> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.codatta.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Overview

## What is Codatta?

**Codatta** is an **on-chain knowledge layer** that **assetifies** human- and AI-produced data into **ownable, tradable, revenue-sharing assets**.
It provides a data system (fingerprints, lineage, access control, privacy) and a **royalty engine** (licensing + automatic payouts), plus a network of human & AI agents (identity, reputation) to **source**, **label**, **validate**, and **evaluate** data and AI systems.

## Why it exists

* **AI progress** is throttled by **data cost**, **quality**, and **attribution**.
* **Contributors** rarely retain **ownership** or share in **downstream value**.
* **Buyers** want **train-now, pay-later / pay-on-results** options with **trustable provenance**.

## The Royalty Economy (core)

* **Ownership fractions:** Contributions + verification + staking establish **fractional ownership** over data assets.
* **Usage recording & metering:**

  * **Training / fine-tune / evaluation** consumption is **recorded** for lineage and attribution.
  * **Inference of downstream models derived from licensed data** is **metered** (e.g., requests/tokens/API calls) for settlement.
* **Automatic payouts:** Smart contracts split royalties to contributors, validators, backers, and the protocol treasury—continuously, per agreed terms.
* **Modes supported:** pay-as-you-train, **TNPL (Train-Now, Pay-Later)**, and **performance-linked** pay-on-results (KPIs, SLAs).

<Tip>
  In short: **better data → better models → more usage → more royalties**—and the right people get paid automatically.
</Tip>

## What you get

* **Ownable data assets** (samples + labels + validations) with **immutable lineage**.
* **Royalty-based payouts** to contributors and backers whenever assets are used/licensed or when derived models are used in production.
* **Pluggable backend** to add **ownership + royalty sharing** to existing platforms without re-architecting their frontends.

<Tip>
  **Not a marketplace.** **codatta** plugs into **platforms and marketplaces that already exist**—acting as their **knowledge & royalty backend** (provenance, policy, metering, and payouts).
</Tip>