Cancelled games & refunds
What if a game never takes off? BurnBola has a built-in, permissionless cleanup path — no support tickets, no admin mercy required.
When a game can be cancelled
A game in the Sale phase that has sold fewer than 100 tickets and has seen no purchases for 6 480 000 blocks (~30 days) becomes cancellable. Any new purchase resets the idle clock — a game that's still attracting buyers is left alone. A game that reached 100 tickets can never be cancelled: the 100th ticket locks the game in.
The app tracks this for you: a card of a stalling game shows a countdown to when reclaim unlocks, and the bot DMs every ticket holder when it does.
One tap refunds everyone
When the idle period passes, any ticket holder can press the reclaim button. One tap runs the whole cleanup on-chain:
- Cancel the stalled sale.
- Refund every buyer — not just the presser. Each ticket returns 99% of its price straight to its buyer's wallet: the 90% that sat in the bank plus the 9% that was escrowed in the game's promoter pool (nobody earns on a game that never happened). Only the lottery's 1% is not refunded — it's unconditional.
- Close the game's storage accounts and return their rent (~0.07 SOL) to the game's creator.
The whole procedure runs as a short batch of transactions; the presser pays only the network fees (a fraction of a cent). Afterwards the game card shows "Everyone refunded — game closed" with a link to the final transaction on Solscan, so anyone can verify every refund landed.
Why push-refunds matter
Many protocols use "pull" refunds: each victim must come back and claim individually, and the laggards' money sits stranded forever. BurnBola pushes refunds to all buyers in one sweep, triggered by whoever cares first — the natural candidate being the holder with the most tickets at stake. Nobody needs to even remember the game existed to get their money back.