Solana Seeker Exclusive — Hackathon Submission 2026
A Strategy Game Built for the Hardware
Mercs & Mines is a 90-day mobile grand strategy campaign built natively for the Solana Seeker. Real prize pools. On-chain history. Hardware-level authentication. A working demo on Solana Devnet right now.
Seeker-Native Advantages
Not Just "On Solana." Built for the Device.
Every major friction point in mobile crypto gaming has a hardware solution on the Seeker. We've designed for all of them.
Seed Vault / TEEPIN — Zero-Friction Signing
A player in a 10-minute session might issue 30+ commands. Signing a Phantom pop-up each time would be unplayable. On Seeker, the player authenticates with their TEEPIN once at session start. The Seed Vault issues a 2-hour session authorisation — every micro-transaction signs silently in the background. High-value actions trigger a single confirmation tap, hardware-confirmed in 0.3 seconds. The game feels like a native mobile title. That's the point.
Seeker ID = Player Account
No sign-up form. No email. No password. The Seeker ID is the player's game account. First boot links the device identity to the game profile automatically. Onboarding friction is zero. The player's first voluntary action is playing the game, not filling in a form.
SKR Token Rewards
Players earn SKR rewards at key ecosystem milestones: completing the tutorial, earning their first Campaign Chronicle NFT, capturing their first Badlands node. The game is a source of SKR within the Seeker ecosystem. Not a consumer of it.
dApp Store Distribution
Launching on the Solana dApp Store eliminates the 30% Apple/Google tax and bypasses both platforms' anti-NFT policies. Every dollar a player spends goes further. Every NFT the game issues is permitted by design, not in spite of platform rules.
Hardware Push Notifications
Solana messaging routes directly through the Seeker's native notification layer. Lock-screen alerts, no third-party service. "WARNING: Your Leviathan Land-Train is under attack in Sector 4. Estimated breach: 15 minutes." The kind of message that gets a player to put down whatever they're doing.
Dual Economy
Why This Isn't Pay-to-Win
The central failure of most web3 games: the token is how you win. We've separated the economy into two layers so that $GCN provides real stakes without providing competitive advantage.
Soft Currency (Off-Chain)
Credits and Magma-Ore. Daily operations — base upkeep, troop wages, factory builds, standard gear. Lives on the game server. The developer can rebalance freely without touching a financial market. Crypto-passive players never need anything else.
Hard Currency ($GCN — On-Chain SPL Token)
Earned by winning: Badlands node captures, seasonal leaderboards, Commander NFT sales. Spent on collectibles, tournaments, and premium cosmetics. Never required for core gameplay. Never the reason you win a battle.
Oracle-Pegged Pricing
All $GCN costs are denominated in fixed USD values via the Pyth Network price feed. All costs are payable in SOL or $GCN. Paying in $GCN applies a 10% discount. A Commander mint is always $5.00 USD worth of SOL — or $4.50 worth of $GCN. The token amount adjusts with the market. The player's real-world cost does not. The game is never priced out of reach by its own tokenomics.
| Action | Fixed USD Cost |
|---|---|
| Commander cNFT Mint | $5.00 |
| High-Stakes Tournament Entry | $10.00 |
| Legendary Commander Mint | $20.00 |
| Build Timer Skip (major) | $2.00 |
The Planetary Prize Pool
Every $GCN Spent Feeds the War Chest
The Prize Pool is not a marketing promise. It's a transparent Solana smart contract. The balance is displayed in real time on every player's Campaign HUD. You can watch it grow while you fight for it.
Guaranteed Minimum Prize Floors
| Sector Type | Minimum Guaranteed |
|---|---|
| Standard Sector | 10,000 $GCN |
| Contested Sector | 25,000 $GCN |
| Flagship Sector | 100,000 $GCN |
If player spending doesn't reach the floor by Campaign Day 30, the deficit is topped up from the Prize Pool Reserve. The prize is never trivially small, even at launch. Flagship Sectors are announced two weeks before Season start — a visible, massive prize pot that drives new player acquisition every campaign cycle.
The Audit Trail
Every combat outcome is backed by a deterministic input log. The (SessionID, seed, log) tuple is the on-chain evidence — any $GCN dispute can be replayed and independently verified by any party. The blockchain confirms log integrity; the simulation confirms outcome inevitability. The deterministic architecture isn't just a debugging convenience. It's a financial requirement.
On-Chain History
Your Catastrophes, Preserved Forever
The three core NFT types are automatic, free, and tied to events that already matter to the player. The blockchain records what happened. It doesn't ask anything extra.
Gravestone NFT
Minted automatically when a Rank 3+ Commander dies gloriously — in a major battle, during a Story Event, or while advancing a victory ticker. The cNFT burns; the Gravestone arrives. Contains the full service record, cause of death, and a procedurally generated corporate HR death notice.
"Major 'Ironjaw' Vasquez (Embezzler, Trench-Sweeper) fell at the Siege of Crater Basin whilst executing what colleagues described as an 'optimistic tactical advance.' She is survived by 847 Credits she never actually handed over. HR has opened a recovery case. Flowers are discouraged."
Art tier scales with the glory of the death. A Rank 5 Regimental Colonel's Gravestone is always Legendary.
Service Record NFT
When a minted Commander survives a full 90-day Campaign, the game server appends their complete service record to their existing on-chain metadata. A retired veteran — a collectible whose value is derived from provable history, not future deployability. A Rank 5 Colonel who served in the Campaign where the Hamster God-King achieved absolute dominion is a genuinely rare artefact.
Campaign Chronicle NFT
When a Campaign concludes, every player in that Sector receives a Chronicle cNFT. Free. No opt-in. It records which of the ten possible endings triggered, the player's final faction standing, and the Sector ID — immutable provenance. A Chronicle from a Campaign where the secret Great Reunification ending fired will, by definition, be held only by the players who were there. It cannot be faked. Most players will never own one.
Also: Raccoon Gang Card packs (cosmetic cNFT series), and the TRASH PANDA music NFT — issued to every player present when the Raccooniverse ending fires. Most servers will never produce one.
The Path to $1M ARR
Volume and Habit. Not Whale Extraction.
$1M+ ARR at 20,000 Monthly Active Players.
No single player needs to spend more than $5/month.
That's approximately 13% of the Seeker's addressable user base.
| Revenue Stream | Model | Projected Annual |
|---|---|---|
| G.U.N. Contractor Tier™ Battle Pass | $4.99/month in SOL, $4.49/month in $GCN, 40% attach rate | ~$480,000 |
| Cosmetics & Direct Purchase | Avg $1.50/month per player | ~$360,000 |
| Resource Market Tax | 5% P2P trade tax | ~$80,000–$200,000 |
| $GCN Ecosystem & Secondary Sales | 2% royalty + tournament fees | ~$100,000–$300,000 |
| Total | $1.02M–$1.34M ARR |
The G.U.N. Contractor Tier™
The Battle Pass. In-universe, it's a lore object — the compliance paperwork is reportedly 47 pages. Contents: cosmetic rewards track, 3–5 exclusive Contractor-Tier Story Events per Campaign unavailable to free players, early access to new Raccoon Gang Card series, and a premium Corporate After-Action Report NFT at Campaign end. No gameplay advantage. That's a canon design constraint, not a marketing claim.
Live on Solana Devnet
This Is Not a Pitch Deck. It's a Demo.
The backend is in production. The Solana program is deployed and verified. The demo runs today.
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Rust Deterministic Sim-Engine Combat resolution, loot rolling, NPC AI, full data model.
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WebSocket Streaming Combat with AAR Replay Deterministic — any session can be re-run and verified.
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TEEPIN Authentication Challenge → ed25519 sign → verify → session token. Seed Vault flow implemented.
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Founding Courtesy Treasury-pays-rent player account creation on Solana Devnet. Player wallet never pays SOL.
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Full End-to-End Flow Phantom wallet connect → combat stream → After-Action Report.
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CI/CD Pipeline Auto-deploy on push. DigitalOcean production server.
Solana Program ID: 2f4NRu39hkNgDMvNhuLFk4E7aCgDRVExGrfc3zNW6m7G
Play the Live Demo →