Game Economy

Beyond XP and rewards, DegensQuest has a live in-game economy with three pillars:

1. Power-ups — consumable boosts you buy with QUEST or $DEGEN and spend on a match. The primary QUEST sink, with a burn that makes QUEST deflationary.
2. Match wagering — optional $DEGEN ante pots between players, plus parimutuel spectator side-bets, settled when the match ends.
3. Progressive jackpot — a single growing $DEGEN pool, fed by a slice of wager rake, that pays out to a lucky participant once it crosses its threshold.

In-game only. All wagering and the jackpot use $DEGEN, the in-game soft currency — never real money. $DEGEN cannot be bought, sold, or withdrawn (see $DEGEN Balance). Power-ups can additionally be bought with QUEST, the on-chain token, which settles on Base.

More economy features are rolling out over time — this page documents what is live today.

Power-ups

Power-ups are consumable, single-match boosts. They are DegensQuest’s primary QUEST sink: most are priced in on-chain QUEST, and a configurable share of every purchase is burned — permanently removed from circulation — making QUEST deflationary as the game is played.

Launch catalog

The catalog is QUEST-first by design and may expand over time; the live list and prices are always shown on the Power-ups page in the web app and Mini App. Effects apply to your next match (or, for Streak Shield, to your daily streak) and are consumed when used.

How buying works

The two currencies settle differently:

• $DEGEN power-ups settle instantly. Your $DEGEN balance is debited and the power-up lands in your inventory in a single atomic step.
• QUEST power-ups settle on-chain. Buying opens a pending purchase with a deposit intent: you transfer the QUEST to the protocol treasury on Base (chainId 8453), then submit the transaction hash to confirm. The power-up is granted only after the on-chain transfer is verified (confirmations-aware — it is never faked or front-credited).

Every purchase, grant, and consume is exactly-once: retrying a buy or a confirm with the same request never double-charges or double-grants you.

The burn (why QUEST is deflationary)

Each power-up carries a burn rate (its share of the price that is removed from circulation rather than recycled). At launch the QUEST power-ups burn 10–25% of their price; the $DEGEN power-ups have no burn. Because power-ups are bought repeatedly as people play, this creates continuous, usage-driven deflationary pressure on QUEST supply. Burn amounts are recorded on the ledger for full transparency.

Inventory & consuming

Owned power-ups sit in your inventory (quantity per power-up). When you enter a match, eligible power-ups are offered; consuming one decrements your inventory by one and applies the effect to that match. Some power-ups have a per-user ownership cap to keep them fair.

Match wagering ($DEGEN)

Any match can host an optional $DEGEN wager pot. This is a points game using the in-game soft currency — there is no real-money betting anywhere in DegensQuest.

Ante pots

• The match host or staff (the guild owner, or a moderator/admin) opens a pot on a match, setting a fixed ante amount.
• While the pot is in its lobby, each player can ante in once — their $DEGEN stake is escrowed on the append-only ledger and added to the pot.
• When the match starts, the pot locks: no new antes (side-bets can stay open).
• When the match resolves, the winners split the pot equally, minus a small platform rake.

Spectator side-bets (parimutuel)

Spectators (and players) can back an outcome — a winning participant or team — with a side-bet in $DEGEN. Side-bets are parimutuel: everyone who backed the correct outcome splits the side-bet pool (minus rake) pro-rata to their stake. There are no fixed odds — your share depends on how much was bet on each side.

If nobody backed the correct outcome, the entire distributable side-bet pool rolls over into the progressive jackpot (so the $DEGEN is never lost — it funds a future jackpot win).

Rake

A platform rake is skimmed from each pool on resolution:

• Default rake: 5% of each pool. It is configurable per pot, up to a hard maximum of 20%.
• The rake is split: a configurable cut (20% by default) seeds the progressive jackpot, and the remainder goes to the treasury.

Refunds

If a pot’s lobby expires before the match ever starts (default window: 1 hour), every ante and side-bet is refunded in full automatically.

Conservation & fairness

The $DEGEN economy is conserved: every base unit staked is accounted for as a winner payout, a treasury share, a jackpot contribution, or a refund — nothing is created or destroyed in a wager. Every stake, payout, and refund is exactly-once and recorded on the append-only ledger, so a pot’s books always balance.

Progressive jackpot

DegensQuest runs a single global progressive jackpot — a growing $DEGEN pool that pays out big, occasionally, to an active player.

How it fills

• A slice of every wager rake (the jackpot cut — 20% by default) flows into the pool.
• Orphaned side-bet pools (rounds where no one picked the winning outcome) roll into it.
• Rounding dust from pot splits is swept in too — keeping the books exact.

How it pays

• When the pool crosses its threshold (1,000 $DEGEN by default), a draw is triggered.
• The winner is drawn from players who anted into a pot recently (within a rolling eligibility window — 7 days by default), weighted by how much they staked. Bigger and more frequent participation means better odds — but it is never guaranteed.
• The draw uses cryptographically secure randomness and is unbiased across the weighted field.
• The winner takes the entire pool; it then resets to zero and starts growing again.

The live jackpot balance, threshold, and recent winners are shown in the Arena/jackpot view in the app.

Fair-play note

• No real-money gambling. Wagering and the jackpot are played entirely in $DEGEN, an in-game soft currency with no real-world value that cannot be bought, sold, cashed out, or converted to QUEST. Think arcade tokens, not chips.
• Provably accounted. Every $DEGEN move is an append-only ledger entry; pots conserve value exactly and settle exactly-once, so outcomes can be audited and replayed.
• Anti-abuse. Per-day $DEGEN earning/spend caps and exactly-once settlement prevent automation from draining or inflating the economy (see $DEGEN Balance).
• Play responsibly. Wagering is optional and for fun. Set your own limits and treat $DEGEN as a game score, not a financial instrument.

For how the on-chain QUEST token, its sinks, and the fee flywheel fit together, see QUEST Utility & Tokenomics.