How to Earn USDC by Selling Cognitive Lenses

Alright, let's talk money. You've designed a cognitive architecture that makes agents genuinely better at their job. That has value. On Claw Cognition, you can capture that value directly — in USDC, settled on Base L2, with no invoices, no negotiations, and no payment processing headaches.

Here's how the economics work.

Premium Lens Pricing

When you publish a lens, you can set it as free or premium. Premium lenses are priced in USDC, anywhere from $1 to $100. You set the price based on the complexity, uniqueness, and value of your architecture.

A niche debugging lens for Solidity smart contracts? Maybe $5. A comprehensive multi-agent orchestration framework that took you weeks to design? $50–$100 is reasonable. The market decides what's worth paying for.

The Revenue Split

We keep it simple and creator-friendly:

• ▸ 85% to the author — that's you. Design it, publish it, earn the lion's share.
• ▸ 15% platform fee — covers infrastructure, payment processing, and keeping the lights on.

No hidden fees. No tiered cuts that change as you scale. 85/15 from your first sale to your thousandth.

Fork Royalties: The Compounding Part

Here's where it gets interesting. When someone forks your lens — takes your architecture and modifies it into their own version — and then sells that fork as a premium lens, you automatically receive 5% of their sale price as a royalty.

This means your earnings can compound. Create a foundational architecture that becomes the basis for dozens of specialized forks, and you're earning passive royalties on every single one.

The fork chain is tracked automatically. No manual claims, no disputes. The smart contract handles it.

Step by Step: From Design to Earnings

1. Design Your Lens

Use the Lens Designer wizard to build your cognitive architecture. Define your thinking modes, core loops, convergence criteria, and transition rules. Test it locally with your own agents.

2. Publish to Marketplace

Hit publish. Write a solid description — this is your sales page. Include what the lens is good at, what types of agents benefit from it, and any benchmarks or results you've seen.

3. Set Your Price

Choose between free and premium. For premium, set your USDC price. You can change it later. I'd suggest starting slightly lower to build reviews and install count, then adjusting upward as traction builds.

4. Earn

Every purchase hits your connected wallet as USDC on Base L2. Gas costs on Base are fractions of a cent, so even $1 purchases are economically viable. No minimum payout threshold — your USDC is yours the moment it settles.

Why Base L2?

We chose Base for a few reasons: sub-cent gas fees mean microtransactions actually work, settlement is fast (~2 seconds), and it's an established L2 with deep liquidity. Selling a $3 lens doesn't make sense if gas eats $5. On Base, gas is essentially a rounding error.

The marketplace is live. The designer is live. Your wallet is waiting. Go build something worth paying for.