How Gridstake works

Time is cut into epochs of equal length. In each epoch there is a board of 25 blocks. You choose any number of them and deploy ETH: the amount you send is divided equally across the blocks you picked. Each wallet can deploy once per epoch, and a deployment cannot be changed or withdrawn afterwards.

When the epoch closes, a public random beacon selects one winning block. Wallets with stake on that block take the ETH from the 24 losing blocks (less fees) in proportion to their stake, and they earn newly minted GRID. Everyone else loses what they deployed in that epoch.

• Stakes are counted in units of 0.000001 ETH, so the amount per block can have at most six decimals.
• Covering more blocks raises your chance of being on the winner but spreads your stake thinner.
• Every block has the same 1 in 25 chance, no matter how much ETH is on it. A crowded block pays less per ETH when it wins.
• If nobody deployed in an epoch there is nothing to settle and it simply passes.

In every epoch 10 of the 25 blocks are solo blocks and 15 are split blocks. Which ones are solo is derived from the epoch number, so it is fixed and visible before anyone deploys. Solo blocks carry a small square marker in their corner.

The distinction only affects GRID. ETH is always shared by stake. On a solo win the contract draws a point inside the block's total stake using the same beacon; the wallet whose stake covers that point takes the full block reward. A wallet holding 30% of the winning solo block therefore has a 30% chance of the whole reward, rather than a certain 30% of it.

At settlement the epoch's ETH is divided in a fixed order:

1. 1% of everything deployed is the admin fee.
2. 10% of the losing blocks' stake (after that fee) goes to the Treasury, which uses it for buybacks, staker rewards and the Reserve.
3. Everything else is the winners pool, shared by stake among wallets on the winning block. That includes their own stake coming back.

If the winning block has no stake on it at all, there are no winners: the whole round (after the admin fee) is vaulted to the Treasury and no GRID is minted for that epoch.

Two smaller amounts come out of the Treasury's share rather than the winners pool: referral rewards, and a gas reimbursement for whoever submitted the settlement transaction.

GRID has a hard cap of 3,000,000. 120,000 were minted at genesis and placed entirely in the trading pool. Everything else can only be minted by the game, one winning epoch at a time.

• Each epoch with a winner mints the current block reward to the winning block.
• An extra 20% of that reward is minted into the jackpot.
• Each winning epoch has a fixed chance (see "Jackpot odds" above) of paying out the entire jackpot, shared by stake among that epoch's winners, on top of the block reward.

The block reward steps down as supply grows: the cap is divided into eight bands, and each band reached removes one eighth of the starting reward. Because the bands are measured against current supply, GRID burned by buybacks makes room under the cap and can move the reward back up a band.

Settlement does not loop over players, so winnings are not pushed to you. They are moved into your balances by a checkpoint, which anyone can call for any wallet. Your next deployment checkpoints your previous epoch automatically, and the Collect button on the Mine page checkpoints every winning epoch the app finds for your wallet.

After a checkpoint you hold up to three balances inside the game:

• ETH winnings: withdraw at any time, no fee.
• Mined GRID (unrealized): claiming it to your wallet costs a 10% realizing fee.
• Fee income (realized GRID): your share of other miners' realizing fees. Claimable with no fee.

The realizing fee is not burned and does not go to the protocol. It is shared among all the other wallets still holding unclaimed mined GRID, in proportion to what they hold. Leaving GRID unclaimed is in effect a position that earns from everyone who claims before you. If no other wallet holds unclaimed GRID, the fee is added to the jackpot.

The winning block comes from drand, a public randomness beacon run by a league of independent organisations, on its evmnet chain. That chain publishes a new BLS signature on the BN254 curve every three seconds, which is cheap to verify inside the EVM.

• Each epoch is tied to exactly one beacon round: the first round published after the epoch's close time plus a safety delay. The delay exists so that no deployment can still be included once the round's value could be known.
• The oracle contract verifies the signature on-chain against drand's hard-coded public key. A BLS signature for a given round is unique, so there is exactly one valid random value per epoch.
• Anyone can settle. A keeper normally does it within seconds, but the function is open: whoever submits the valid signature settles the epoch and is reimbursed for gas. The caller cannot choose the round or influence the result.

The winning block, the solo winner's position and the jackpot draw are all derived from that one verified value. Between the close and the settlement transaction the board shows the epoch as settling.

Auto

Auto lets you prepay a number of epochs. You choose a fixed set of blocks, or a number of blocks to be picked pseudo-randomly each epoch, plus the stake per block and a maximum keeper fee. A keeper then deploys for you once per epoch and is paid a gas-based fee from your prepaid balance, never more than your maximum.

The prepayment is epochs × (stake per epoch + maximum fee). Epochs the balance cannot cover are skipped. Cancelling moves the unused balance into your ETH winnings.

Referrals

A wallet's first deployment can name a referrer, which is then fixed for good. The referrer is credited 0.45% of every ETH that wallet deploys. The reward is funded from the Treasury's cut, so it costs the referred wallet nothing. See Referrals.

GRID trades in a single Uniswap v4 pool against ETH. The pool is created by the protocol's hook contract in the same transaction that starts the first epoch, so trading and mining open together.

• The entire genesis supply goes into the pool. No wallet ever holds it: no team allocation, no presale.
• The launch is single-sided: the genesis GRID is laid out in price ranges rising from the opening price, and the pool sells it step by step as buyers push the price up. The ETH in the pool is whatever buyers have paid in, so early on there is little ETH to sell into.
• The hook owns the liquidity. Only the hook and the protocol Reserve are allowed to add liquidity at all.
• Every swap pays a tax, always taken from the ETH side: 2% on buys, 3% on sells.
• Collected tax is periodically compounded back into the pool as buy-side liquidity. Anyone can trigger the compound from the Overview page.

Launch tax

For the first 15 minutes of trading the tax starts at 80% and decays quickly toward the normal rates, roughly halving every 76 seconds. It exists to make racing bots pay for the privilege of buying in the first blocks. The Trade page always shows the tax that applies right now and warns you while it is elevated.

Treasury

Protocol revenue arrives at the Treasury as ETH and is worked off in small, rate-limited slices. Each slice is split four ways: buy GRID and burn it, buy GRID for stakers, send ETH to the Reserve, and send ETH to the keeper wallet for gas. The live split is on the Overview page. The owner can change it only within hard limits: at most 30% to the Reserve and 15% to operations, so buybacks are always at least 55%.

Staking

Stake GRID to receive the staker share of buybacks, paid in GRID. Each distribution is shared among stakers at the moment it arrives, in proportion to stake. There is no lock-up and no fee. The APR on the Stake page is an estimate based on the trailing seven days and will move with revenue.

Reserve

The Reserve holds ETH and places it as buy orders below the current GRID price. If the price falls into an order it fills, turning ETH into GRID; most of that GRID is burned and the remainder goes to stakers. ETH from unfilled orders returns to the Reserve to be placed again. Its ETH only ever moves between the Reserve and the pool.

• Mining is a game of chance with negative expected ETH value. Every epoch 1% of all stakes and 10% of losing stakes leave the table, so on average miners get back less ETH than they put in. Whether the GRID you mine makes up the difference depends entirely on GRID's market price, which can fall to zero. Most deployments lose: covering one block wins 1 time in 25.
• The contracts are unaudited unless stated otherwise. No audit report is published alongside this interface. A bug could freeze or lose funds, including stakes in an open epoch and balances waiting to be claimed.
• Owner and operator roles exist. The game's owner can change the fee collector address and the gas allowances used for reimbursements (within limits). The Treasury's owner can change the revenue split within the bounds above, the processing limits, the operations wallet and the operator. The Reserve's owner can change its operator and how much filled GRID is burned versus paid to stakers. The buyback and Reserve operators decide when buybacks run and where orders sit; they cannot withdraw funds, but a careless or malicious operator could execute a capped slice at a poor price. None of these roles can touch player stakes, change the fee rates in the table or mint GRID.
• Settlement depends on drand. If the drand evmnet beacon stops publishing, epochs cannot be settled until it resumes, and the contracts have no refund path for an unsettled epoch.
• Timing. A deployment sent in the last seconds of an epoch may be mined in the next one, where the solo blocks are different. One deployment per wallet per epoch means you cannot correct it.
• Solo blocks add variance. On a solo win most wallets on the block receive ETH but no GRID.
• Market risk and the launch tax. GRID is a volatile token with one pool. Buying during the first 15 minutes can cost up to 80% of your ETH in tax. Large trades move the price; check the quote and your slippage setting.
• Unclaimed balances stay in the contract. Mined GRID, fee income, Auto prepayments and ETH winnings are held by the game contract until you claim or withdraw them.
• This interface is a convenience. It reads public chain data and can be wrong or unavailable. The contracts are the source of truth; addresses are listed on the Overview page.

Nothing on this site is financial, legal or tax advice. Participation may be restricted where you live; that is your responsibility to check.