Accounts & Éclat

The Éclat System

A Saltbox account gives the archive memory. It records what you backed, what you challenged, what your classified submissions earned, and how much weight your participation has accumulated over time. Éclat is the unit that makes that record visible.

What Éclat Is

Éclat is the archive's internal currency. It is the unit used to claim stipends, open positions on classified entries, challenge weak files, and reward creators whose submissions gain traction after classification. In practice, it is the public value layer of Saltbox. Pastore has its own extraction logic. The community has É.

That is why a classified file can carry two kinds of weight at the same time. Pastore assigns the official yield when the entry is processed. The community builds its own layer through investment, contest pressure, and creator-side payouts. Éclat is what keeps that second layer measurable.

What Accounts Unlock

A Saltbox account gives you a public username, a private recovery email, and a live balance that moves with your activity. Once you are signed in, you can claim daily stipends, invest in classified entries, contest files you do not trust, track your open positions, and follow your transaction history through the dashboard.

If one of your submissions is classified and tied to your account, that same record becomes the place where creator royalties and extraction bonuses land. The account is less like a social login and more like a ledger identity inside the archive.

How É Moves

How value enters an account

Opening Balance

Every new public account begins with a randomized starting balance between 100 É and 250 É. That opening allocation gives new users enough weight to participate immediately and makes each account feel issued rather than perfectly standardized.

Daily Stipend

Once every 24 hours, an account can claim a randomized stipend between 25 É and 50 É. It is the slow, reliable baseline of the system and gives regular visitors a steady way to remain active in the archive.

Investment Returns

When you invest in a classified file and that file continues to grow, the system pays returns in stages. Early positions carry more leverage because growth has more room to compound before the entry matures.

Discovery Bonus

If you invested while a file was still early and that entry later breaks into major growth, the archive can issue a one-time discovery bonus. It rewards recognition before consensus has fully formed around the entry.

Creator Royalty

If your classified entry attracts investment, a creator royalty is credited to your account automatically. That payout gives the original poster a direct stake in the public life of the file after classification.

Extraction Bonus

When a file grows large enough to trigger Pastore Override, the creator receives a final extraction bonus from the remaining pool. It marks the moment the entry passes into a more controlled archive state.

Taking A Position

Invest and Contest

Invest

Investing means allocating some of your É to a classified entry because you believe the file will keep growing. The ledger then tracks your position against the entry's community yield and adjusts the projected return as the file develops.

Each account gets one investment position per entry, although that position can be added to over time. The minimum investment is 10 É, and the system stays in whole numbers throughout.

Contest

Contesting means applying fixed pressure to a file because you think its public confidence should fall. Each contest reduces the community side and moves the entry closer to Contested, Under Review, Flagged, and eventually Extracted if enough pressure accumulates.

Contesting is a commitment. It is meant for files you believe deserve resistance, not just entries you dislike.

Position Rules

You cannot invest and contest the same file. A Saltbox account picks a side. One account can hold one investment position per entry and one contest action per entry, which keeps the system legible and stops a single record from arguing with itself inside the same ledger line.

If you push an investment above 500 É, the interface warns you before confirming it. That warning exists to make large moves feel intentional.

Reading The File

What the yield ledger shows

Ledger Field Meaning
Total Yield The combined value visible on the entry. This reflects Pastore's assigned yield plus the community side that has formed around the file.
Pastore Extraction The official yield assigned when the file was classified. This value comes from the response document and represents Pastore's own valuation.
Investment Pool The active public pool still tied to open positions. This is the part investors are competing around in real time.
Creator Earnings The amount already routed to the original poster through creator royalties and, when applicable, extraction bonuses.
Status The live public state of the file's market layer. Stable, Contested, Under Review, Flagged, and Extracted describe how much pressure the entry is carrying.
Top Investor The strongest positive public position currently associated with that file. It gives readers a quick sense of who recognized the file early or moved hardest.
Threshold Event

Pastore Override

Pastore Override is the point where a file has become too large, too pressured, or too visible to remain in ordinary public circulation. On the site, it triggers automatically if an entry reaches 50,000 É in community yield or if contest pressure climbs to 15 total contests. Once that threshold is crossed, the file is extracted from public investment access.

The entry itself stays readable. What changes is its economic state. Active investment positions freeze, the pool locks in place, and the Pastore panel marks the event as a completed extraction. For submitters, that moment can also trigger a final creator-side payout.

Private Reputation

Signal Strength

Signal Strength is the reputation score attached to your account. It grows when your activity produces good outcomes, especially through successful returns, discovery bonuses, and other gains that show strong judgment. It falls when your positions collapse and your read on the archive proves weak.

For now, Signal Strength is primarily a personal metric. It is stored on the account and visible to the account holder, but it has not yet been pushed into a public record layer. Think of it as the archive's memory of how well you have been reading the signal.

Keep The Terms Straight

Éclat and Seuil Rangs are separate systems

Term What It Measures
Éclat The archive's public currency. It tracks stipends, investment, contest pressure, creator earnings, and community-side value.
Seuil Rang Pastore's internal ranking for research utility. It appears in response documents and measures how useful a file is to Pastore's work.
U / S Disposition statuses tied to response handling. They sit outside the Rang scale and describe the administrative state of the file.

If you want to enter the system directly, the account page handles signup and sign-in. If you want Pastore's side of the terminology, the Seuil Rangs page covers the response hierarchy in full.