A marketplace with a Jubilee
A plain-English guide

The Jubilee,
explained.

Masiv runs an old idea on a new marketplace: every product carries a thank-you back to the buyer, the seller takes a small service fee instead of a vig, and the ledger resets on a regular rhythm so no one accumulates forever. Below: who pays what, when the gifts return, and where the model comes from.

In one sentence

A market where buying is also receiving.

On a normal marketplace, the platform takes a cut, the merchant keeps the rest, and the buyer walks away with whatever they paid for. On Masiv, the maker attaches a gift to every product — a discount, a sample, a credit, a thank-you of any kind. When you buy, the gift is delivered back to you as ledgered value. Then on a cosmic rhythm — every ~3 days, every ~10 days, every new moon — the marketplace shares its own surplus with the makers and patrons who showed up.

That's it. The rest of this page just shows the numbers.

Who's at the table

Three roles, plainly named.

Every sale on Masiv touches three parties. Their cuts are fixed and visible.

The Maker

Who plants.

A candlemaker, a writer, a developer, a baker. Lists a product at any price and attaches a gift of any size. Keeps the price of every sale, minus the steward's small service fee.

Receives: price − 3% per sale
The Patron

Who receives.

The buyer. Pays the listed price and gets the product — and the maker's gift returned to them as ledgered value. Also shares in the Patron's Rebate and the Jubilee distribution on schedule.

Receives: gift back + share of every rebate
The Steward

Who keeps the rhythm.

Masiv itself. Operates the settlement, runs the clock, holds the commons. The steward takes a 3% service fee — not a 30% take, not a 2.9%+30¢ stack — and gives 17% of it back to makers at every Maker's Feast.

Keeps: 3% service fee (caps at 9%)
Where your dollar goes

One twenty-dollar sale, followed end to end.

Let's say a maker lists a $20 product with a $2 gift attached. A patron buys it. Here is every dollar.

A $20 sale, with a $2 gift
Standard rates: 3% steward fee, 10% reward to the maker on gift value.
What happensAmountWho’s affected
Patron pays the listed price. −$20.00 The patron is charged through Square — same as any normal store.
Steward takes a 3% service fee. −$0.60 Goes to Masiv to operate the network. Not interchange. Not interest.
Maker receives the rest of the sale. +$19.40 Settles to the maker's Square account. The price was theirs to set.
Patron receives the gift back, ledgered. +$2.00 Returns to the patron immediately as gift value — visible in their balance.
Maker accrues a reward for the cycle. +$0.20 10% of the gift value (default) — distributed at the next Patron's Rebate.
Patron net experience: paid $20, received the product and $2 in gift value. Maker net: $19.40 now + share of every Feast and Rebate to come.

That's a single sale. The interesting part begins when many sales stack up — because then the timed redistributions kick in, and a slice of the marketplace's accumulated surplus flows back to whoever showed up.

When value is returned

Three resets, on a visible clock.

The marketplace runs on the moon, not on the cash register. Each lunar month is divided into 153 watches of about 4.6 hours each — close to the period of a Roman watch (“the fourth watch of the night,” Matthew 14:25). Three thresholds tick through every lunation. You can watch the countdown on the homepage; there are no hidden bonuses or surprise resets.

17 w

A Maker’s Feast.

Every 17 watches (~3.3 days), the steward pulls 17% of its accumulated service fees and splits them equally across the makers active in that window. Quiet stretch = small feast. Busy stretch = bigger feast.

→ 17% of steward fees · to recently active makers
51 w

A Patron’s Rebate.

Every 51 watches (~9.8 days, three Feasts deep), 51% of the window’s accumulated maker-rewards distribute back to every patron who bought during that span. Loyalty without a points program.

→ 51% of window rewards · to active patrons
153 w

The Jubilee.

Every 153 watches — exactly one lunar month, falling on the new moon — the full reset arrives. The commons pool (fed by a 10% tithe on every settled sale) distributes equally across every account; the underlying ledger advances one cycle; the next harvest begins.

→ commons distribute · ledger advances · count restarts

The numerology stacks the same way it always did: 3 × 17 = 51, 3 × 51 = 153. The cycle is one nested rhythm — small celebrations inside larger ones, all the way up to the new moon. What changed is the unit: those numbers count watches of the moon, not sales of the day. The marketplace can have a slow week and the Jubilee still arrives on time; a busy week just means a bigger pool when it does.

Where the model comes from

The Bible behind it.

Masiv is named for the principle of masiv — a flipped VISA — and is shaped by the economic instructions in Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and the parables of Jesus. You don’t have to be religious to use it. You just have to be willing to live inside a market that resets.

“Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you.”
Leviticus 25:10

The original reset. Every fifty years, debts forgiven, land returned, the economy unwound. Masiv keeps the spirit on the moon’s clock — the marketplace jubilee arrives every new moon.

“At the end of every seven years thou shalt make a release.”
Deuteronomy 15:1

The sabbath-year release of debts. The Masiv counterpart is the Patron’s Rebate — the cycle’s accumulated surplus returns to the people who participated, not to a bank.

“Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother.”
Deuteronomy 23:19 · Leviticus 25:36

No interest. No compounding. The only extraction allowed on Masiv is the steward’s 3% service fee, hard-capped in code at 9%. The system literally refuses to start if anyone tries to raise it higher.

“The unprofitable servant… hid his lord’s money. Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents.”
Matthew 25:25–28

The parable of the talents. Idle value, left buried too long, eventually flows toward what’s in motion. On Masiv this is the buried-talent decay: dormant accounts gradually share their surplus with active ones.

“Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land full of great fishes, an hundred and fifty and three: and for all there were so many, yet was not the net broken.”
John 21:11

The famous 153. A net cast on the right side of the boat catches an abundance without tearing. Masiv borrows the number for its Jubilee threshold: every 153 sales, the catch is brought in and shared.

“Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.”
Ecclesiastes 11:1

The maker’s posture. You attach a gift to a product not because you owe anyone a discount, but because the gift seeds the field. The market returns the favor on its own clock.

“The lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him the debt.”
Matthew 18:27

The release. Negative balances are forgiven on the sabbath cycle — they don’t accumulate, they don’t follow you across the Jubilee, and they don’t turn into debt collection.

Common questions

Things people actually ask.

So what exactly does Masiv take?

3% of every settled sale, as a flat service fee. That’s the steward’s whole cut. No interchange markup, no monthly subscription, no listing fee, no transaction minimum.

Where does the gift come from? Is the maker just discounting?

The gift is set by the maker, in dollars, on each product. It can be a discount, a credit toward a future purchase, a sample, a thank-you in kind — anything with value the maker is willing to attach. The platform doesn’t fund the gift; the maker does, on purpose, as a way of seeding their corner of the field.

How does a patron actually receive the gift?

Immediately, as ledgered value on their patron account. Every 51 lunar watches (~9.8 days), the Patron’s Rebate redistributes 51% of the window’s accumulated maker-rewards across every patron who participated in that span. At every new moon, the Jubilee distribution hands out the commons pool equally to every account.

When does the gift turn into real money I can use?

Today, the ledger is the source of truth: it records the gift the moment the sale settles, and you can see it on your patron page. Sweeping ledgered value out to a real Square payout (or gift card, or refund) is on the roadmap — the rails for it exist, but the automatic cash-out is not yet wired. We don’t promise what we haven’t built.

What stops a maker from gaming this — fake sales, sock-puppet patrons?

Three things: every clearing goes through Square (real cards, real funds, real fees), so wash-trading costs the maker actual money on every loop; the steward’s fee is taken before any redistribution; and the Jubilee resets wipe accumulated balances, so there is no way to slowly mint position over time. If the math doesn’t pay back better than the cost, the loop loses money.

Why 17 and 51 and 153? Why not 10 / 50 / 100?

Because the numbers come from the text, not from a designer. 17 is the biblical “number of overcoming” (Joseph’s age when sold, the 17th day of the second month when the flood began, etc.); 51 = 3 × 17; 153 is the count of fish in John’s post-resurrection catch (John 21:11). The three-step nesting falls out naturally. Here those numbers count watches of the moon — one synodic month divides exactly into 153 watches of about 4.6 hours each, so the Jubilee always lands on the new moon and the Feast and Rebate fall at predictable points inside the lunation.

What happens to slow-moving products? Will a maker lose their seeded gift?

No, never. A product that goes unsold across three full lunar cycles (~89 days) is marked dormant — but that’s a discovery signal, not a tax. The maker’s seeded gift_value stays attached to the product. The listing is demoted in search and recommendations until the maker tends the field: any edit, refresh, or click of “wake this up” resets the dormancy clock and brings the product back into the rotation, free. The maker plants once and keeps tending; the field is theirs.

If sales don’t trigger the cycle anymore, what does?

The moon. The synodic month (~29.53 days, new moon to new moon) is divided into 153 watches. Every watch ticks on a fixed UTC clock. The events fire on a predictable schedule regardless of marketplace volume — a quiet month still gets a Jubilee, it’s just a smaller one. Sales no longer gate the cycle; they only flavor what gets distributed when it fires.

Do I have to believe any of this to use it?

No. You can use Masiv as a 3%-fee marketplace with a built-in loyalty program and a publicly visible rebate clock, and ignore the rest. The biblical scaffolding is the reason the rules are what they are — it’s not a requirement to participate.

Now you’ve read the manual.

The market is waiting. Pick something off the shelf, or plant something on it.