Hooked
Whitepaper

Hooked is a skill-driven, principal-first fishing game on Solana. It is built for players who want yield to feel like a prize, not a calculator output. Players deposit between 0.5 and 2 SOL into a weekly room.

The pooled SOL is deployed to an external Solana liquidity venue. The current venue is Meteora, where Hooked has measured an average of approximately 2% per week over the observation window. Yield is variable; the protocol does not guarantee a return, and routes to whichever Solana venue offers the best risk-adjusted return. At room close, harvested yield is concentrated on the top three players by skill, while every participant, winner or not, receives their full principal back in a single on-chain transaction.

The premise is simple. A 1 SOL deposit earning 2% weekly on its own would produce only 0.02 SOL. Pooling a full 20-SOL room and concentrating that same base yield turns it into a 0.16 SOL base-case first-place prize. Hooked pools small deposits and concentrates the resulting yield on the top performers, so a player with one SOL has a real shot at meaningful upside, earned through skill rather than capital.

No new player capital is ever paid out as rewards. There is no token, no presale, and no airdrop in the current scope of this paper. Yield comes from real external sources, principal is escrowed on-chain, and progression is bound to the player.

Web3 gaming and DeFi each promise to put more value in the hands of users. In practice, three structural failures keep that promise out of reach for most players.

2.1 · GameFi is extractive

Most play-to-earn rewards are funded by token issuance or by the spending of incoming users rather than by external value creation. Holders extract value from new entrants. There is no outside revenue feeding the economy; every reward owes its existence to a player who paid more recently.

2.2 · GameFi is a Ponzi scheme

Extractive economies are Ponzi-shaped by construction. When new entries slow, the system cannot honour its reward promises. The latest joiners absorb the loss; earlier participants exit with the rewards. Yield without external value creation is a queue with no anchor.

“This is not yield. It is a queue.”

2.3 · DeFi is whale-ruled

Traditional DeFi rewards capital, not effort. Even when yield is real, the absolute return on the deposit sizes most retail players can afford is too small to feel like a game outcome. At Hooked's base case of 2% weekly yield, a 1 SOL deposit would earn 0.02 SOL on its own. DeFi yield matters emotionally only to whales who already have a lot of capital. A retail player never feels the game in DeFi.

2.4 · Where Hooked sits

Hooked combines the two without their failure modes. Deposits pool into a 20-SOL room and deploy to external yield. Yield from the room goes to a small group of top performers, making the prize large enough for a one-SOL player. Principal stays in a vault, yield comes from outside the system, and outcomes are decided by skill, not bag size, so it does not need new buyers and whales cannot brute-force it.

Five commitments shape every decision in Hooked. They are listed in order of priority — earlier principles override later ones when they conflict.

1. 1

   Principal Guarantee.

   Player deposits are escrowed on-chain and returned in full at room close. The protocol's primary obligation is the safe return of principal.

2. 2

   Non-Extractive.

   Rewards are funded by external Solana liquidity venues, never by new player deposits.

3. 3

   Cheat-Resistant.

   Catch outcomes are resolved server-side and cryptographically verifiable. Automated play is detected at the input layer. Outcomes cannot be fabricated by the client.

4. 4

   Skill-Weighted.

   Deposits are capped at 2 SOL per player. A larger deposit means more chances to play, but the proportion of yield captured per skill outcome stays bounded.

5. 5

   Earned Progression.

   Rod and bait upgrades are paid for in in-game coins earned by playing. Equipment is soulbound and capped at small bonuses, so gear cannot dominate skill.

A room is a seven-day cycle. The steps below describe the operational lifecycle from deposit to close.

5.1 · Casts and skill

A cast always starts with a timing bar you stop at the optimal moment. Legendary and Apex outcomes then require a follow-up circular-tap window. Both layers are server-authoritative — local clients render the result, but never decide it. A perfect-timing player isn't guaranteed to beat an unlucky one on any single cast, but over 70–280 casts a week (depending on deposit size), skill compounds. Given the same RNG pool and enough casts, better timing is expected to widen the score gap over time, even though room-level outcomes still vary.

5.2 · Fish rarity and scoring

Fish are drawn from five rarity tiers. Score equals catch weight multiplied by the rarity multiplier. A larger or rarer fish is statistically harder to catch; perfect timing increases the probability of converting a hooked fish into a successful catch. Each cast first selects a tier, then a weight within it. Apex is available only during active seasonal events; outside event windows, only Basic, Rare, Monster, and Legendary can be drawn.

Hooked launches with 23 fish species distributed across the five tiers. Each tier has its own named roster and weight range.

Once a fish is hooked, the chance rate per weight below is the probability the cast successfully lands a fish of that weight. Basic fish land at 100% across the full 1–10 kg range; heavier and rarer fish become progressively harder to land.

Rare · 1.5×

Monster · 2.5×

Legendary · 3.5×

Apex · 4.0× · seasonal

5.3 · Day / night cycle

Bait windows refresh at UTC 02:00 and 14:00. Both windows use the same rarity distribution and scoring model; the cadence is operational, not probabilistic.

5.4 · Anti-exploit

All RNG is server-authoritative, resolved using HMAC-SHA256 with seed disclosure for post-room verification. Catches are published as HMAC-signed catch_resolved events so outcomes can be independently audited. Multi-accounting is bounded by the per-player deposit cap and the per-room cap.

6.1 · Flow of funds

Every lamport in a room follows a fixed custody path: deposit, deployment, then settlement. Principal accounting stays on-chain throughout, and only harvested yield is distributed by rank.

6.2 · Yield distribution

Yield is split only after principal has already been returned. The example below assumes a fully subscribed 20-SOL room at a measured 2% weekly LP return.

6.3 · Worked scenarios

Yield is variable. The three scenarios below show 1st-place prize size at a fully subscribed 20-SOL room across a realistic range of weekly LP returns. The base case (2%/week) reflects Hooked's measured return on Meteora; the bear case (0.5%/week) is included for transparency.

In the base case, the 1st-place player walks away with 0.16 SOL on top of their full principal — a meaningful prize for a one-week game. Even in the bear case, a 0.04 SOL prize (≈ $6 at $150 SOL) is a real outcome for a casual player who deposited 1 SOL. Compare that to plain DeFi on the same 1 SOL: at the same 2% weekly base case, the player would earn only 0.02 SOL if yield were distributed pro rata.

6.4 · In-game coin economy

Hooked has two currencies, each with a different job. SOL is the value layer — it enters the room, generates external yield, and leaves with the player. In-game coins are the progression layer: earned by playing, spent on gear. They live entirely off-chain, are not tokens, and never carry monetary value.

Every fish a player catches is added to their collection. From there, the player can keep the fish for collection value or sell it for in-game coins. Selling does not affect leaderboard score. The sell price equals the fish's score (weight × rarity multiplier), so a 10-kg Basic sells for 10 coins, while a 30-kg Apex sells for up to 120.

Earning rate

The table below estimates weekly off-chain coin output at roughly 70% sell-through. Higher deposits increase total casts, not coin efficiency per cast.

What coins buy

All gear is soulbound and permanent. Coins remain entirely off-chain and non-transferable.

Why no tradable currency

In-game coins deliberately do not exist on-chain and cannot be transferred between players. The reason is straightforward: a tradable in-game token would create a parallel market that turns the protocol back into the same extractive shape Hooked is designed to avoid. Today, value flows in one direction only: SOL deposits → external yield → SOL distributions. Coins are a private progression metric, not a market.

6.5 · Protocol sustainability

Hooked has two revenue streams described in this paper. The MVP revenue base is the protocol fee; sponsorships remain post-MVP. There is no token, no presale, and no reliance on continued user growth to honour existing obligations.

Because protocol revenue scales with the same base as player rewards (room TVL × realised yield × room frequency), incentives are aligned: the protocol does well only when rooms are active and yield is real. Hooked does not require user growth to keep paying out. A single 20-SOL room with a single LP source is internally consistent, even if no further rooms ever open.

Indicative annual fee revenue at base case

At base-case yield (2% per week) and 30% protocol share, each fully subscribed 20-SOL room generates 0.12 SOL of fee revenue. Phase 1 targets a single daily room; the table shows how revenue scales as cadence grows over later phases.

USD figures are illustrative at $150/SOL. Real protocol revenue scales with SOL price, realised LP yield, and observed room cadence.

Tournament Mode is a separate, opt-in format with its own disclosure flow and operating parameters. Where the standard room is positive-sum and principal-first, Tournament Mode is a separate competitive format for players who prefer faster cycles and higher variance — some earn SOL above their entry; others lose part or all of it. It is intentionally designed for a narrower audience and uses a separate disclosure flow.

7.1 · Format

Tournament Mode's opening parameters are below. These numbers can be changed. Final tournament terms are shown before entry, and any change is announced before the next tournament.

7.2 · How it differs from a standard room

In a standard room, even lower-ranking players still leave with their full principal. In Tournament Mode, entry SOL is explicitly at risk. The mode has its own user agreement and disclosure flow, and the principal-first commitments of standard rooms do not apply.

Two items shape the gear loop. Both are coin-funded and permanent. The coins referenced below are off-chain progression credits described in Section 6.4, not on-chain assets or tokens.

8.1 · Why bonuses are small

A fully maxed player has, at most, +5% weight and +4% rarity — only a few percent of statistical edge, well below the variance introduced by a single Rare or Apex catch. The math is intentional: gear should never be the difference between winning and losing a podium spot. Skill, not gear, decides outcomes.

8.2 · Soulbound by design

All gear is soulbound: non-transferable, non-tradable, and attached to the player's wallet. Equipment is not an asset class — it is a personal stat sheet. This eliminates secondary-market speculation, gear arbitrage, and the “newcomers pay incumbents” dynamic that broke other GameFi economies.

Custody and settlement live on Solana mainnet. Real-time fishing runs over WebSocket (Fastify + Redis) for low-latency responsiveness. The off-chain layer is a convenience tier that holds no player funds.

9.1 · On-chain programs

One Hooked-built Anchor program handles the core protocol logic. It has a narrow, well-defined responsibility, which keeps the audit surface and the trust model explicit.

9.2 · Real-time fishing stack

Fishing demands low-latency feedback: the timing bar, and for Legendary or Apex catches the follow-up circular tap and catch resolution. All real-time gameplay runs over WebSocket; the backend is Fastify with Redis managing game state, sorted-set leaderboards, deduplication, and rate limiting. This gives Hooked the responsiveness a game requires without routing gameplay through Solana mainnet for every cast. Importantly, value-bearing operations — deposits, principal returns, yield deployment, harvest, and distribution — are handled entirely on Solana mainnet by the hooked-rooms program. The off-chain WebSocket layer manages game state only and holds no player funds.

9.3 · Custody and trust model

Player principal is held by the hooked-rooms program vault for the full lifetime of a room. The hooked-rooms program is the only program authorised to move principal in or out of the LP venue. No off-chain service can move principal; deposits, deployments, harvests, and distributions are all on-chain and verifiable. If the off-chain stack goes offline entirely, the on-chain program continues to honour the close transaction.

A server-held keeper keypair is used to trigger settlement, return-principal, and finalize transactions. The keeper has authority to call these instructions but cannot mint, redirect, or withhold principal; those constraints are enforced by hooked-rooms. The keeper exists to schedule transactions, not to control funds.

9.4 · Randomness and cast integrity

Catch-resolution RNG is server-authoritative, implemented with HMAC-SHA256. The backend resolves catches and exposes the seed for post-room verification. Each resolved outcome is published as an HMAC-signed catch_resolved event, so outcomes can be independently audited after the room closes.

9.5 · Off-chain stack

The off-chain layer is intentionally lean. It exists to render the game, cache reads for speed, schedule lifecycle jobs, and ingest game events. None of it holds custody of funds.

Hooked ships in phases with target timing. Phase 1 is planned for May 2026, Phase 2 for Q2 2026, Phase 3 for Q3 2026, and Phase 4 for Q4 2026. Each phase is gated by the safety of the previous one. Capital is never opened to a phase that has not been validated end to end.

10.1 · Indicative success metrics

Hooked tracks the metrics below to validate that the design is working in practice. Phase 1 targets are intentionally conservative; early validation matters more than scale.

Hooked is built by a five-person founding team spanning community, business development, engineering, marketing, and design.

Plain-language definitions for the most technical terms used in this paper. The protocol dashboard hosts an extended glossary.

This whitepaper is provided for informational purposes only. It does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation to buy any security, token, or financial instrument, and it is not intended to be financial, investment, legal, tax, or professional advice. Nothing in this document creates a contractual obligation between the reader and the Hooked Team or any of its members.

Crypto-assets are volatile and carry risk, including the risk of total loss. Smart contracts may contain errors. Yields from external liquidity venues are not guaranteed and may be reduced or eliminated by market conditions. Past performance of comparable protocols is not indicative of future results.

Tournament Mode (Section 07) is an explicitly competitive, fee-bearing format. Entry SOL is at risk; only the published payout tiers receive distributions, and the principal-first commitments of standard rooms do not apply.

Readers are responsible for complying with the laws and regulations of their own jurisdiction. Hooked may not be available in all jurisdictions. Where access is restricted by applicable law, it is the reader's responsibility to refrain from participation.

Statements about future plans, including roadmap items and target architectures, are forward-looking and subject to change without notice. Numbers and scenarios in this document marked as illustrative are for explanatory purposes and do not constitute a forecast or guarantee of returns.

This paper reflects the May 2026 Hooked design state. The current LP venue is Meteora with a measured ~2% weekly return; the protocol may route to alternative Solana LP venues to optimise risk-adjusted yield. The document will be revised as further design decisions are finalised.

13.1 · Contact

Hooked is open to player questions, audit firms, partnership inquiries, and journalists. Official channels and links are listed below; the website is the canonical reference.

For safety, always cross-check public handles, community links, and inboxes against the official website before engaging.