Mines — How to play & pay table

Everything about the game: how it plays, what each combination pays, the RTP, and how every round can be verified on-chain.

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Mines

Open a tile, keep the winnings, decide again

House Edge: 2.00% – 2.86%

Mines is the classic minefield, running entirely on-chain — with one honest difference: there is no round. You choose how many of the 25 tiles hide a mine, then open them one at a time, and each reveal is its own independent bet. A surviving reveal pays into your Balance immediately and the next tile re-stakes exactly that amount, so the ladder you climb is real money changing hands at every rung.

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Fairness

Nothing about the board is hidden, and the mines are no longer merely asserted — they are published. The chain produces verifiable randomness (Chainlink VRF on Arbitrum, Switchboard on Solana — committed before your bet and verified at reveal), your bet carries the map of tiles you have already opened, and the program draws the mines among the tiles that map says are STILL FACE DOWN. The strike is settled first — with r tiles face down and M mined, you bust when randomness mod r lands in the top M ranks, so survival is exactly (r − M)/r — and only then are the other mines arranged. That order is the point: the arrangement decides which mines you are shown, never whether you won. When you bust, the chain publishes the whole mined board for that press, and you can redraw it from the same published value. A surviving press publishes nothing, on purpose: every press re-draws over the tiles still face down, so posting a board after each one would show mines that appear to move — and a tile you have already opened is excluded from every later draw, so it stays safe forever. Every step pays ⌊98·r/s⌋ percent (s = r − M), from a table generated from a single source and compiled into the program. That floor is the honest part: a two-outcome bet has one payout knob and the label grid is 0.01×, so the return lands at 98% or just under it, never above — 97.14% to 98.00% across the table, a house edge of 2.00% to 2.86%. That figure is PER STEP. A climb is a chain of separate bets that each paid their own edge, so an eight-rung climb returns about 0.98⁸ of what was staked through it, not 98% — the board shows your real running total instead of a headline the maths cannot keep, and each rung prints its own return beside its own multiplier.

Randomness by: Chainlink VRF · SwitchboardContract operated by: DODEN.IO

Frequently asked questions

How does Mines work?: The board holds 25 tiles and you choose how many hide a mine (1 to 24), then open them one at a time. EVERY TILE YOU OPEN IS ITS OWN BET: survive and the winnings land in your Balance, and the next tile automatically stakes exactly what you just won. Hit a mine and that step's stake is gone. More mines means each step pays more: with 1 mine the first step pays 1.02×, while 24 mines leaves a single step that pays 24.50×. The biggest number on the board is NOT one step's multiplier — it is your REAL running total, the product of the rungs you actually bought (three mines, eight tiles opened = 2.80×).
Is "cash out" a transaction?: No — and that is the most important thing about this game. There is no multi-step round on-chain: each tile reveal has already settled and already paid into your Balance. Stopping is simply not betting the next step. Nothing to sign, nothing that can fail, and no money can ever be stranded in a half-finished round.
Is there a hidden mine layout?: There is no pre-set layout and still no board account on-chain — but there IS a real board on every press now, and it gets published. Your bet carries the map of tiles you have already opened; the program settles the strike with `randomness mod r` (r = tiles still face down) and then draws the M mines among exactly those tiles. When you BUST it publishes the whole mined mask for that press, so you can redraw it from the published value instead of taking our word for it. A surviving press publishes 0 — deliberately: every press re-draws over the tiles still face down, so posting a board each time would show mines that appear to move. And a tile you have already opened is excluded from every later draw, so it stays safe forever.
Where do the multipliers come from?: Pure combinatorics: each step pays ⌊98·r/s⌋ percent, where r is how many tiles are still face-down and s is how many of them are safe. The table is generated from a single source and lives in the on-chain program, and every entry sits on the 0.01× grid — the number on the label is the number paid.
So is the RTP exactly 98%?: Per STEP it is close; per CLIMB it is not, and we say so. A tile reveal has exactly ONE payout knob and the label grid is 0.01×, so rounding DOWN (the ⌊ ⌋) always lands the return at 98% or below — never above. Across the table's 300 cells the real return runs from 97.14% to 98.00% (a house edge of 2.00%–2.86%); only 116 cells land on 98.00% exactly, and the worst is 1 mine at step 5, which pays 1.02× and returns 97.14%. But every rung is an INDEPENDENT bet that has already paid its own edge, so a k-rung climb returns roughly 0.98^k. That is why the board makes your REAL running total the big number and prints the RTP of the rung you are about to buy right beside that rung's own multiplier.
Can I climb forever?: The table has a natural end: n mines leaves exactly 25 − n steps. The real ceiling is the bankroll, though — each step is a fresh bet for a larger amount, and the bankroll's Kelly cap REFUSES any bet it could not pay. A refusal leaves your money exactly where it is, in Balance; the house never takes a bet it cannot settle.
What is the minimum bet?: 5 USDT for the opening step. Later steps are not typed in: they stake precisely what the previous step paid, floored the same way the chain floors it.