Live Rooms

When a room of N opens, each participant is granted floor(0.75 × (N − 1)) engagements at zero points spent.

The reasoning is simple: in a cohort of N, everyone can engage everyone else exactly once, so each participant can receive about N − 1. The 25% haircut is the safety margin against people leaving early.

So the threshold sets the deliverable: the number of creators needed to open a room is what determines how much each of them receives. Not the same number as the grant — a room of 7 delivers 4 — but the one that decides it.

Every exchange unlocks when 7 creators are ready at once. When a room of 7 opens, everyone in it is granted 4 engagements before spending a single point.

A single consistent threshold across comments, shares, saves, follows and stories keeps cohorts moving and makes room openings predictable. All 4 TikTok exchanges use the same number.

Ready means two things at once: you hold a seat in the room, and you have been active anywhere on PodSwap within the last 2 hours. It does not mean sitting on the waiting-room page.

That distinction is the whole mechanism. Measured on the waiting room's own heartbeat, a room could report two creators ready while eighteen were queued for it — so the headcount unlock never fired, and an exchange only ever opened at its scheduled time.

Queueing a post, engaging with someone else, or simply using the site all keep you counted. Take a seat, get on with your day, and the room opens around you.

A room opens the moment the threshold is met, whatever the hour. If it is met at nine in the morning, the room runs at nine in the morning.

If a room fills with seats but not enough people are around, it is given a guaranteed opening time instead — the next of 03:00, 11:00, 19:00 UTC that is at least 2 hours away. Everyone holding a seat is emailed the time, and again when it opens.

Once open, a room runs for at least 2 hours, and keeps running for as long as engagement is still landing. It closes after 30 minutes of silence, and never runs longer than 6 hours. What is actually being exchanged decides when a room ends — not whether the headcount dipped.

After a room closes it rests for 60 minutes before readiness can reopen it, so the same handful of people drifting back cannot make it flicker.

In the previous always-open design, a large majority of people who gave engagement received none and never came back. An exchange where you can donate but not receive is not an exchange.

The check-in grant exists so that nobody can end up a pure supply donor: if you are in the room when it opens, you are owed something before you do any work.

If an exchange sits closed for 7 days, everyone waiting is nudged. The threshold itself does not move: 7 is a floor, not a starting point that erodes.