The public market index
for the moon economy.

ARKX (ARK Space Exploration ETF) is the closest tradfi benchmark — ~$400M AUM, ~40 names, 0.75% expense ratio, active management. It's a fine product, but it's a US-hours-only brokerage instrument with no yield, no counter-cyclical buyback, and no on-chain composability.

ASCENT-8 is what an on-chain, mechanism-native version looks like: 8 lunar-concentrated names, equal-weighted, deterministic methodology, 0% expense, 24/7 tradeable on Base, AMP yield up to 2.0× during sector rips, auto-buyback during sector dumps, and chat-native via Base MCP. Full side-by-side at /methodology.

NASA confirmed three lunar habitat missions before end of 2026 plus the first Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) delivery award on 2026-05-26. That moves the lunar economy from thesis to dated, contracted procurement — exactly the catalyst the public-equity names ASCENT tracks are exposed to. LUNR (Intuitive Machines) is the most direct lunar-lander pure-play, RKLB (Rocket Lab) supplies launch + spacecraft, and RDW (Redwire Space) manufactures lunar hardware. The catalyst banner at the top of this page tracks all three missions live; the terminal surfaces every related news item as it lands.

Two layers. Display layer: the terminal reads live RKLB / LUNR / ASTS / PL / RDW / IRDM / MNTS / SPIR prices via Yahoo Finance and surfaces them with sparklines, sector index, and launch context. Mechanical layer: the same index level is pushed to the on-chain OracleAmplifier contract on Base. The contract derives a deterministic multiplier (0.6× / 0.8× / 1.0× / 1.25× / 1.50× / 1.75× / 2.0× by index threshold) and routes Clanker's 2/2 buy/sell tax flow symmetrically.

So when the sector rips, staked ASCENT holders see amplified ETH drops (subsidy drawn from accumulated buy-tax reserve). When the sector dumps ≥10%, DEFENSE mode flips — sell-tax ETH auto-routes to a buyback + burn vault, funded ONLY by the sell volume itself. Protocol can never go broke; reserve is never touched in defense; each seller mechanically funds the floor under their own exit.

The protocol is designed for that exact case. When sector indices drop and AMPLITUDE flips to DEFENSE, sell-tax ETH from every transaction routes to a buyback vault, swaps to ASCENT, and burns it. Supply shrinks proportional to sell volume. So a panicked dump isn't a death spiral — it's a supply-reduction event funded by the panic itself.

Three additional protections: (1) staking lock tiers (30/90/180/365 days) mean a meaningful chunk of supply can't react to short-term price moves; (2) early-unstake slashing increases during DEFENSE mode; (3) the buyback uses ONLY just-arrived sell-tax ETH, never the reserve, so the protocol cannot drain or rugpull itself.

Three things. First — the on-chain side: ASCENT cross-references space-themed Base and Ethereum tokens against the equity sector, so when RKLB rips you see which crypto plays are tracking it. Second — Telegram-native alerts built in 30 seconds with no third-party plumbing. Third — the API: query the entire sector (equities + launches + news + on-chain tokens) in a single call, free up to a daily quota.

Cheapest EVM L2 with mature tooling, and the Clanker launch infrastructure routes creator fees directly to the protocol treasury. Premium-tier staking, fee accrual, and on-chain access gating all run as Solidity contracts on Base. No bridges, no wrapping, no cross-chain plumbing to break.

Equities: Finnhub (primary) with Yahoo Finance fallback for resilience. Launches: RocketLaunch.Live aggregator covering every major provider (SpaceX, ULA, CASC, Rocket Lab, Blue Origin, etc). News: RSS aggregation across Space.com, SpaceNews, NASASpaceflight, Universe Today, plus Hacker News space-topic threads. On-chain: DexScreener live pair data on Base and Ethereum. All public sources; no proprietary feeds.

Creator fees from Clanker route to the protocol treasury, split three ways: infra (data ingestion, hosting, API tier upgrades), distributions (pro-rata to stakers from trading-fee accrual), and reserves (operational runway). No team vesting cliffs, no marketing budget pull, no insider allocation outside what Clanker mechanically pairs at launch.

No. ASCENT is a utility token granting access to a data service. The team takes no position on the underlying equities shown on the terminal, does not provide investment advice, and does not manage assets on behalf of holders. Holding ASCENT is functionally equivalent to a software subscription paid in advance.

Phase 1 — Clanker deploy · AscentStaking + OracleAmplifier contracts on Base · free tier permanent. Phase 2 — Premium tier gating · Telegram alert bot · custom alert builder. Phase 3 — JSON API + rate limits · on-chain whale-watch surface. Phase 4 — Desk tier · historical data export · sentiment-scoring on news feed. Beyond — options-flow integration, sector rotation dashboard, multi-chain on-chain expansion.

SpaceX is the largest pending catalyst this sector has. The moment Space Exploration Technologies Corp lists publicly (ticker pending — SPCX has surfaced in early filings), ASCENT-8 expands to ASCENT-9. The index re-bases, the constellation map gains a new orbital body, and AMPLITUDE thresholds recalibrate to account for the new market cap weight. The terminal is already wired to accept a 9th ticker on flip; we're watching the SEC + Nasdaq filings daily.