A grove is a small group with a real goal.
Storage, training, inference, or apps. A grove is your cluster in the app. Members pool their machines, and each epoch the grove is scored on the verified work it did. The whole roster shares the reward. Organizations are groves too: a team’s machines are its trees, same ladder, same score. Builders form apps groves: the apps they ship run on members’ nodes, and that work scores like any other.
How the score works.
Score = tier × members^0.5 × stake^0.4 × work^1.0
Doubling your real work roughly doubles your score. Doubling your members multiplies it by about 1.4. Doubling your stake multiplies it by about 1.3. Effort beats size, and effort beats capital. Work done for yourself counts as zero.
How a grove's reward splits.
30% is shared equally among every active, staked, verified member, so someone who joined yesterday and did real work gets a fair share. 70% follows each member’s share of the work. Idle seats get nothing and dilute nothing.
Two ladders.
Your assurance: A0 device (free identity, weight 0.02) → A1 member (the 32,000 SALT membership bond, 1.0) → A2 attested (hardware attestation, 1.5) → A3 verified (proof of personhood, a real GPU, or KYC, 2.5). The next rung always shows its literal requirement.
Your grove’s tier: Seed 1.0× → Circle 1.3× (25 members, per-member work ≥ 3, 25× the bond staked) → Guild 1.7× (250 / 6 / 250×) → Flagship 2.2× (2,000 / 10 / 2,000×). All three gates at once. You cannot climb with dead weight.
Inviting people.
When someone you invited stakes and does their first verified work, you both receive a one-time welcome grant of 500 SALT. Signup alone pays nothing. Only the direct pair is credited; there is no tree. An inviter is paid for at most 10 activated invitees per epoch. A share link carries a name and a grove, nothing else. You can also gift a membership by staking someone’s seat.
Why it can't be farmed.
Simulation, not assertion.
Sixty parameter combinations were swept; fifty-four pass every fairness test with headroom. A small high-work grove out-earns a large idle one by about 3.3× per member. An honest worker out-earns a 50× whale by about 160×. The harness and its invariants are in the open-source repository.
Rewards settle in SALT. SALT has no cash value until mainnet, Q2 2027.
What is a grove?
A grove is a small group with a real goal that pools its machines for storage, training, inference, or apps. Each epoch the grove is scored on the verified work it did, and the whole roster shares the reward.
How is a grove scored?
Score = tier x members^0.5 x stake^0.4 x work^1.0, so work is linear and dominant while headcount and capital have diminishing returns. Doubling your real work roughly doubles your score, and work done only for yourself counts as zero.
Can a grove be farmed?
No. Free accounts earn nothing and add no size, funded idle seats each cost 32,000 SALT and do no work, whale stake enters concavely, and self-dealt volume nets to zero.
Do I get paid for inviting people?
Only when someone you invited stakes and does their first verified work; then you both receive a one-time welcome grant of 500 SALT. Signup alone pays nothing, there is no tree, and an inviter is paid for at most 10 activated invitees per epoch.
Does SALT have cash value?
Not yet. SALT is the network's unit of stake and settlement, and it has no cash value until mainnet, which is targeted for Q2 2027.
Updated 2 September 2026