people ask how rekt.money works more than almost any other arcade-perp question we see. this is a structural explainer — what an arcade-perps product actually does under the hood, what to watch out for before you size up, and where uponly.win lands on the same axes.
we are not affiliated with rekt.money. we run uponly.win, a competing arcade. so read this as "from the neighborhood" — we know the category, we will not invent specifics, and we will be honest about being biased.
the basic loop
every arcade-perps product runs the same general loop, just dressed differently.
- connect or create a wallet
- deposit a stablecoin (usually usdc)
- pick a position size, or in some products, pick a vibe and let the app pick the position
- open a leveraged trade
- win or get rekt
- withdraw what is left
rekt.money sits in this loop. so does uponly.win. so do hit.one, daily.fun, and a handful of others. what differs is what happens between the open and the close — and that is where the structure matters.
what happens after you tap "trade"
this is where arcades quietly diverge. when you tap the open button, one of three things is happening underneath.
house book
the platform itself takes the other side of your position. they may hedge it externally, they may not. when you lose, they earn (or their hedge earns and they take the spread). it is a clean ux and tight execution, but the conflict of interest is structural.
liquidity pool
a pool of lp capital absorbs the other side. lps earn fees and lose on traders' winners. you trade against a pool, not a single market maker, but the platform still curates which trades are accepted and at what price.
on-chain market
the platform is a front end that routes your trade to a public on-chain venue. the market is the counterparty. the platform earns a fee for routing and ux. uponly.win uses this model — we route to avantis on base.
whichever model rekt.money uses, the right move is the same: read their docs. structure is fact, not opinion.
what to watch out for on any arcade-perp
this is the list we wish someone gave us when we started in this category. apply it to rekt.money, to uponly.win, to anything.
- who is the counterparty on your trade?
- what is the full fee schedule, including spread mark-up and loser fees?
- how is the price you trade at determined, and how does it compare to the public market price?
- what is the funding mechanism and who sets it?
- how are liquidations triggered and is the threshold transparent?
- how does the platform custody your funds while a position is open?
- is the smart contract or backend audited, and where is the audit posted?
- what does the team look like — public or anonymous, builders or marketers?
a platform can score well on some of these and poorly on others. perfect scores are rare. the structural ones — counterparty model and loser fees — matter most for long-run alignment.
specific things to check in the fine print
fine print is where arcade-perps tend to bury the lever that breaks the math in their favor. things to actually screenshot before sizing up:
- whether close fees apply identically to losing exits
- whether spread mark-up exists vs the underlying market
- whether liquidation prices are calculated from oracle or internal price
- whether there is a minimum hold time or anti-front-running tax
- whether the platform reserves the right to halt trading on individual pairs
how uponly.win compares structurally
we will spell out what we do, so you can apply the same checklist to us with your eyes open.
- counterparty model — on-chain market via avantis on base, no house
- fees on losing trades — zero
- open fees — zero
- spread mark-up — zero, you trade at the routed market price
- creator share — 50% lifetime, no claw-backs
- team — public, ship weekly games, originally built the platform in one overnight session
for the structure-level comparison, see rekt.money vs uponly.win honest comparison. for the team origin story, see uponly built in one night.
common red flags across the category
not aimed at any platform in particular — these are the patterns we see across arcade-perps that should slow you down.
- fee schedules that take a screenshot longer than two phone screens to capture
- leverage tiers that quietly cap your max above certain notional sizes
- creator programs with rate decay or short attribution windows
- no public information about who is running the project
- no clear answer to "where do trades actually settle?"
the right way to test any arcade
minimum viable test of any arcade-perp takes about five dollars and ten minutes.
- fund the smallest amount the platform will let you
- open one position and close at a small loss
- open another and try to close at a small win
- note exactly what came out of your wallet on each leg
- compare against the published schedule
this catches more nonsense than reading docs for an hour ever does.
try the structurally aligned arcade
try uponly — drop in a small amount of usdc on base, hit rip, and apply the same test you would apply to any other arcade. if you came from rekt.money and want a step-by-step move, see migrating from rekt.money to uponly.win.
final note: 75x–500x perps are high-risk entertainment. all the structural fairness in the world will not save bad position sizing. size as if you might lose every cent — because at this leverage, you might.