Rule booklet · Beta

How Despot works, from your first buy to the end of a season.

Every rule of the game, in the order you meet it. You buy shares in a country, your money becomes its army, and every round the armies fight. The winners take the losers' shares.

One round, 16 minutes^*About 90 rounds a day, around the clock.

1Trade

Buy, sell and vote

Prices move with every buy and sell. Your shares also vote on which country yours attacks.

2War

The armies fight

Each country draws its target by a lottery weighted by the votes. A battle is a weighted coin flip.

3Loot

Winners take everything

The loser's shares become the winner's loot. Winners can keep it, or claim it and sell it.

ContentsRead it in order the first time. Every chapter stands on its own after that. For a quick overview first, see how Despot works.

1Getting started
2Countries, shares and prices
3Buying and selling
4The round clock
5Armies and odds
6Voting on a target
7Battles
8Loot
9Occupied countries
10Land, names and flags
11Fees
12Fair results
13Your money and rule changes
14The end of a season
15Glossary

1 · Getting started

A wallet, a balance and a session.

You play with your own Solana wallet. Despot never holds your keys, and only your wallet can take money out of the game.

Connect a Solana wallet and create your account. One approval creates it and moves your first deposit, at least 0.03 SOL, into your Despot balance. The balance belongs to your wallet, and only your wallet can withdraw from it.
One-click trading, if you want it. Off, your wallet approves each buy, sell, vote and claim. On, your wallet approves a session key once, and for up to 24 hours your buys, sells, votes and claims go through without a wallet pop-up.
A session has limits. It can only trade, vote and claim, it has a spending cap, and it ends on its own. It can never withdraw your money.
Money comes back to your balance. Sales, loot-sale payouts and returned deposits all land there. Withdraw to your wallet whenever you like.

Costs besides the game itself

Account deposit: About 0.0013 SOL, once, when you create your account. Solana holds it with your account, and it comes back if the account is closed.
Prepaid fees: 0.01 SOL, only with one-click trading. Your browser holds it to pay your trades' network fees, and what is left comes back to your wallet when you turn it off.
Position deposit: About 0.0058 SOL, once for each country you hold, taken from your first buy there. You get it back when you sell everything in that country and close it.
Network fee: Every transaction pays Solana's own fee: 0.000005 SOL, plus a small priority fee of at most about 0.00001 SOL. It is paid separately, never out of the amount you type.

2 · Countries, shares and prices

Early buyers pay less.

Every country has its own shares, and one price curve sets the price of every share. Buying creates new shares and raises the price. Selling removes shares and lowers it.

There is no order book and no one on the other side: you always buy from the curve and sell back to it. The money you pay goes into the country's reserve on Solana. The reserve is what stands behind the shares: it pays sellers, and it is the country's army.

Because each share costs a little more than the one before, money that comes in after you lifts the value of your shares. Money that leaves lowers it.

One country Settings today

Shares per country150,000

Last share costs15× the first

A sold-out country holds30 SOL

The share cap can be raised later, along the same curve, which never changes what existing shares are worth. It can never be lowered, and the curve's shape cannot change during a season.

3 · Buying and selling

You never pay more than you type.

Trade while trading is open. That is the Trade and vote stage, the first 11 minutes of every round.
The fee is 0.5%, added on top of the curve price, on buys and on sells.
The late surcharge. In the last 9% of trading, about the last 59 seconds, the fee climbs step by step until it reaches 1% at the moment trading closes.
The amount you type is the most you pay, fee included. If the price moves and you would get fewer shares than quoted, the app asks you first, unless you allowed a small difference.
The smallest buy is about 0.001 SOL, fee included.
Half of every buy is locked until the next war has been fought, normally at the end of the round you bought in. If that war is voided, the half stays locked until a war is fought. Locked shares still vote and still count in the army.
Sell your unlocked shares whenever trading is open. A sale pays what the curve gives at that moment, minus the fee. Loot you claim is never locked.

What happens to every buy

Half: sellable

Half: locked

Can be sold whenever trading is open. Rides into the war. Unlocks once the war is fought.

Example

You type 1 SOL. About 0.995 SOL buys shares and about 0.005 SOL is the 0.5% fee. Half of the shares you get are locked until the war. In the last seconds before trading closes, the same 1 SOL buys about 0.990 SOL of shares, because the fee has climbed to 1%.

4 · The round clock

Every round has four stages.

A round lasts 16 minutes^* and the next one starts right after it, so there are about 90 rounds a day. The result of one war decides who holds what when the next one begins.

One round16 minutes

Trade and vote 11 min

Buy, sell, vote and change your vote, in every country. The last 59 seconds carry the late surcharge.

Sealed 30 s

Nothing trades and nothing votes. Positions freeze, so nobody can change sides at the last second.

War 2.5 min

No market is open anywhere. Each country draws its target and the battles are fought, one after another.

Loot sale 2 min

Claim your loot, and sell loot in the countries conquered this round, at one price for everyone. Every other country stays closed.

5 · Armies and odds

A battle is a weighted coin flip.

A country's army is the money behind its own shares plus the money behind all the loot it holds. The more money behind a country, the stronger it is.

A side's chance of winning is its army divided by both armies together. When no occupied country is involved, each side fights with exactly what it would lose, so the battle is a fair bet for both sides. Occupied countries have one setting of their own, explained in chapter 9.

Your part of your country's army is the part your shares hold. The app shows the army and the odds live, all through the round.

Example battle

Türkiye's army is 6 SOL and Russia's is 4 SOL, 10 SOL in all. Türkiye wins 6 times in 10, Russia 4 times in 10.

6 · Voting on a target

Votes make a target likely. The draw decides.

Your shares vote on which country yours attacks. The votes do not pick the target outright: at the war, each country draws its target by a lottery weighted by its votes.

One share, one vote. A bigger holding carries a bigger vote. Locked shares vote too, and your vote covers every share you hold in that country, including the ones you buy later.
Vote any time during Trade and vote. Votes freeze when the Sealed stage starts, and they carry over to later rounds until you change them.
One vote commits a country. If anyone in a country votes, that country goes to war. There is no abstaining. A country where nobody votes does not attack.
Votes that do not count. You cannot vote for your own country. A position needs about 0.001 SOL behind it for its vote to count. Loot sitting in your country's pool does not vote until it is claimed.
Countries with nothing to win are left out. If a target's whole prize is worth about 0.001 SOL or less, it is removed from the draw, and the draw is weighted over the remaining targets.
Votes are public. Everyone can see every country's votes all through the round. Nobody knows the draw until it happens.

Example draw

Russia

70%

China

30%

Türkiye's holders put 70% of their votes on Russia and 30% on China. At the war, Türkiye attacks Russia 7 times in 10 and China 3 times in 10. The most popular target is the most likely one, never a certainty.

7 · Battles

Conquest is total.

Coalitions. Countries that draw the same target attack it together, as one side. Their armies are added up, and if they win, the loot is split by the army each one brought.
Order. Battles are grouped by defender, shuffled into a random order and fought one at a time.
A failed attack. If the defender holds, it conquers every attacker in that battle. Attacking is exactly as risky as being attacked.
All or nothing. The loser's shares all move to the winning side as loot. Players who held the losing country lose those shares. There are no partial results.
One round, many battles. A country conquered earlier in the round does not get to make its own attack. A country that wins and then loses later in the same round loses everything, including what it just won. When two countries attack each other, whichever battle comes first decides, and the other is cancelled.
Results land at once. All battles are decided on Solana within seconds. The app shows them one by one across the War stage.

Example coalition

Türkiye (6 SOL) and China (2 SOL) both draw Russia (4 SOL). The attackers bring 8 SOL against 4 SOL and win 2 times in 3. If they win, Türkiye takes 75% of Russia's shares and China 25%. If they lose, Russia conquers both of them.

8 · Loot

Keep it in the empire, or take it out.

When your country wins, the loser's shares land in a loot pool held by your country. Loot the loser was holding comes along too. Your slice of it is in proportion to your stake in your country.

Your slice. Your stake is the shares you hold in your country, plus any loot of yours still in its pool, counted at the last war's prices. The game records everyone's stake automatically each round.
Loot left in the pool fights for your country, falls with it if your country is conquered, and earns you a bigger slice of the next war's loot. It does not vote.
Claiming takes your slice out as your own shares of the conquered country. Claimed shares are safe if your country falls, they vote in their own country and you can sell them. They are lost if that country is conquered. Claiming is final: nothing can put shares back into a pool.
Claims happen in the loot sale, right after a war, never before one.
The loot sale. For 2 minutes after the war, each country conquered that round holds a sale. Place a sell order; it cannot be cancelled. When the sale closes, all the shares sold in that country go down its curve as one block, and every seller gets the same price per share. The fee is 0.5%, with no surcharge, and the money lands in your balance.
Speed is worthless. Selling first or last in the sale pays the same. If you do not sell, you keep the shares and can sell them on the curve in a later round.

Two choices for your loot

	Left in the pool	Claimed
Fights for your country	Yes	No
Lost if your country falls	Yes	No
Earns a bigger slice next war	Yes	No
Votes	No	Yes, in its own country
Can be sold	No	Yes

Example

You hold 10% of Türkiye's stake when Türkiye conquers Russia on its own. 10% of the Russian shares Türkiye takes are your loot.

9 · Occupied countries

A conquered country can rise again.

A country is occupied while another country holds its shares as loot. Conquest takes every share that exists, but players can still buy new ones afterwards, so most occupied countries are only partly occupied.

Two kinds of shares. Shares held by players vote and fight for the country. Shares held as loot fight for the occupier, never for the country they came from.
Buying into an occupied country. All of a country's shares share one price, so a buy also raises the value of the occupiers' loot, and that part fights for them. The buy ticket shows how much of your buy counts in war for the country.
The backup setting gives part of that back: today, half of the part that would otherwise fight for the occupiers counts for the country instead. The setting can change only with six rounds' notice (chapter 13).
The country card shows the army, and under it the money the country's own holders have in it.
Freedom comes only by beating the occupier head-on. When an occupied country conquers its occupier, its holders get their country's shares back as ordinary shares during that loot sale, automatically. Allies who helped take their part and become occupiers themselves.
Other ways an occupation ends. If the occupier is conquered, its conqueror takes over the occupation. If the occupier's holders claim all the loot, the occupation is over.
A fully held country, with every share held as loot and none left to buy, has no voters and cannot attack until someone claims shares out or the cap is raised.

Example buyBackup at 50%

Saudi Arabia's occupiers hold 7.7% of the Saudi shares bought so far. A buy of 0.0493 SOL after the fee counts 0.0487 SOL in war for Saudi Arabia, and 0.0006 SOL, 1.2%, lifts the occupiers' loot.

The bigger the occupiers' part, the less of a buy counts for the country. The ticket always shows the exact split before you buy.

10 · Land, names and flags

Your piece of the map.

Land, names and flags are for show: they change nothing in the game. Everyone sees the same map, so every border, name and flag is public.

Your land. Every holder of at least 1% of a country gets their own land inside it on the map, in the same place on every screen.
Name it once a round. The name shows inside your land when the map is zoomed in far enough. Anyone can report a name, and moderators take down the ones that cross the line.
Occupied land. Where one country holds a piece of another, each holder of the occupier whose part of that piece comes to at least 0.5% of the occupied country's shares gets land inside it. The piece takes the occupier's colours.
Flags. Each country's holders choose its flag from its present-day flag and flags it flew in the past. Votes are weighted by shares, and the flag with the most shares behind it flies. A tie keeps the current flag, and with no votes the country flies its present-day flag. You get one flag vote a round in each country.

11 · Fees

Despot earns only from trading fees.

0.5%

On every buy and every sell, on top of the curve price. Selling in a loot sale costs the same.

+0.5%

The most the fee rises in the last minute of trading, so a trade at the final moment pays 1%.

Taken from wars. Everything a losing country gives up goes to the winners.

Fees go to the platform and are kept apart from the money behind every country. A fee never comes out of a country's reserve or its army.

Two other amounts reach the platform: the fee on the payout at a season's end (chapter 14), and, at a season's end, leftovers that no player is entitled to, such as rounding dust.

None of this guarantees a profit. Every gain in Despot comes from other players: from the players who bought after someone else, or from the players who backed the losing side.

12 · Fair results

Nobody can steer a war.

Every draw in a round, the targets, the order of battles and every outcome, comes from one random number. It is made of two parts that nobody controls together: a secret seed the game committed to on Solana in advance, and the fingerprint of a Solana block produced after trading closed.

Nobody knows the outcome before trading closes, and anyone can check every result afterwards.

Void rounds

If the random number is not produced in time, the round is void. Nothing changes hands, no fee moves, and trading reopens in the next round. Every void is counted publicly.

The game could only cause a void by refusing to reveal its seed. The team holds no positions, so a void gains it nothing.

13 · Your money and rule changes

Your shares are yours.

Non-custodial

Your shares are recorded on Solana under your own wallet, and only you can sell them or withdraw the money.
Payouts always go to your own balance and wallet, never to an address anyone else chooses.
The platform cannot move, freeze or take your shares.
The only way you lose shares is by the game's own rules, when your country loses a war.

A pause stops buying at once. Selling keeps working. Wars stop from the round after next, never in a round whose votes are already frozen, and when the game resumes, wars come back with the same delay.
If the team stops running rounds, anyone can pause the game after about 6 hours^*, and anyone can run the rounds after about 24 hours, so nobody's money stays stuck for longer than about a day.
Rule changes come with notice. Fees, stage lengths, the share lock, the minimums and the occupied-country backup can change, but only six rounds after they are announced, about 96 minutes. The top bar then shows "Rule change in N rounds"; hover or tap it to see what changes.
What cannot change during a season: the price curve's shape. The share cap can only go up.

14 · The end of a season

Every share is paid out.

A season ends with a payout of every share left in the game. It is announced at least six rounds ahead, about 96 minutes.

After the announcement, buying stops. Selling keeps working at the curve price, claims keep working, and wars stop within two rounds. Until the cutoff, the end can still be called off.
At the cutoff, nothing trades, votes or claims any more.
The payout. Every share left, loot included, is paid its country's average backing: the country's reserve divided by its shares. A fee equal to the sell fee comes off, 0.5% today and never more than 1.5%.
The money lands in your balance, and your position deposits come back.

Example

A country ends the season with 60,000 shares and 5.7 SOL in its reserve, so each share is paid 0.000095 SOL. Your 6,000 shares are paid 0.57 SOL, less the 0.5% fee: about 0.567 SOL.

15 · Glossary

The game's words.

Army: The money behind a country's own shares plus the money behind the loot it holds. It sets the country's odds in battle.
Backup setting: How much of a buy into an occupied country counts for that country in war instead of for its occupiers. 50% today.
Balance: Your money inside Despot. It belongs to your wallet, and only your wallet can withdraw it.
Claim: Taking your slice of loot out of your country's pool as your own shares. Only in the loot sale, and final.
Coalition: Countries that drew the same target and attack it together, as one side.
Conquest: Winning a battle. All of the loser's shares held by players move to the winners as loot.
Empire: A country together with all the loot it holds.
Late surcharge: The extra fee in the last minute of trading, rising to 0.5% on top of the base fee.
Liberation: An occupied country conquering its occupier and getting its shares back.
Locked shares: The half of a buy that cannot be sold until the next war has been fought.
Loot: Shares a country won in war, held in its pool for its holders.
Loot sale: The 2 minutes after the war when loot is claimed and sold, at one price per conquered country.
Lottery: The draw that picks each country's target, weighted by its votes.
Occupier: A country that holds another country's shares as loot.
Position deposit: A refundable 0.0058 SOL kept while you hold a country, returned when you close it.
Reserve: The money behind a country's shares, held on Solana. Buyers pay into it and sellers are paid from it.
Session: A key your wallet approves once so you can play without a pop-up for every move. It cannot withdraw.
Share: A unit of a country. Its price follows the country's curve.
Stake: Your shares in a country plus your loot still in its pool, which sets your slice of its next loot.
Void round: A round whose random number was not produced in time. Nothing changes hands.

Notes

* At Solana's current speed. The game measures time in Solana's blocks, not on a clock, so if Solana's block time changes, every round and stage runs a little shorter or longer than the minutes shown.

Settings marked "today" are the launch settings. Each one can change only with six rounds' notice, shown in the game's top bar.

For a short tour of the game in eight languages, see how Despot works. For why the game is built this way, read the Despot white paper; for the full mechanics and the maths, the Despot technical paper.