Where's the money?

When you create or join a match, your USDC moves straight into the MatchEscrow smart contract — a public program on the Base blockchain. Both players' stakes sit there, locked, before kickoff. Neither player can touch the other's money, and neither can Spolia. The contract only pays out based on the verified result.

You can read the contract and every transaction yourself on Basescan ↗. Nothing is hidden.

Play your match head-to-head. When it's done, each player uploads a screenshot of the final score screen — both scores and the game clock visible. That's the evidence the result is settled on.

Our AI vision system reads the scoreboard from the uploaded screenshots and determines the winner automatically. When both screenshots agree and the read is confident, the contract pays the winner — usually within minutes, with no human in the loop.

If the screenshots conflict, the score is unreadable, or the AI isn't confident, the match moves to Disputed and a person reviews the evidence before any payout. The stake stays locked in escrow the entire time — it is never released on a guess.

Every match has a 7-day timeout. If your opponent never joins, never plays, or never submits a result, you can cancel and reclaim your full stake from escrow. You cannot get run off here — the money was never in their hands to keep.

Players carry a Code of Honour record — clean settlements, honourable ratings from opponents, and any disputed matches — so you can see who you're about to play before you stake. New players start with a clean slate.

For higher-stakes matches you play through the Spolia desktop app, which captures the result for you so there's no screenshot to fake or fumble. Here is exactly what it does, and only while you are in an active match you joined:

• Captures your screen at the end of the match (and a few times at random during play, as tamper-proof audit points), plus one shot of the online lobby to confirm both gamertags.
• Notes which window is focused during the match, to flag if the game wasn't actually on screen.
• Signs each capture with a key stored in your device's keychain, so the result is provably from your machine.

It does not record continuously, log your keystrokes, read other apps, or capture anything when you're not in a match. On macOS it asks for Screen Recording (to capture) and Accessibility (to detect the game) — nothing more.

Raw screenshots and audit captures are automatically deleted 14 days after a match settles. We keep only a mathematical fingerprint (a hash) and the AI's reading of the score — enough to prove the record, without holding onto your images. The one exception: if a match was disputed, its evidence is kept longer so the review stays auditable.

If you believe a result is wrong, you can contest it. A disputed match freezes in escrow — no payout on a guess — and a human reviews the full evidence bundle: both players' screenshots, the AI readings, the in-match timeline, and activity signals. You keep the right to that review on every match you play.

Spolia takes a flat 2.5% of the pot on a settled match. Nothing else — no deposit fees, no withdrawal fees. See the full fee breakdown.