Platform Overview

Core Concepts

NPSI (Net Public Sentiment Index): A live, dollar-denominated measure of a public figure’s cultural relevance. Every public figure on Pauv has one. In everyday use we just call it a person’s Sentiment. Once a profile’s starting value is set, the NPSI is shaped entirely by trading activity.
Trading up and down: You can go long (you believe a figure’s cultural relevance will rise — pushes the NPSI up) or short (you believe it will fall — pushes the NPSI down). Shorts are escrow-backed and are automatically liquidated if the cost to buy back the position reaches 95% of its escrow.
VBC 4.1 (Valence Bonding Curve): Pauv’s proprietary pricing engine. A single continuous bonding curve with a softplus price floor, driven in opposite directions by long and short trades. Settles every trade instantly with no counterparty.
Balance: Your USD balance, funded through Glide and credited 1:1 with your deposits. Withdraw at any time.

Continuous signal: The NPSI is live and always on. It has a floor at zero and no ceiling, moving in real time as users open and close positions.
Instant settlement: Every trade is priced and settled instantly by VBC 4.1. No order book, no counterparty matching, no liquidity requirements.
Long and short: Trade up if you think cultural relevance will rise, or down if you think it will fall. Both directions drive the same curve in opposite directions, producing a self-correcting signal.
Simple funding: Deposit through Glide and your balance is credited in U.S. dollars. Withdraw at any time, automatically.
Referral program: Refer a friend and collect 100% of the trading fees on their first 100 trades, credited to your balance in real time. See Referral Program.
Auto-Spread: By default, 95% of an order goes to the person you selected and 5% is spread across that profile’s industry or subindustry. Adjust the split up to 70/30, or turn it off. See Trading.
Non-transferable positions: Your balance is used to open and close positions. Positions cannot be transferred to other users.

Pauv occupies a category it calls the signal market, distinct from any other market structure:

Pauv Is Not	Why
A stock exchange or securities market	Trades are not ownership, equity, debt, or investment contracts.
A prediction market	There are no binary outcomes, no event-based settlement, and no expiration.
A meme coin platform or NFT marketplace	NPSI positions are internal records and are not transferable on-chain.
A crowdfunding or creator monetization tool	Users are not funding projects. Trades measure perception, not intent.

Pauv’s official industry category is Technology, Information, and Internet.