Vault risk rules, etched into silicon on X Layer.

Stego is a savings pool (a "vault") whose safety rules are small, permanent electronic circuits that live on a public blockchain, so nobody can quietly change the rules and anyone can check them.

When you put money in most crypto pools, a team controls the rules and can change them. In a panic, everyone rushes for the exit at once (a "bank run") and the last people out lose the most.

Stego writes its rules, such as "no more than about 25% of the pool can leave in one day", into circuits that cannot be edited. The pool must ask the circuit before every deposit and withdrawal and obey its answer.

No physical chips are made. TapeOut copies the chip-making process on a blockchain:

• Transistor: a token that stands for one logic gate, like one LEGO brick. Stego's are called STEGO.
• Circuit: bricks wired together into something that computes an answer, like a small calculator.
• Tape-out: the moment a design is made permanent. The bricks used are destroyed ("burned") and the circuit is stored on-chain forever.

Stego's first circuit used 112 transistors, and all 112 were burned when it was taped out. You can check this on the blockchain.

• ALLOW: go ahead, no extra cost.
• THROTTLE: allowed, but a small 1% fee is charged, and that fee stays in the pool for the people who remain. It discourages panic.
• HALT: not right now. For withdrawals, this means waiting until the next day's allowance.

Small withdrawals (under about 4.7% of the pool per day) are guaranteed to always be ALLOWed. That's written into the safety envelope, so no circuit can take it away.

• It cannot be changed. A taped-out circuit is permanent. To change a rule, a new circuit must be proposed publicly and wait 24 hours, so users can leave first if they disagree.
• It can be checked completely. Each circuit has only 65,536 possible inputs, and we have checked every one of them. This page lets you check it yourself.
• Strangers can safely contribute rules. A circuit can only compute an answer. It cannot move money or call other programs, so running a stranger's circuit is safe.

Honest trade-off: a circuit costs more computing ("gas") than normal code. On X Layer, that is still far less than a cent per check.

Anyone can design a rule circuit. Each rule type has a safety envelope, a set of limits every design must respect. For example, small withdrawals must always be allowed, and a bigger withdrawal can never get a softer answer than a smaller one.

To submit a design, the author must lock up 2,000 STEGO as a bond (a deposit). If anyone finds a single input where the circuit breaks the envelope, that person takes the whole bond. That's called "slashing". So authors are paid to be careful, and checkers are paid to look for mistakes.

A curator also has to approve a design before it goes live, and there is a 24-hour wait before any change takes effect.

• Policy authors earn a 0.1% fee on deposits into the vault, plus 25% of STEGO mint proceeds (the creator's public commitment).
• Checkers earn the bond of any circuit they prove wrong.
• People who stay in the pool keep the 1% THROTTLE fees paid by people rushing out.

Honest note: none of these produce meaningful income until the vault holds real deposits, and the vault earns no yield yet (that's on the roadmap).

Connect your wallet, type an amount and press Deposit. Your wallet asks you three times: to "wrap" OKB into WOKB (the token form apps use), to approve the vault, and to deposit. To leave, type an amount and press Withdraw. The page tells you in advance whether the circuit says ALLOW (free), THROTTLE (1% fee that stays with the others) or HALT (come back tomorrow).

If you are the only depositor, you can only take out about a quarter of the vault per day. That's the same rule for everyone, and it's what protects people from a bank run.

Your deposit is always yours: when the season ends you claim it back in full, and nobody (not even the creator) can take it. What you can spend is the one-time ticket (≈0.0013 OKB, which burns 10 STEGO), a fee if you leave early (2% normally, 10% in a rush), any STEGO Boost you buy, and network gas (fractions of a cent). The prize is the pot: the sponsor's seed plus the early leavers' fees.

You deposit 0.01–0.05 OKB. If you stay until the season ends, you get your full deposit back plus a share of the pot. Shares are weighted by amount × time, so the earlier you join, the bigger your share. Before you join, the page shows exactly what you'd get if everyone stays. If you leave early, you pay a fee into the pot: 2% on a calm day, 10% during a rush. If too many people leave on the same day (about a quarter of the pool), the circuit says HALT and you wait until tomorrow.

What you can lose: the one-time ticket (about 0.0013 OKB, which buys and burns 10 STEGO) and any fee you pay by leaving early. Nobody, including the creator, can take the deposits. The contract has no admin at all.

Winning pot shares depend on other people leaving early, so the pot may be small if everyone holds.

From Season 2, players who never leave during the season get extra pot weight (for example +20%). Leaving even once, even a tiny amount, forfeits it for the rest of the season. The leaderboard marks bonus holders with 💎.

While joining is open, you can burn STEGO to make your pot share bigger: +5% for every 10 STEGO, up to +50% (100 STEGO, about 0.0073 OKB). The page tells you whether a boost is worth it at the current pot size before you buy. Burned STEGO is gone forever, so it makes the rest scarcer.

Yes. See "Design the next season's exit rule" above. If your circuit is chosen, you receive 10% of that season's pot, paid automatically to whoever owns the circuit NFT.

Live on X Layer: the Stego processor, all three rule circuits, the rule registry, the vault and Nerve Season 1. Everything on this page is read directly from the blockchain.

Coming next: recurring funded seasons, and real yield for the vault (it holds no strategy yet).

• The code has not been professionally audited. Deposits will start capped at 5 OKB in total.
• TapeOut can upgrade its own platform code. If that happens, Stego automatically stops trusting the circuits and freezes penalties until the upgrade is reviewed. Withdrawals always stay possible.
• The daily withdrawal limit means a very large exit may have to wait until the next day.