Terms & Rules for Attention Fund

Last updated: October 20, 2026

Attention Fund lets you stake real money on hitting your own screen-time goals. Because real money is involved, please read this page before you start a challenge. It explains how staking and payouts actually work, what counts as cheating, and what happens to your account if the rules aren't followed.

1. How Staking Works

When you set up a challenge, you choose:

• A daily screen-time cap for the apps you're tracking
• A challenge length (5, 7, 10, or 14 days, or a custom length of 3+ days)
• A deposit amount you're staking on yourself

Your deposit is divided evenly across the days in your challenge. Each day you stay under your cap, you earn that day's slice back as an Attention Dividend. Complete every tracked day and your full deposit is returned. Days you've already earned stay yours no matter what happens later in the challenge.

You can add more money to an active challenge to increase your stake, but you cannot reduce your deposit once it's set.

Amounts

• The minimum for a new challenge you pay for is $5.
• The maximum is $500, the same as for a card stake. You choose the amount.
• If you're starting a new challenge using only credit you've already earned back, the minimum is $3 — you're re-staking your own money, not making a fresh deposit.
• Adding to a stake you've already started takes whole dollars, $1 or more. You can add any time after your deposit is confirmed, while the challenge is still running.

2. Screen Time Caps & Shields

Attention Fund uses Apple's Screen Time tools to monitor your usage of the apps you choose to track and to apply a "shield" — a block on those apps — if you go over your daily cap.

Disabling or bypassing this monitoring (for example, revoking Screen Time permission) doesn't pause enforcement — see "Cheating & Tampering" below.

3. What You Can Get Back — and What You Can't

Attention Fund is not a contest and you are not playing against anyone. Nothing you do on the leaderboard changes what you are paid — the leaderboard is a score, not a payout. Your money is placed at risk against your own goal and returned to you day by day as you meet it.

If you meet your goal every day, the challenge costs you nothing. It only ever costs you if you choose to break your own shield.

Where forfeited money goes

Forfeited money stays with Attention Fund. It's how the company makes money, and it goes straight back into the product — starting stake credits for new users, and getting the app in front of more people.

Money you forfeit is money you lost against your own goal. We are not holding it for anyone else and it is not paid out to other users.

4. Ending a Challenge and Getting Paid

When your challenge ends, you'll see what you earned back, and we send it to you. There is nothing to choose.

Your payout is automatic. Once your final results are settled we start sending what you earned back to the Venmo or Zelle on your account, and we tell you once that it's on its way. You don't have to ask for it.

• Payouts are sent by hand, by Venmo or Zelle, to the handle or email on your account. Make sure it's right, because that's where your money goes.
• There is no minimum. Any amount you've earned back is yours.
• Nothing is paid out mid-challenge. Money you've earned is released when the challenge ends.
• Your results settle a day or two after your last day, once your final day's screen time has reached us.

5. Signup vs. Payment Confirmation

Your challenge officially starts the day you finish onboarding — enforcement (caps and shields) can begin immediately, whether or not your payment has gone through yet.

However, your stake only counts once your deposit is confirmed as paid:

• You submit your deposit via Venmo or Zelle after signup.
• Until that payment is confirmed, your challenge runs but no money is at risk and no Attention Dividends are paid out — you won't appear on the paid leaderboard, and forfeits aren't recorded against a deposit that doesn't exist yet.
• Once your payment is confirmed, your stake becomes active: dividends begin counting for tracked days going forward, and shield breaks from that point on will forfeit that day's slice.

6. Cheating & Tampering

Cheating means doing anything to make it look like you met your goal when you didn't, or disabling the systems we use to track and enforce your challenge. This includes, but isn't limited to:

• Revoking Screen Time / Family Controls permission mid-challenge to stop the app from seeing your usage or applying a shield
• Uninstalling, tampering with, or otherwise disabling the app's monitoring so usage can't be recorded
• Falsifying baseline data, usage, or goal information to manipulate your dividend, streak, or leaderboard score
• Creating multiple accounts to manipulate the leaderboard or payout system

How this is actually enforced today

If you revoke Screen Time authorization while a challenge is active, Attention Fund logs the event — when access was revoked and, if applicable, when it was restored — and immediately notifies our admin team. This shows up on an internal "Suspicious Activity" view where every open or past revoke event, across all users, is reviewed by a person.

This is a manual review process, not an automatic penalty: revoking access does not by itself forfeit a day, adjust your score, or ban you. An admin reviews the gap and decides whether it looks like an innocent permission hiccup or an attempt to dodge enforcement, and follows up accordingly — which can include a warning or a ban.

7. Enforcement: Ban vs. Account Deletion

These are two different actions, with very different consequences.

Ban (suspension)

• An admin can ban an account found to be cheating, tampering with tracking, or otherwise abusing the system.
• A banned account is immediately signed out and blocked from using the app.
• Your data isn't deleted — your account, history, and challenge data remain intact.
• A ban is reversible: an admin can unban the account, restoring normal access.

Account Deletion

• Deletion permanently removes all of your challenge data, history, and account information from our systems.
• It also deletes your login itself — you will not be able to sign back in with that account afterward.
• Deletion is permanent and cannot be undone. There is no way to recover a deleted account or its data, including any pending payouts.
• You can request deletion of your own account at any time by contacting us (see below); an admin may also delete an account for severe or repeated violations of these rules.

8. Changes to These Rules

We may update these Terms & Rules from time to time as the app evolves. We'll update the "Last updated" date above when we do. Continuing to use Attention Fund after a change means you accept the updated rules.

9. Contact Us

Questions about these rules, or want to appeal a ban or request account deletion? Contact us at:

contactattentionfund@gmail.com

The Rule You Sign

Rules version 2026-10-19-card

Turn off Screen Time or delete the app during your week and every day it stays off is lost.

Card Terms: Money on Hold

Card Terms version card-2026-10-20

These Card Terms apply when you put money on hold with a card at attentionfund.app/stake. Where anything else on this page says something different about deposits, payment or payouts, these Card Terms are what apply to a card stake. Everything else on this page, including shields, cheating and tampering, and bans, applies to card stakes too.

Money on hold

• Your stake is money on hold on your card. It is not a payment. Your bank shows it as pending, and it comes off your available balance while it's held.
• You choose a daily amount, from $1 to $70. Seven times that is what's on the line each week.
• Your stake is held again every week until you stop.

How a week works

• A week runs Monday to Sunday and closes at 11:59 pm on Sunday, in your own time zone.
• Your first week starts the day you put money on hold and runs for seven days. If that day isn't a Monday, the week after it runs only to the next Sunday, so that every week after that lines up Monday to Sunday. A week shorter than seven days has less on the line.
• Your stake is held in two parts each week: one hold covers Monday to Thursday, and the next covers Friday to Sunday. Your bank shows each hold as its own pending amount, and together they add up to your stake. A hold that starts partway through a part covers only the days left in it.

Days you keep and days you forfeit

• Every day you stay under your cap stays yours. Its share is released when that part of the week closes.
• A day you forfeit, by pushing through your shield after going over your cap, costs that day's share of the week's stake, out of what's on the line for that part of the week. That share is lost, and the rest is released.
• A day is only lost when a forfeit is recorded for it. A day with no record is kept.
• The days you forfeit in a week can never cost more than that week's stake. You can never get back more than you put on hold, and there is no prize.
• Money that is lost stays with Attention Fund, as described in section 3.

A balance you owe

• A day you forfeit comes off your credit first, then off what's on hold. If neither can cover it, for example because your card declined that part of the week, the part that isn't covered becomes a balance you owe.
• If you have credit, or credit arrives later, it pays a balance you owe before anything else.
• The next hold you place will be larger by the balance you owe, and that hold collects it: the balance comes off the hold when its part of the week closes, along with any days you forfeit in that part. Anything that hold can't collect waits for the next one. Before you put money on hold at attentionfund.app/stake, you'll see the balance, your stake, and the total that will be held.
• If you stop while you owe a balance, stopping also collects it, from your credit and from a hold that is carrying it. The amount is shown to you before you confirm.
• While you owe a balance, your next week doesn't start. The week you're in finishes as normal. To start again, set up a new challenge in the app and put money on hold at attentionfund.app/stake.
• There is never any interest or fee on a balance you owe. We never chase you for it and never ask your card for it on its own. It's only ever collected in the ways above.

Credit

Finishing a challenge no longer turns into credit. What you earn back is sent to you. These rules cover credit you already hold and credit from a promo code.

• If you have credit, it is set against your stake: less is put on hold, and your credit is on the line in its place.
• Credit is only used up by days you lose. A day you lose comes off your credit first, then off the hold. A week you keep leaves your credit where it was.
• Credit that is on the line can't be withdrawn until that week closes.
• If your credit covers a whole week, or a whole part of one, nothing is put on hold for it, and your card stays saved for the weeks after.

Stopping

• You can stop your stake at any time from the app.
• Stopping ends your week straight away. Days you've already forfeited that week are lost, and so is half of what's still on the line for the rest of the week, today included. That comes off your credit first, then off the hold, and it is never more than what's on hold, plus any credit on the line, at the moment you stop. Everything else is released.
• If you owe a balance when you stop, stopping collects that too, as described under "A balance you owe". Days you forfeited that week that nothing covers become a balance you owe.
• A stop can't be undone, and nothing is held again after it.

If a hold can't be placed

• If your card declines a hold partway through a week, the week keeps going but nothing is on hold for that part of it until a hold goes through. Days you forfeit in that part still count: they come off your credit, and whatever your credit doesn't cover becomes a balance you owe. We try again on the days that follow, and you can update your card at attentionfund.app/stake.
• If your card declines at the start of a week, or there's no card saved, that week doesn't start and nothing is on the line. To start again, set up a new challenge in the app and put money on hold at attentionfund.app/stake.

Not a subscription

Putting money on hold doesn't buy anything and doesn't unlock anything in the app. It's your own money, held against your own goal, and a week you keep costs you nothing.

Deleting your account during a week

• Deleting your account while a week is running is a stop. It costs exactly what stopping would at that moment: days you've already forfeited that week, plus half of what's still on the line for the rest of the week, today included. It comes off your credit first, then off the hold, and it is never more than what's on hold, plus any credit on the line.
• Before you confirm, the app shows you the exact amount deleting will cost, and your account is only deleted for that amount. Everything else on hold is released straight away, and then your account is deleted.
• If you owe a balance, deleting your account collects it the way stopping does. Whatever can't be collected, including days you forfeited that nothing covers, stays on our records as a balance owed after your account is gone, kept only as a payment record with your account details removed.
• If no week is running, deleting your account costs nothing.

Which version you agreed to

These Card Terms carry their own version, shown at the top of this section. When you tick the box on attentionfund.app/stake, we record that you agreed and which version it was. If these Card Terms change in a way that matters, the version changes, and you'll be asked to agree to the new version the next time you put money on hold at attentionfund.app/stake. The holds placed for you each week follow the version you last agreed to, a balance you owe is only ever collected under a version that describes it, and deleting your account costs what the version you last agreed to says it costs.

---

See also our Privacy Policy.