Every newsletter, trading blog, and Substack runs on the same failed model. Pay the monthly subscription or get nothing. You don't know if the article is worth reading until after you've paid, and once you pay you're on a recurring charge whether you read one article that month or twenty. The pricing and the value are completely decoupled.
Whop Feed fixes this by metering at the paragraph. Headlines are free. Each paragraph of the body costs 5¢ to unlock. Read the first paragraph, decide if the next is worth 5¢, unlock that, decide again. You pay strictly for the amount of content you consume. If you close the tab halfway through, you stop paying halfway through.
How It Works
Every paragraph is its own ACE-encrypted domain. Users see a "5¢" button next to each locked paragraph. Pay, unlock, read. Unlocks are permanent for that reader. A 20-paragraph article caps at $1. A 3-paragraph summary costs 15¢. Readers always see the price ceiling before they start.
Headlines and the first paragraph are always free. Shelby serves them as plaintext so readers can evaluate relevance before paying. Title, lede, and a clear 5¢ unlock on every subsequent paragraph.
Bodies are ACE ciphertext on Shelby. Each paragraph has the FeedPayment Move module as its ContractID. The ACE committee releases the key after the reader completes a one-time CA payment to that paragraph's domain, or the reader has an active CA stream to the article's creator.
Unlocks are permanent. Once paid, that paragraph is in the reader's wallet forever. Re-reads don't re-charge. This is different from continuous streaming content like Terminal data or copy trading, where payment flows while you consume. Feed reads are one-time per-paragraph unlocks.
Why Paragraph-Level Metering Changes the Incentives
On a traditional paywall, the reader commits before knowing if the content is worth it. Monthly subscription, full article, take it or leave it. Most readers leave it. The creator's incentive is to write a viral headline that converts the subscription sale. The article itself can be mediocre. The subscription is already paid.
Feed puts the decision at every paragraph. The creator is paid only if readers keep unlocking. Write a tight first three paragraphs and readers keep going. Get repetitive in paragraph 12 and readers drop off. The creator earns proportional to the value the reader actually received.
A 20-paragraph article where readers drop off at paragraph 7 earns 35¢ per reader. A 20-paragraph article where readers finish every time earns $1 per reader. Same effort to write, different compensation depending on how tight the writing is.
Where Feed Surfaces
Whop Explorer. A reader searching in Explorer sees Feed articles with the first paragraph visible and a "5¢ to read" prompt on each paragraph below. Paragraphs matching the search query are highlighted so the reader can evaluate before paying.
Whop Terminal. Breaking Feed articles surface inline in Terminal. A subscriber unlocks paragraphs without leaving the dashboard, and Content Rewards attribution fires at full rate on the read.
Signal group auto-conversion. Signal callers publishing to Feed auto-convert their calls into Feed posts. Free teaser paragraph for the call itself, paid playbook paragraphs for entry logic, stop, target, position size. Readers pay only for the depth they want.
Attribution
Every paragraph read is a Content Rewards attribution event. A reader pays 5¢, the creator gets 2.5¢, their signal group or community gets 1.25¢, any indicator referenced in the analysis gets 1¢, and Whop gets 0.25¢. The 50/25/20/5 split runs on every paragraph unlock. Details on the full split and the 10× engagement multiplier live on the Content Rewards page.
Ties Into the Broader Stack
- ›Consumption-Based Pricing is the pricing model Feed is the purest example of. One paragraph, one 5¢ micropayment, permanent unlock.
- ›Streaming Payments is the CA rail every Feed unlock routes through.
- ›Content Rewards distributes the attribution on every paragraph read.