User Story · The Lender

Lisa sets one number.

She has $25k of USDC and no interest in trading. Her entire job here is choosing a price — the price at which she'd be genuinely happy to own the token. Everything she will ever earn or risk follows from that one number.

The decision

The tick is the whole strategy

what it meansDepositing at 90¢ on a $1.00 token declares: "repay me in full, or make me an owner at 90 cents." It's a limit buy order that moonlights as lending capital — always below the market price, at a discount she chose in calm blood.

the dialCloser to price (95¢): funds loans first, catches sells first, earns the most — and owns tokens first when a move is real. Deeper (75¢): safer, quieter, mostly unpaid. Risk and pay climb the ladder together, tick by tick.

why not hide deepShe could quote 50¢ — perfect safety, near-zero income, because loans and fills both consume the book top-down. And any lender who steps above her captures the entire flow. Competition drags quotes to honest levels; safety is always available and always costs the yield.

The income map

Every dollar she earns has a timestamp

Moment	What she earns
nothing happens	nothing. Resting cash is a standing offer, not a salary — and it's instantly withdrawable the whole time
a loan draws her tick	credit fees: her share of origination, skims, premiums, rollovers — pro-rata to what she lent, for as long as it's out
a sell cuts into 90¢	the swap fee on her slice of that trade — plus inventory bought at her own quoted discount
the recovery buys it back	the round trip: sold above basis, plus another fee — cash back on her rung, fatter
a wick almost took a borrower	her share of the restore fee — paid for the window when her outcome hung in the air

Payment follows the tick. If flow never reaches 90¢, she earns nothing and risked nothing — the deal being exactly what it says. Watch her sit silent through the rally and light up in the crash in the Market story.

Assignment

The put-writer's deal, said plainly

the riskIf a move persists past the pending window, her lent capital converts: she owns tokens at 90¢. Not a surprise, not a haircut someone else chose — the exact trade she quoted on day one, for which every fee she collected was the premium.

the USDC experienceShe can flip the auto-sell flag — assignments route straight through the executor and she receives proceeds in USDC, netting roughly her own 90¢. Or skip ticks entirely and delegate to a curator's sleeve: USDC in, USDC out, someone else's judgment, minus their fee.

the line nobody crossesNobody promises her par through a crash — that promise is how other protocols mint frozen queues. Her guarantee is the asset (USDC held or received) and the price (hers): a chosen, priced haircut — never a socialized surprise.

The exit

Leaving is boring, on purpose

resting cashWithdraws instantly, any time, no queue. Un-lent capital is by definition present — cash-enforced solvency means the book can't lie about what's in it.

lent cashReturns as loans repay or settle — bounded by tenor: every loan resolves within N days, so her worst-case wait is the term, not "whenever liquidity returns."

inventoryHold it, list it, or auto-sell it — her call, at her price. Nothing she holds was ever forced on her at a number she didn't pick.

The one-line version of this whole page: Lisa is paid to stand at a price she chose, only when the market actually needs someone standing there — and every risk she carries was in the number she typed.