# Dividend Dividend is an information flow to the stakeholders through the stake as an economic connectivity “pipeline”. It is a share of output or net revenue that accrues to the stakeholder. In the economic space protocol, dividends can take various forms, such as financial returns or commodity output returns, and those returns may accrue directly to the stakeholder or to some other [Agent](/agent.md) nominated by the stakeholder, such as the commons. Dividends can also give other rights, such as rights to influence the future evolution of performance or rights to build one's own performance in connection with the performance they staked. In the ECSA discourse dividends are multi-denominational. That is an important part of generalizing “equity” into “stake” and thus into a general economic connectivity protocol. The economic space protocol does not define surplus as a positive balance of credits like with “profit”, but as a positive change in stake price. The stake valuation includes the balance of other tokens, including other participants’ stakes, commodities, and credit. That is why an economic space can hold a surplus in the treasury or distribute it as dividends that do not need to be transformed into credit (or third party issued “money”), but can remain in the same underlying token or in any other form. An economic space’s stake represents access to its underlying performance, resulting outputs, and network assets. --- # 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://glossary.ecsa.io/dividend.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.