How Chess3 Works

Chess meets Web3: the big idea

Traditional fantasy sports let you back players and score points. Chess3 does something more direct: it makes the pieces themselves tradable assets, and it settles real money based on what happens on a real chessboard. Think of it as fantasy sports fused with a live prediction market — for the oldest strategy game in the world.

There are three moves to master, and that's the whole game: own pieces, bet before the match, and win on captures. Let's walk through each.

Step 1 — Own the pieces

Every type of chess piece is an ERC-1155 NFT. You buy and sell them on a bonding curve, so the price isn't fixed — it moves with supply and demand. The more people buy a piece, the more expensive it gets; when people sell, it comes back down. Each piece starts from a base price that reflects its value on the board:

So the very first queen share costs about 0.99 $CHECK (base 0.9 plus the first step on the curve), and it keeps climbing as more are minted. A piece is therefore two things at once: a collectible you can trade for a profit, and the ammunition you'll use to place bets.

Step 2 — Bet before the match

Before a live game begins, you lock your piece NFTs onto the specific pieces you think will do damage. The rules are flexible:

• Multiple people can bet on the same piece.
• You can bet on many different pieces in one game.
• You can back both white and black.
• Once betting locks, your NFTs stay locked until the game ends.

Step 3 — Win on captures

The game follows a real chess match, move for move. Here's the clever part: when a piece is captured, its NFTs are sold, and the proceeds go to the backers of the piece that captured it.

You're not betting on who wins the game — you're betting on which pieces will capture others. Back an aggressive knight that trades up through the middlegame and you collect from every piece it takes. The King can never be captured — the game ends before that ever happens.

The Chess3 economy

Everything runs on $CHECK, the platform token: you spend it to buy pieces, it's what's at stake when you bet, and it's what lands in your wallet when you win. Trading and game activity generate fees that flow to the Chess3 treasury, which funds the platform and its rewards. Because pricing is a transparent on-chain formula and outcomes are driven by a real game, nobody sets the odds by hand — the market and the board do.

A quick strategy primer

Winning at Chess3 rewards chess understanding as much as market timing. A few ideas to get started:

• Back the aggressors. Pieces that trade and capture often — active knights, open-file rooks, a marauding queen — pay their backers more.
• Mind the curve. Cheaper pieces early on cost less to accumulate; a popular piece gets pricier as others pile in.
• Spread your bets. You can back several pieces, on both sides, in the same game — hedge like you'd hedge a position.

Smart contracts & transparency

Chess3 is fully on-chain on Base. Every piece, bet and payout is a public transaction you can verify yourself. Here are the core contracts: