intended to provide transparency into Request Bounty process and give a baseline understanding of expected potential earnings associated with fulfilling Requests. However, in the event of widespread misuse of the feature, or bugs uncovered during testing, Aemula may be required to make interventions during the course of a month that impact Request Bounties for that month. Aemula will make best efforts to ensure this page is updated as quickly as possible to reflect any changes to Request Bounty Terms.

Disqualification

Aemula reserves the right to disqualify fraudulent or spam submissions or articles that have received fraudulent or spam support.

If you have any questions or run into any issues, please reach out to support@aemula.com.