How it works

I am homan, and I have shares.

Owning equity in me is a proportional claim to my profits from selling equity in companies, other people, and similar instruments.

This is strictly an economic claim; it doesn't come with ownership / control / influence over me in any way.

Buying and trading shares of me is not open to everyone.

My "village" is a curated set of people (including me) who can trade shares of me freely amongst themselves. Each villager has a cap – the max percentage of shares they can hold. Villagers start with a 0.1% cap.

I have full control over liquidity. I may pause trading at times, but since I view trading as valuable feedback from reality, I intend to enable liquidity as much as possible.

"It takes a village to raise a child person".

Since my shares represent the value I will create over my life, everyone in my village is incentivized to help me create value.

Our incentives are aligned.

There is no obligation for villagers to help in a specific way. Some villagers may actively help me execute by implementing some functionality. Others may chime in with valuable feedback. Some may show up once a year to offer sage advice. And a few may never say anything at all, but their mere presence in the village signals their belief in me, which unlocks doors.

I view trading as invaluable feedback. How many shares a villager buys or sells, when, and at which price, signals feedback on my judgement that I simply don't have access to right now. Such feedback from the right village will enable me to create more value.

This is why I intend to enable liquidity early, and grow the village, to enable villagers to express their feedback through trading.

This is an agreement between me and my shareholders, and the information and functionality required to honor that agreement.

I'm calling this instrument my "personal token".

My personal token – its state, mechanics, agreement – exists on a blockchain (Base), making it visible and verifiable.

On the blockchain, every shareholder is represented by a unique shareholder ID (a number - #1, #2, #3, etc.). When a shareholder joins, I generate a new ID for them, and associate their onchain address (like: alice.base.eth) with that ID. Every action a shareholder takes with my personal token onchain is tied to their shareholder ID.

Other metadata about a shareholder (display name, legal name, etc.) is stored in a database offchain. Sensitive information such as legal name will remain private (I need it since we are entering into an agreement). Other metadata will be used to render shareholders on this site.

Since my token is an agreement with you, if you lose access to your onchain address, I can map your shareholder ID to a new onchain address.

Think of this website (homantoken.com) as a "client" for my onchain personal token. This is where you will authenticate yourself with your onchain wallet (the app that controls your onchain address), buy and trade shares of my token, see its state, etc. You could do all of these actions through a different client if you wanted.

Key mechanics (defined as onchain functions):

• Floor – the amount excluded from the scope of my token. I'm planning to set this to $10M, in a way that accounts for inflation. If you don't think I can create a lot more than $10M of value over my life, participating doesn't make sense.
• Buybacks – I can buy back shares from shareholders at any time, but the minimum buyback price is determined by an onchain function, not by me in the moment.
• Royalties – I get a small royalty in shares on the profit a shareholder makes when they sell.
• Voting – shareholders vote on whether capital gains are distributed to shareholders or reinvested back into me to fuel more growth. Votes are weighted by shares held. I don't vote. Like companies, shareholders will mostly profit through secondary sales, not distributions.

Any changes to my personal token (mechanics, the agreement, etc.) require every shareholder to approve. This is because any amendment is a change to what they agreed to when they came onboard.

Every feature enables me to create more value, which benefits all of us.

A floor enables me to dilute myself aggressively to grow. When I don't have to keep calculating "will I still be able to take care of my family if..." I can be a lot more generous in how I share equity in my token.

Royalties incentivize me to grow. The more shareholders profit, the more equity in my own token I earn back, enabling me to dilute myself more aggressively upfront.

Buybacks exist for alignment and evolution. This instrument is in its early days. There will be a lot of iteration moving forward (with your help!). We need to have the ability to buy out shareholders who stand in the way of progress that benefits all of us.

The village must evolve over time. Like with startups, those who are valuable in one phase of the journey, may not be later on. I hope villagers can help me discover and convince the right people to join, and also help identify those we may need to part with. Our incentives are aligned. I expect that we will make these decisions together!

Read the whitepaper.
See the live village smart contract.

As part of the agreement, I'm obligated to make sure that any of my holdings that fall into the scope of this instrument are reflected in my personal token. I plan to invest through my personal token.

But, from a villager's perspective, it's easy for me to spin up a secret wallet to invest with. There's a lot of work required to make this obligation verifiable onchain. Which is why until you can verify my holdings directly onchain, I plan to share my yearly tax returns with villagers. And I'd love any ideas that further reduce the need to trust my word!

I can't imagine intentionally jeopardizing this journey. That being said, I'm painfully aware of my own stupidity. This is why I need a high quality village that can help me make decisions about my personal token. This whole journey is a collaboration.

The personal token comes with the ability to dissolve it. I included this in the general spec because I think people, generally, would be afraid to use an instrument that forces a lifelong commitment. But I don't intend to dissolve my token before I die. And I intend to have a smart contract that liquidates my holdings at death and distributes gains pro rata to shareholders.

Trust goes both ways. I need villagers to act on their own, not on behalf of others. To me, sharing the value I create over my life is a very personal, intimate action. I must have control over who I share my equity with.

If I ever commit fraud, it's your responsibility to sue the fuck out of me. All the fraud that "web3" has seen has made this project much, much harder to launch. It sucks. Don't let me get away with anything that would harm others adopting personal tokens. We all win when personal tokens become a legitimate instrument that is well understood by our system, and I intend to spend a lot of time making this happen.

Right now I'm focused on building the right initial village that can help me ship my personal token and bring this idea to the world in the right way. This effort will require the help of people across many disciplines.

Then, I will launch my personal token with a seed round. I'm thinking this will be a dutch auction to set the initial price per share (at which the preseed converts). Trading will go live (within the village) immediately after this seed round.

And we'll see where it goes from there!

Clearly I need a lot of help to get this idea off the ground.

I'd love to help others think through and launch their own tokens. Everything I'm building is open source. Feel free to fork.

People who are helpful will be invited to the village and rewarded with higher caps (more exposure to my upside). Help out in the open! In the Discord server. On X threads. Wherever people can see it. This makes it easier for the village to find you and reward you fairly.

My legal name is Karthik Uppuluri. I am a United States citizen. I'm 32 years old (05/18/1993). I have no outstanding legal obligations or debts. As of now, I have no holdings that fall within the scope of my personal token (equity in companies, etc.).

I take good care of my health. I had an incident of acute pancreatitis in 2016, but recovered in a few days and haven't had any major health incidents since. I intend to publish a more comprehensive health report leading up to the seed round.

Do I need to know "crypto" to participate?

Not at all. In fact, I barely knew anything about this technology before I started working on this project.

Personal tokens are about sharing our success with others. Not technology for the sake of it.

What determines a personal token's valuation?

On valuation.