Exiting — the guaranteed profit

The exit window is what separates BurnBola from every burn-it-all gamble: you are never trapped. After each burn round the game pauses for 108 000 blocks (~12h at ~0.4s/block — the app shows a live countdown), and any live ticket can be sold back to the bank at a fixed price.

The window has two parts

The window runs in two consecutive stretches, and they don't overlap:

1. Leave — the first ~11 hours (99 000 blocks). Cash out at the exit price, or list a ticket on the P2P market. No one joins yet, so the field only shrinks.
2. Join — the last ~1 hour (9 000 blocks). Buying-back closes; instead, outsiders can enter the running game at the price the field has settled to, once everyone who wanted out is gone. Listings you put up in the leave part stay for sale here too.

Splitting it this way is what keeps the join price honest. Because exits are finished before joining opens, a joiner sees a fixed price for the whole join part — no one can move it out from under them by leaving late. And the per-round entry cap is measured off the number who actually stayed, so you can never pile a crowd of joiners into a field of two survivors.

One consequence to plan around: once the join part starts, you can no longer exit. If you want the guaranteed buyback, take it during the leave part — don't hold into the last hour expecting to cash out then.

The exit price

At the start of each round the contract computes, once:

exit price = bank ÷ live tickets

(The round's 10% commission was already skimmed off the bank before the burn — see Fees, bank & jackpot — so the price is simply the bank divided by the survivors.) That exit price is the same for everyone and is fixed for the current round.

An exiter receives 99% of the exit price — a flat 1% goes to the lottery, like every flow that leaves the game sideways.

Why it's always a profit

Your buy-in put 90% of the price into the bank. After the first burn, the same bank is shared by half as many tickets — so even after the round commission and the 1% exit fee, the first exit window pays around +60% over what you paid in a 100-ticket game. Each subsequent round roughly doubles it: ×2.9, ×5.5, ×10 your buy-in… The earliest possible exit is already above your cost, and it only goes up.

The flip side is symmetric and honest: every exit takes money out of the bank, slightly shrinking what the future winner gets. The pot the last ticket takes is whatever survived both the burns and the exits — plus the jackpot, which is not affected by the exits during the game.

Mechanics

• Exit any subset of your live tickets — all of them, or just a few to lock in profit while the rest ride on.
• Prefer a buyer over the bank? In the same window you can list a live ticket on the P2P market at your own price — another player buys it and the ticket (with all its prospects) transfers to them. The seller pays the same flat 1%; the buyer pays exactly the listed price.

Listing is NOT the same as exiting

An exit is final and safe: the ticket is marked dead, out of the game, and the SOL is yours that instant. A listed ticket is still alive and still in the game — you are only advertising it. Until someone actually buys it, it counts among the survivors and it will burn in the next round like any other live ticket if it isn't sold in time. Listing is a bet that a buyer pays you more than the bank would; the risk you carry for that upside is the burn. If you want a guaranteed way out, exit — don't list and hope.

And note the timing: a listing you carry into the join part can no longer be swapped for an exit, because the buyback is closed there. An unsold listing at the window's end simply rides into the next burn.

• Payout is instant and atomic: the same transaction that marks your ticket exited transfers the SOL to your wallet. There is no claim step, no waiting.
• Exited tickets are out of the game permanently: they can't burn, can't win, can't return.
• Exiting also forfeits any champion pass. The 🏆 winner and 🥈 runner-up passes go only to players who stay — the last survivor and the one burned in the final round. Cash out and you give up your shot at the champions tournament for that game.

Exits are hidden until the window closes

While an exit window is open, the game freezes the numbers everyone sees — the live Alive count and bank don't move, and individual exits aren't revealed — until the window closes. Only then are all the exits applied at once and the next burn runs.

This is deliberate. If exits were visible in real time, a sudden wave of leavers could spook everyone into a stampede for the door in the same window. By sealing the window, your decision to stay or go is made on the fixed exit price alone, not on what the crowd is doing this second. Everyone's exits in a window are settled together, on equal terms.

Two timing warnings

1. The window closes on a block count, not a wall clock. The app shows a live countdown; treat the last minutes as unsafe territory.
2. Large exits split across transactions (up to 20 tickets each). Started at the last moment, an exit can complete partially — the tickets in transactions that missed the deadline stay alive and face the next burn. You think you're out; you're half out. No money is lost on the failed transactions (only their network fee), but don't leave a big exit to the final seconds.

Exit or hold? The honest math

Holding through a round is roughly a coin flip that doubles your exit price if you win it. The expected value stays approximately neutral — the game doesn't secretly tax holders or reward them; it only redistributes from the burned to the surviving. What you're choosing is variance: a guaranteed exit price now, versus a 50% chance of double that next window (and a shot at the jackpot at the very end). Pick the risk you actually want — and remember the jackpot only goes to someone who never blinked.