Trickle Fund
It's the evening of February 13, 2026.
After finishing the Guiding Principles for Fund Design yesterday, I've been pondering a question: What should this fund be called?
"Protracted War Fund" was my first thought, but it never felt quite right. It's too militaristic; as the name of a financial product, it sounds a bit odd. Furthermore, the phrase "protracted war" easily conjures images of a long, draining conflict, which isn't entirely consistent with the message we want to convey.
Finally, I thought of Trickle.
The beauty of the word "trickle" lies in its intersection of water and electricity. On the water side, a trickling stream is small, continuous, and precisely describes the pattern of investor-authorized cash flow. On the electricity side, "trickle charging" is a term in electrical engineering, referring to charging a battery with a very small, constant current over time.
Recall the power generation/consumption framework we proposed earlier: An investor authorizing a constant cash flow rate (e.g., 1 USD/day) is essentially performing trickle charging for the "appliance." When the fund takes profits and distributes cash flow to investors, it's generating power. The pre-funded balance transferred to EA to earn current account interest is also a form of energy storage. The entire system is a cycle of trickle charging and discharging.
Therefore, the fund is officially named 涓流基金 (Trickle Fund), with the English name Trickle Fund.
The word "trickle" works well in English too. "Trickle down" refers to the trickle-down effect, "trickle charge" is trickle charging, and "trickle" itself means "to flow in a thin, gentle stream." It's concise, memorable, and requires no extra explanation. Those who understand can appreciate the water-electricity double meaning, while those unfamiliar can intuitively grasp the concept of "small and continuous."
A good name should be like this: it doesn't require explanation, but it can withstand explanation.