# Badge Earning Mechanism SOULBOUND's earning mechanism is based on referral rewards, which are known as branching rewards. Branching reward means that you receive a percentage of the payment (depending on your SOULBOUND BADGE trait) whenever a new user uses your referral code to buy SOULBOUND BADGE. \ This creates a hierarchy that motivates participants to recruit additional members to ascend trait levels and maximize potential referral payouts. At launch, the baseline referral reward percentage starts at 10% and can scale up to 14% for the highest badge trait levels. Ongoing BADGE purchases and trading also confer staking rewards and protocol fee revenues shared among BADGE holders per the level of contribution. Together these incentives promote sustainable community growth and value accretion aligned with broad token holder interests. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://soulbound-1.gitbook.io/soulbound-btc-allpaper-v2/soulbound-badge/badge-earning-mechanism.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.