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The Players' Whitepaper

The ocean's food chain, on-chain. Fish farm $CHUM. Sharks tax and steal it. How deep you swim decides how rich — or how chummed — you get.

↓ Scroll to descend · Sea level 0m

Start in 60 seconds

Pick your front door

Grab the free Minnow first — it teaches you the whole loop for nothing. When you're hooked, mint a Genesis egg and play for keeps. Both take about a minute.

Free Minnow

Free

A soulbound starter fish. Earns up to 500 $CHUM — enough to learn the water. Can't be stolen, sold, or bred. One per wallet.

Genesis Egg

$13 in ETH

Sealed Roe that hatches in 1–2 minutes into a 90% Fish / 10% Shark. You don't know which until it cracks — or pay $130 for a guaranteed Shark if you want a sure predator. That's the thrill.

The food chain

Everyone has a place in the ocean

Your creature's look is pixel art generated from its on-chain DNA — it can never be faked, lost, or rug-pulled off a server. It lives on the chain forever.

Minnowfree · capped

Training wheels. Earns a capped 500 $CHUM, then retires. Soulbound.

Fish90% of mints

The producers. Stake in the Reef, choose a depth, farm $CHUM under risk.

Shark10% of mints

The predators. Tax every claim and devour risky ones whole. Bite 5–8 — higher Bite, bigger cut.

Megalodononly 25 ever

Fuse three Bite-8 Sharks. 1.5× tax weight and a permanent spot on the board.

Orcaseason 2

The plot twist: Orcas hunt Sharks. The predators finally learn fear — the counter-predator the games we grew up on never shipped.

The Depth Dial · your risk, your choice

How deep will you swim?

Stake a Fish and it earns $CHUM every second. But first you choose your depth — and this is the game. Every number below is the exact odds the contract uses. Nothing is hidden. The deeper you go, the more you earn… and the more the Sharks can take.

0m · surface

The Shallows

Calm water. Boring is a strategy — you literally cannot lose your pile here.

Rate 1.0× Shark tax 20% Cash out always safe
−40m · open water

Open Water

60% more yield. Leaving is a bet: 3-in-4 you walk clean, 1-in-4 they strip you at the door.

Rate 1.6× Shark tax 25% Exit gamble 25%
−300m · the deep

The Deep

Degen territory. Maximum yield, but every claim is a coin-flip against a feeding frenzy.

Rate 2.5× Shark tax 30% Claim frenzy 20% Exit gamble 50%

You can move between depths anytime — but changing depth cashes out your pending $CHUM first, so you face the current depth's rules on the way. No sneaking your pile from the Deep to the Shallows for free.

How you lose — and why it's the fun

The Sharks are the point

Getting chummed is a rite of passage. The game literally makes you a " i got chummed" card to post — because here, your losses are content too.

Predator moveWhenWhat it takes
TaxEvery claim20–30%, split among patrolling Sharks by Bite. Guaranteed.
Feeding FrenzyRisky claims & exitsYour entire pending pile → one Shark, by Bite-weighted lottery.
Newborn SnatchWhen you breed10% of hatchlings grabbed straight out of the nursery.

Bubble Shield — insurance for the cautious

Before any risky move, buy a Bubble Shield: pay a 10% premium up front, and if the Sharks hit you, you keep 50% instead of losing everything. Swim deep without betting the whole pile on one flip.

The honest economy

The part most crypto games lie about

We won't. Here's exactly how $CHUM works — and why a quiet week makes it scarcer, not weaker.

Hard cap, forever

1,000,000,000 $CHUM. No function can ever mint more.

Earned in the water

No presale. No VC. No team unlock dumping on you. The only way $CHUM exists is by playing.

The faucet tightens

Rewards flow in 30-day Tides, each releasing less than the last, on a fixed schedule.

Half of every spend burns

Every $CHUM spent — breeding, shields, fees — 50% is destroyed forever. The more it's played, the scarcer it gets.

The Genesis mint funds the game — transparently

The mint is priced in dollars ($13 each) and paid in ETH at the live feed rate, so a full 33,333-egg base-price mint grosses $433,329 whatever ETH is worth. The contract splits every dollar itself — hardcoded, visible on the block explorer, no hidden wallets:

75%
Marketing
10%
Liquidity
10%
Operations
5%
Team

The lion's share — 75% to marketing — is the war chest that brings players to the water; a game this genre lives or dies on reach. Crucially, none of the mint ETH is recycled back into gameplay rewards. The $CHUM economy funds itself from capped, decaying emissions and the 50% recycle on every sink, so the treasury never has to reinject money to keep rewards flowing. We show the live burned-vs-emitted ratio on the homepage — above 1.0× means more is being destroyed than created. We can't fake it — it's on-chain.

The rest of the reef

More ways to play

Schools — safety in numbers

Join a School and every member beyond the first lowers everyone's steal odds, up to −10 points. A big pod is genuinely harder to rob. Taxes still apply — Sharks always eat.

Spawning — make more, risk more

Burn $CHUM to breed two creatures into an egg. Hatches in 3 days (2 in the Deep Nursery), with a 10% Shark snatch at the door. Build a fleet — if it survives.

Chum Lines — bring your chums

"Chum" means bait. It also means friend. Earn 5% of everything a friend ever burns, forever; they get a 2% rebate. Follows real play, not signups — it can't be farmed.

Share your moments

Every big beat — Apex pull, frenzy win, getting chummed, swimming free — makes a one-tap share card with your creature and your Chum Line baked in.

Play as a Shark

Pulled a predator? Patrol the Reef, collect tax from every Fish, win frenzy jackpots, snatch newborns, and hunt for a Megalodon fusion. 100% redistribution, zero inflation.

Seasons & the deep future

Each 30-day Tide is a season with ETH prizes. Ahead: Orcas that hunt Sharks, ownable Reefs you defend in raids, and a full DAO handover to $CHUM holders.

Strategy

Don't get wrecked (or do, on purpose)

If you're cautious

  • Start in the Shallows — you cannot lose your pile there. Learn the rhythm.
  • Join a School early. The steal-reduction is free defense.
  • Use Bubble Shields the first few times you go deeper.
  • Claim often rather than hoarding — a frenzy can only take what's currently pending.

If you're a degen

  • The Deep pays 2.5× and every claim is a 20% flip. Stack a pile, gun for the "SWAM FREE" card.
  • Pull Sharks, patrol hard, hunt the biggest Deep-water Fish for jackpots.
  • Chase the Megalodon — only 25 exist, and your name stays on the board forever.
  • Remember the Sharks are other players. This is PvP. That's the game.

Read this

The honest truth

$CHUM is a game token, not an investment. Its price can go to zero.

The steal mechanics mean you can lose everything you have at stake on a single roll — a roll whose odds are always shown to you first. This is a game of stakes and bragging rights, built to be fun, not a way to get rich.

Play with what you'd happily lose. Read the odds. Swim responsibly.

Get in the water

The reef is open

Shark Game runs on Robinhood Chain — a fast, cheap Ethereum Layer-2. It's live right now on the public testnet for everyone to try with free test ETH.

Welcome to the reef. Try not to get chummed.