Memecup

Blockchain tournament gaming platform with real-world social impact

Built Solana-powered skill tournaments turning player fees into provable global impact.

Network:Solana
Tournaments:Hourly, Daily, Weekly
Experience:Mobile First
Payments:Solana USDT

The Challenge

Two Dutch entrepreneurs in the solar industry wanted to build more than another crypto casino. They envisioned a skill-based, real-money tournament platform where:

  • Players could enter quick, frequent tournaments for meaningful cash prizes
  • All entry fees and payouts were transparently handled on-chain
  • A fixed share of every pot helped fund clean water wells
  • The experience felt as simple as a casual mobile game

The challenge was to turn this concept into a secure, fair, and scalable Solana-powered platform that could:

  • Validate on-chain entry fees before gameplay
  • Prevent cheating and fake scores
  • Automate prize pools and payouts across thousands of players
  • Publicly track impact funding without adding friction to players

Our Plan and Build

We broke MemeCup into three core layers: player experience, game logic, and on-chain money flows.

1. UX and application layer

  • Designed mobile-first flows in Figma for:
    • Joining hourly, daily, and weekly tournaments
    • Paying entry fees and confirming wallet status
    • Tracking live leaderboards and past results
  • Expanded designs to desktop for a consistent cross-device experience
  • Built the frontend in Next.js, wired directly to Solana payments and backend APIs

2. Game logic and fairness

  • Customized a Flappy Bird–style game to support:
    • Entry-fee validation before allowing access to play
    • Automatic score submission to the tournament backend
    • Anti-cheat protections to block bots and manipulated scores
  • Added polish and personalization with:
    • Custom sounds, animations, and theming (characters, backgrounds, pipes)

3. Solana payments and automation

  • Implemented Solana USDT entry fee payments and backend validation
  • Used Solana streams to ingest incoming transaction data in real time
  • Built systems to:
    • Track prize pools per tournament
    • Allocate 80% to winners and 10% to water projects
    • Automatically distribute USDT payouts to top-10 winners on-chain

Key Features

Tournament lobby & scheduling

Tournament lobby & scheduling

The platform featured an automated tournament lobby for hourly, daily, and weekly events. Players could see upcoming and active tournaments, entry fees, prize pools, and payout structures at a glance. Behind the scenes, a scheduling system automatically created, started, and settled tournaments at fixed intervals. This gave MemeCup a consistent rhythm of competitions without manual operations work.

Live leaderboards & history

Live leaderboards & history

The platform included live leaderboards that updated in real time as players finished their games. An in-progress view showed how current scores stacked up during active tournaments, while a history view allowed users to search and filter past leaderboards. Each leaderboard exposed final rankings, payouts, and linked on-chain transactions so players could verify results and rewards.

Solana USDT entry fee verification

Solana USDT entry fee verification

For every tournament, the system tracked the total prize pool and applied a custom payout schedule for the top 10 winners. Once a tournament ended, the backend automatically executed USDT payouts on Solana directly to the winners’ wallets. This removed manual handling of prizes and gave players immediate, on-chain confirmation of their earnings.

Impact funding visibility

Impact funding visibility

The platform was designed so that 10% of every tournament entry fee was allocated to funding clean water wells. This allocation was tracked in the backend and reflected in on-chain transactions, allowing the founders to transparently show how much capital was being directed to impact projects over time. Players could compete knowing each match contributed to a measurable, verifiable cause.

Results and Impact

By the end of the engagement, MemeCup had:

  • A production-ready tournament engine with automated scheduling and settlement
  • Real-time leaderboards and historical result views tied directly to on-chain payouts
  • A fully integrated Solana payment flow that validates entries and pays winners automatically
  • A transparent mechanism to route a fixed share of every tournament to clean water initiatives

The founders now have a working platform that pairs competitive gaming with verifiable social impact, giving players a way to win money and fund real-world projects in every match.