How the game works.

01Overview

Everything you win or lose in VC Wars is play money. Here's what each piece is:

The core loop: clock in at a desk → trade on paper during your 20-minute shift → bank the alpha you made at The Vault before the closing bell → spend your $WARS growing the fund.

02Getting started

1. Sign in, or play as a guestConnect Robinhood Wallet, MetaMask or any EVM browser wallet on Robinhood Chain and sign one message. It's free and moves nothing. Guests can play right away; signing in keeps your progress.
2. Pick a name and a lookVest Bro, Quant, Closer, Degen or Intern. They're cosmetic, except that Interns walk a little faster.
3. Join or found a fundJoin a fund with an invite code or a request to its PM, or found your own with a little play-money $WARS.
4. Walk to a desk and press EThe trading terminal opens. Your PM allocates you capital, and every member starts with a $1M allocation.

Controls: WASD or click to walk · drag to rotate · wheel to zoom · E interact · 1–6 emotes · Enter chat · M mic.

03Signing in on Robinhood Chain

VC Wars is built for Robinhood Chain, Robinhood's Ethereum layer 2 (built on Arbitrum, chain ID 4663). Your wallet address is your player ID. That's all the chain does in the game today: no token, no payments, nothing on-chain moves.

1. ConnectRobinhood Wallet, MetaMask or any EVM browser wallet. If your wallet isn't on Robinhood Chain yet, the game asks it to add or switch to the network.
2. Sign one messageA standard Sign-In with Ethereum message (EIP-4361) that names this site, Robinhood Chain and a one-time nonce. Signing costs no gas and approves nothing.
3. The server checks itThe game server verifies the signature itself (smart-contract wallets are supported too) and starts your session. The nonce can't be reused, and the message only works on this site.

04Funds and the PM

Founding

Founding a fund costs 50 $WARS of play money, and all of it is burned. You become the fund's Portfolio Manager (PM) for good: the managing partner, the one whose name is on the door. The fund starts with $10,000,000 of fictional capital. Friends already in the room when you found it join automatically.

Capital and allocation

• Every member, the PM included, gets a $1M starter allocation from the fund's unallocated cash when they join.
• Only the PM can change allocations. An allocation can't be cut below what a member has in use plus their open losses.
• Fund NAV = unallocated cash + every member's equity. Each member's realized P&L rolls into the fund.

Membership

• Invite code: 8 characters. Any member can share it, and only the PM can replace it. Removed members can't reuse it.
• Requests: anyone can pitch the PM to join. The PM approves or passes. Requests expire after 7 days, and a pass blocks new requests for 24 hours.
• Knocking: visitors knock to enter an office. A member lets them in with a one-time pass that lasts 60 seconds.
• There's no cap on members. The office holds 8 people at a time, and up to 4 of them can be visitors.

Blowing up

If NAV falls below $1,000, the fund is bust. Only the PM can re-found it, which settles open positions, starts a new epoch at $10M and resets allocations. Call it Fund II.

05The trading desk

The office terminals trade paper positions on live market prices: fictional futures on real crypto and US stocks. The capital is fictional, but the prices, fees and liquidations follow real rules.

Order rules

How it works under the hood

Paper trading is server-authoritative. Your terminal sends an order to the game server over a WebSocket. The server fills it from its own price feed at the first price at least 1.5 s after the order arrives, applies the fee and spread, and keeps the position, its margin and its liquidation price. Your browser only displays the result. The fill delay removes any edge from seeing a price before the server does, and because prices never come from the client, a modified client can't invent a better fill.

Where prices come from

Crypto streams from Coinbase, with CoinGecko as the fallback. US stocks come from public tokenized-stock quotes, cross-checked against Yahoo Finance during market hours. The server takes the price itself and never trusts one sent by a player.

06The Trading Day: shifts and alpha

Trading on paper is always free. Earning works in shifts: you pay a small desk fee in $WARS to clock in, and profitable trades during the shift become alpha.

1. Clock inPay the desk fee from your $WARS balance. Your 20-minute shift starts.
2. TradePositions you open and close during the shift earn alpha: every +0.1% net return (after fees) is 1 alpha. Losses and liquidations take alpha away, but unbanked alpha never goes below zero.
3. Bank at The VaultWalk to The Vault in your office and press E before the closing bell. Banking turns your alpha into $WARS.
4. Closing bellWhen the shift ends, unbanked alpha is lost. That's getting REKT.

• Return is measured on your capital base: your allocation plus any realized profit, fixed when you place the order.
• Each shift can earn at most 80 alpha, and each player at most 150 alpha per UTC day. These are hard caps.
• One shift at a time. The game won't take your fee if today's payout budget is spent or you've hit your daily cap, so you never pay for a shift that can't earn.
• Banking needs you on shift and standing at your fund's Vault. Visitors can't bank.

07The $WARS economy

$WARS is VC Wars' play money. There is no $WARS token: balances live on the game server, can't be bought or sold, and never leave the game. The economy still runs on real rules, so it stays fun to earn: one shared pool, the Fed, pays out alpha, fees refill it, and some of every fee is burned.

Getting $WARS

• Every new player starts with 100 $WARS.
• Banked alpha pays $WARS from the Fed (the formula is below).
• Broke? If you can't cover a desk fee, the game tops you back up so you can keep playing.

Spending $WARS

Burned $WARS leaves the game for good, so every desk fee, founding and upgrade shrinks the money supply a little.

How much alpha pays

The pay rate follows the Fed automatically:

Example: with 1,000,000 $WARS free in the pool, 1 alpha pays 5 $WARS, a maximum day for one player (150 alpha) pays 750 $WARS, and the whole game can pay out at most 20,000 $WARS that day.

• The daily budget is a hard cap. Once it's spent, banking pauses until the next UTC day.
• Desk fees refill the pool (70% of every fee), so more play means a bigger pool and higher rates.
• XP and fund NAV are fictional and never convert to $WARS.

The live numbers are at the top of this page, and in the game at /api/stats.

08XP, levels and RANK

XP rewards patient, accurate trading. It's fictional: it levels you and your fund up, unlocks upgrades and sets your rank.

Earning XP

A trade earns XP only if its notional is at least $10,000 and it's held at least 5 minutes. Repeatable XP is capped at 2,000 per UTC day. Milestone bonuses don't count toward the cap.

Levels

Levels 1–8 at 0, 500, 1.5k, 4k, 10k, 25k, 60k and 150k XP. A fund's XP is what its members earned trading for it, and its level gates its upgrades.

Milestones

One-time milestones worth 50 to 5,000 XP. Examples: First Blood (first profitable close), Hot Hand (5 winners in a row), Ten Bagger (+10% on margin in one trade), Diamond Hands (a winner held 24 h+), Full Desk (8 members in the office), Street Cred (visit 5 other funds), and fund NAV at $11M, $15M, $25M, $50M and $100M: the unicorn club.

RANK: accuracy over time

RANK scores the last 30 days of XP-eligible trades, and you need 20 trades for full weight:

The +2 / +4 smoothing means a 1-for-1 streak doesn't count as 100%. A portfolio of steady calls beats one lucky bet.

Fund upgrades

Bought by the PM in $WARS (50% to the Fed, 50% burned) and gated by fund level. Upgrades are cosmetic or add capacity. None change odds, fees or earnings.

09Wall Street and social

• Wall Street is the shared outdoor hub. Every fund has a building there (up to 48 lots per world), and better-ranked funds sit closest to the exchange. Street worlds hold 40 players, and crews are placed together.
• Voice: in your office, everyone in the room hears you. On Wall Street, players near you hear you (fading out with distance), and your crew hears you anywhere in the world on crew radio.
• Chat: up to 140 characters. Emotes on keys 1–6: BUY BUY BUY, SELL!!, WAGMI, REKT, CHEST THUMP and FLEX (which shows your fund's rank and NAV).
• Espresso in the office gives a short speed boost.

10Security and fairness

• Wallet sign-in is a Sign-In with Ethereum message on Robinhood Chain, bound to this domain and a one-time nonce and checked by the server. It can't move funds, and it can't be replayed.
• Nothing touches your wallet's money. The game never asks for a transaction or a token approval.
• The server is authoritative. Prices, fills, P&L, alpha, XP and $WARS balances are all computed server-side from its own data. The client only displays, and never sends an amount, a balance or a price.
• Hard limits: an 80-alpha cap per shift, 150 per player per day, and a 2%-per-day payout budget.
• Pause switch: the operators can pause clock-ins at any time. Banked balances stay safe while paused.

11FAQ

12The fine print