A Tontine is a death pool. Everyone invests into the pool and the last person alive gets all of the money. MSCHF's Tontine is a digital version of this. Login every day otherwise you die, last person to die gets the whole pool.
Since Tontine is designed to run indefinitely, there was a rigorous quality assurance process to ensure the site would run as designed for every participant no matter where or when they logged in. This included testing the site on every device and browser to check for any errors.
An additional consideration with our QA process was ensuring the log in process and character selection process were sound. We did many tests on this to make sure users' accounts were stored properly, that they could only play if they had paid, and that they could log in to stay alive with no issues.
When Tontine launched, there was a 7 day sign-up period. Once the game officially started, there were over 7,000 participants and a total winning pool of $71,400.
Many players died in the first weeks of the game, while others used bots to log in for them each day, essentially creating a digital immortality for themselves.
As of October 2024, there are still over 200 active participants logging in each day, waiting for the others to die so they can claim their winnings.
