# Noper Tournament — complete rules (for humans and for LLM strategy simulation) A blind-vote **Bull vs Bear** elimination tournament played over escrowed Noper bear NFTs, with an escalating ETH entry fee that accumulates into a single pot. This document is the **authoritative rule set**. It is written so you can paste it into a frontier model and ask it to simulate optimal strategy for a given field size, your bear count, and your risk appetite. > Everything below is enforced on-chain by the `NoperTournament` contract. Numeric defaults are > the launch values; the owner can tune some of them (noted), but **cannot** influence which side > wins a round, who becomes champion, or read votes before reveal. --- ## 1. The loop (one round = one "week") Each round has three phases, back to back: 1. **Commit (vote) window** — you pick a side **secretly** and pay the entry fee. 2. **Reveal window** — you (or anyone with your salt) reveal your committed side. 3. **Settle** — anyone calls `settle()`; the **majority of revealed sides wins** the round. Then the game either **ends** (see §6) or **advances** to the next round at a higher fee. Default cadence: **6d commit + 1d reveal = 1-week rounds** (owner-tunable per round, but never in a way that reopens a closed vote). --- ## 2. Entering a round To put a bear in a round you call `enter` with, per bear: - **The entry fee** (ETH). `fee(round) = baseFee + feeStep × (round − 1)`. Launch: `baseFee = 0.01`, `feeStep = 0.005` → round 1 = 0.010, round 2 = 0.015, round 3 = 0.020 … (one round = one week) - **A blind commitment**: `keccak256(abi.encode(side, salt, tokenId, round, staker))`, where `side ∈ {1 = Bull, 2 = Bear}` and `salt` is 32 random bytes kept off-chain. **Only this hash is stored on-chain during the commit window** — there is no per-side counter, so the live tally literally does not exist until reveals begin. (A weak/low-entropy salt is brute-forceable; the frontend uses 32 secure random bytes.) On first entry the bear is **pulled into escrow** (transferred to the contract). It stays escrowed until the game ends or you exit it (see §7). Eligibility: - A bear branded **loser** can never enter again. - A bear can enter a given round **once**. - First-ever entry is **round 1 only**, *unless* `openJoin` is on (see §5). - Optional **whale cap**: `maxPerWalletPerRound` (launch: 0 = unlimited). You may **`recommit`** (change your sealed side) any time before the commit window locks. It reveals nothing. --- ## 3. Revealing During the reveal window, submit `(tokenId, side, salt)`. The contract recomputes the hash and checks it matches your commitment. - Revealing is **permissionless to submit** (the salt is the secret) and revealing your true side only ever helps your own bear — a keeper can reveal on your behalf. - **Failing to reveal = forfeit = treated as a loss.** An unrevealed bear cannot win the round. - You **cannot change your side at reveal** — the commitment binds it. Reveal only discloses what you already, blindly, chose. --- ## 4. Settlement — who advances `settle()` (callable by anyone after the reveal window) tallies revealed sides for the round: - `bull = count of revealed Bull`, `bear = count of revealed Bear`. - **Winner = the bigger side.** `bull > bear` → Bull wins; `bear > bull` → Bear wins. - **Tie → draw**: *everyone who revealed* advances (both sides survive). - **Survivors** = the winning side's count (or all revealers, on a draw). - The **losing side (and all forfeiters)** are eliminated and become **permanent loser bears** when their bear leaves escrow. The loser brand is forever and on-chain. No owner declares a winner — it is pure on-chain arithmetic over the reveals. > **Strategic core:** because the *majority* advances, this is a Keynesian beauty contest. You are > not trying to be "right" about bull vs bear — you are trying to be on **whichever side the crowd > picks**, blindly, before anyone can see the crowd. With no information, each round is ≈ a coin flip. --- ## 5. Continuing, sitting out, and `openJoin` After winning a round you choose, each subsequent round, to: - **Re-enter** (pay the new, higher fee, commit again — you may switch sides freely), or - **Sit it out** (pay nothing; your bear is a "Survivor" and is **not** eliminated), or - **Retire** (stop for good and reclaim a slice of your fees — see §8). `openJoin` (launch: **ON**, owner can switch off): - **ON** — bears that sat out earlier rounds (and even fresh bears) may join later rounds. The field is open. This is the anti-stall valve for early low-traction rounds. - **OFF** — strict bracket: only the previous round's winners may continue; no late entries. Branded losers are always blocked regardless. --- ## 6. How the game ends (3 ways) 1. **Cull reached** — after a settle, if `survivors ≤ cullThreshold` (launch: **100**), those survivors are the **champions**. The decisive round is this round. 2. **Stall / priced-out** — if a round's commit window closes with `entrants < minFighters` (launch: **2**), anyone calls `endIfStalled()`; the **previous** round's winners are the champions. (This is how the escalating fee eventually ends the game when it gets too steep to fill.) 3. **Total wipeout** — if a round settles with **zero** revealers, the previous round's winners are the champions. When the game ends, the pot splits into a **champion jackpot** and a **participation pool** (§7), both frozen. --- ## 7. The pot and the payouts — a three-layer reward Every fee is split across three layers, so rewards reach **all players**, not just the final winners: 1. **Champion jackpot** (the big prize). The pot **minus the participation pool** is split **equally** among the **decisive-round champions** (`prizePerChampion = championPot ÷ championCount`). Lose before the decisive round and you get **none** of this — it's the harsh, winner-take-most core. More co-champions = smaller slice each. 2. **Participation pool** — `participationBps` of the pot (launch: **25%**), split **by rounds won** across the **whole field**: champions, retired survivors, **and eliminated players for the rounds they won before being knocked out**. `reward = (rounds you won ÷ all rounds won) × pool`. A loss does **not** erase the rounds you already won — you still collect for them. (First-round losers won nothing, so they get nothing here; you must win at least one round.) 3. **Honors rebate** (§8) — a fenced skim that refunds a slice of **your own fees**, scaled by wins, capped at what you paid. Cost-side, loss-mitigation only. Who collects what: - **Champions** (`claimPrize`): jackpot share **+** participation (most wins → most participation) **+** honors rebate, bear back **un-branded**. - **Retired survivors** (`withdraw`, after end): participation **+** honors rebate, bear un-branded. - **Eliminated players** (`withdrawLoser`, after end): **participation for the rounds they won** + bear back (permanently branded). They forfeit their honors skim, but a knockout no longer means zero. - **Immune bears** (the 1/1s): never eliminated/branded, but only win the jackpot if they actually win the decisive round. > **Collect after the game ends.** Participation is paid by the same `claimPrize`/`withdraw`/ > `withdrawLoser` calls once the game is over. Pull your bear out **mid-game** and you **forfeit** your > participation share (it stays in the pool for those who play on — see §5). Claim within `claimGrace` > (launch: **90 days**) or the owner may sweep the unclaimed remainder. --- ## 8. "Retired with Honor" — the self-funded fee rebate A fixed fraction of **every** entry fee is fenced **per bear** into a separate honors pool, which is **never part of the grand pot**. - `honorsBps` (launch: **2000** = 20%) of each fee → that bear's own honors balance (`honorsContribBy`). - A bear can reclaim `ownSkim × min(wins × winRebateStepBps, maxRebateBps)`, **capped at its own total contribution**: - `winRebateStepBps` (launch: **2500** = 25% unlocked per round won) - `maxRebateBps` (launch: **10000** = up to 100% of your own skim after 4 wins) - `minWinsForHonors` (launch: **1** — need ≥1 win to qualify) - **You can never reclaim more than you put in.** Retiring is therefore always a partial refund of *your own* fees, never a profit — which is what makes it Sybil/fee-farm proof and keeps the grand pot whole. A branded loser forfeits its skim (it becomes protocol revenue). `wins` = **rounds actually won** (not the calendar round), so a late joiner is rewarded for genuine wins. (Honors is the *cost-refund* layer; the *participation pool* in §7 is the separate, real reward for wins — the two are independent.) --- ## 9. Money math (for simulation) Let `F₀` = starting field, `e` = fraction eliminated per round (≈ 0.5 with blind 50/50 voting, more if the majority is lopsided), `b` = number of bears YOU run, `h = honorsBps`, `q = participationBps`, `c = cullThreshold`. - **Rounds to end** `R`: smallest `R` with `F₀ · (1−e)^R ≤ c`. - **Fee of round r**: `fee_r = baseFee + feeStep·(r−1)`. - **Pot**: `Σ_{r=1..R} field_r · fee_r · (1−h)` where `field_r = F₀·(1−e)^{r−1}` (the 80% after the honors skim). - **Participation pool**: `participationPool = q · pot`. **Champion jackpot**: `championPot = (1−q) · pot`. - **Total rounds won (all players)**: `W = Σ_{r=1..R} survivors_r ≈ Σ_{r=2..R+1} field_r` (each round's winners). - **Participation per win**: `pool ÷ W`. A bear that won `k` rounds earns `k · pool ÷ W` — **even if it was later eliminated** (a loss doesn't erase earlier wins; first-round losers won 0, so they get 0). - **Each champion's jackpot share**: `championPot ÷ survivors` (survivors ≈ `c`). - **Your max spend** (all your bears, every round to the end): `Σ_{r=1..R} b · fee_r`. A **hard ceiling** — you're only charged when you choose to vote; max loss = the fees you opt into. - **Your honors skim**: `h · (your fees)`; reclaimable up to 100% after 4 wins. - **Champion net** (all `b` survive to the end, won `R` rounds each): `share·b + (R·b)·pool/W + reclaimedSkim − yourFees`. - **Knocked-out net** (your `b` bears each won `k` rounds, then eliminated): `(k·b)·pool/W − yourFees` (no jackpot, but participation softens the loss — this is the "reward all players" term). - **Probability you reach round k** (blind, win-rate `w` per round, default 0.5): `w^{k}`. Going all the way ≈ `w^R` — small. (E.g. 9 rounds at 50% ≈ 1 in 512.) --- ## 10. Strategy levers to simulate Ask your model to optimize over these, for a given `(F₀, your bears b, opponent bull-bias p, e)`: 1. **Side each round** — with no info it's a coin flip; the edge comes from predicting the crowd's majority (memes, momentum, what the bigger wallets signal). 2. **Splitting your bears across both sides** — e.g. run `b = 50` as `25 Bull / 25 Bear`. Whichever side wins, that half of your bears survives; the other half is eliminated. This **buys survival certainty at the cost of guaranteed attrition + double fees**. With enough of your own bears you can even force **ties/draws** (everyone advances) — model when `yourBull + othersBull == yourBear + othersBear` is reachable and whether forcing a draw is +EV. 3. **Sitting out specific rounds** — pay nothing, keep all your bears (openJoin lets you rejoin). Useful to skip an expensive round or wait for the field to thin. **But the participation pool changes this:** rounds you sit out are rounds you don't *win*, so you earn no participation for them. The pure "sit out early, flood the final round" free-ride now leaves the early-win participation on the table for the players who actually fought — model the trade-off, it's no longer free. 4. **When to retire vs play on** — a branded loss forfeits your honors skim, but it does **not** forfeit the participation you already earned for rounds you won (collect it via `withdrawLoser` after the game ends). So a deep run that ends in a loss still pays the participation for those wins — playing on is less punishing than it looks. (Exit your bear *mid-game* and you DO forfeit the unfinalised pool share.) 5. **Concentration vs spread** — many bears = more jackpot shares if you win the decisive round AND more participation (more total wins across your bears), but `b ×` the fees and `b ×` the elimination exposure. 6. **Win depth** — because participation pays per round won, grinding wins across many rounds compounds: you collect participation for each, on top of (or even without) the jackpot. Reward now tracks *how much you won*, not just *whether you won the last round*. **Objective function**: maximize `E[payout] − E[fees]`, where payout = jackpot share (if a decisive-round champion) + participation reward (rounds you won ÷ all wins × pool) + reclaimed honors skim, minus fees, subject to your max-spend budget. Report the full outcome distribution (champion / retired / knocked-out), not just the mean — and note the knocked-out case now has a positive participation term for its wins. --- ## 11. Trust model (what the admin can and cannot do) - **Cannot** influence which side wins a round, who is champion, or the split among them. Settlement is permissionless and reads only on-chain reveals. - **Cannot** read your committed side before reveal (only a hash is stored). - **Can** tune economic params (fees before a round starts, cull, honors and participation %, round length, openJoin, pause new entries) and recover genuinely stuck bears to their original staker — none of which can edit a live vote tally or reopen a closed vote. - **Cannot** renounce ownership while bears/pot are held; there is no arbitrary-call backdoor. - **NUCLEAR OPTION (read this):** the owner — a **Safe multisig** — holds a deliberate emergency escape, `withdrawAll`, that can drain **all ETH** in the contract. It is **two-step + timelocked**: arming emits a public `NukeArmed` event and execution is blocked for **3 days** (`NUKE_DELAY`), so you get a public warning to claim/exit first. It takes **ETH only** — escrowed bears are never touched and stay recoverable to their stakers. This means the pot is ultimately backstopped by trust in the multisig, not by math alone. Watch for `NukeArmed`. > Parameters in this doc are launch defaults. Read them live from the contract before simulating a real > game: `feeForRound`, `cullThreshold`, `minFighters`, `honorsBps`, `participationBps`, `winRebateStepBps`, > `maxRebateBps`, `openJoin`, and `nukeArmedAt` (0 = no pending nuke). --- ## 12. FAQ — escrow, recovery, and the practical edge cases Everything below is enforced on-chain and **every action is a public contract function** — playable and recoverable directly via Etherscan / a script, the website is only a convenience. **How does my bear get escrowed, and how do I get it back?** The only way in is `enter(...)`, which pulls your bear into the contract and attaches your vote. (A raw transfer to the contract is rejected — "use enter()".) Getting it back is always possible, via the path that matches your state: `claimPrize` (champion → bear + jackpot + participation + honors), `withdraw` (survivor → bear + honors, +participation if the game ended), or `withdrawLoser` (eliminated → bear back, branded). The owner can also `emergencyReturn` any escrowed bear to its **original staker**, and after a nuke anyone can `reclaimBear` their own bear. No state can permanently trap a bear. **Can I pull my bear out in the middle of voting?** **No.** Once you've committed in the current round your bear is *locked in* for that round — `withdraw` and `withdrawLoser` both revert. The most you can do is `recommit` (change your sealed side) before the window locks. (Even the owner's `emergencyReturn` can't pull a *revealed* bear from a live, unsettled round — nobody can yank a live vote.) You become free to exit only after the round settles. **Sit out vs. exit — and can I come back?** Two different things, and only one lets you return: - **Sit out** = just don't enter a round. Your bear stays escrowed as a Survivor. With `openJoin` on (default) you can **re-enter any later round** — no penalty. - **Exit** = `withdraw` your bear *out* mid-game. This is a **one-way forfeit**: you give up the jackpot and your participation share, and the bear **can never re-enter this tournament** (it's marked `exited`). You keep the bear (un-branded) + your honors rebate. **I bought a noper bear on a marketplace and it won't let me play / says "loser."** A bear that lost a round is **branded `loser` forever** and **cannot enter** — that permanence *is* the game (elimination has to stick). A bear that was pulled out mid-game (`exited` / "Retired") also can't re-enter. Both states travel with the token, so a bear sold on secondary keeps them. **Marketplaces cache metadata and can show a stale status for a long time**, so the *only* reliable place to check a bear's status is on-chain / on the site — the battle page reads it live and warns you, and a bear's `Status` trait (Loser / Champion / Survivor / Retired) is read straight from the contract. **Check live status before buying a bear to play with.** (A new season is a fresh contract, so brands don't carry across seasons.) **What if I lose my salt / my vote never gets revealed?** Your vote is a blind hash; revealing needs the exact salt. The keeper auto-reveals from an encrypted server-side store, and the site offers a downloadable backup — but if a salt is truly lost, the vote simply **forfeits** (counts as a loss). You still get your bear back (branded) via `withdrawLoser`; no funds are ever at risk from a lost salt, you just lose that round. Keep a backup. **Can the game, the UI, or the math be cheated or broken?** Not for funds. The contract is independently audited (0 critical/high/medium), 122 automated tests, a 3,000-game solvency fuzz. Every payout is hard-capped (`prizePaid ≤ pot`, `participationPaid ≤ pool`, honors ≤ your own skim) and every input is validated — a wrong fee, bad salt, ineligible or double claim all revert. The website is never the source of truth for money; the contract is, and it re-checks everything. The on-page calculator is a clearly-labeled *model*, not a transaction. **Can the team take the pot?** The team cannot influence votes, champions, or the split — that's audited. There is one deliberate emergency escape: the owner (a Safe multisig) can `withdrawAll` the ETH, but it is **two-step and timelocked** — arming emits a public `NukeArmed` event and execution is blocked for 3 days, and it takes ETH only (your bear stays self-recoverable). So the pot is ultimately backstopped by trust in the multisig, which we state plainly. Watch for `NukeArmed`.