Every move is a transaction
Not the result - the move. A single blitz game is dozens of validated writes, each one settled in about a hundred milliseconds while two people sit there watching a clock. That is a real workload, not a testnet demo.
Run a node
The cluster is the point. Come and own a piece of it.
ITZA Chess does not run on our servers, because there are no our servers. It runs on a cluster of independent machines that validate every move, settle every game and serve the app itself. More machines means a faster, tougher, more geographically spread network - and the people running them are the ones who earn from it.
Why it matters here
A chess game is a demanding tenant
Most chains are asked to move tokens around. This one is asked to referee a bullet game, which is a harder job and a better proof.
More nodes, better game
Chess is played everywhere and settlement should be near everyone. A wider spread of operators is not an abstract decentralisation virtue here; it is directly how the game feels to somebody far from the current cluster.
Chess outlives companies
The rules have not changed since 1880 and the games of 1858 are still worth studying. A chess platform should be able to outlive whoever built it. That is only true if the thing it runs on is not owned by one party.
The model
What a node does, and where the money comes from
Two honest halves: the part that is running today, and the part that is designed and waiting on the coin.
Validating and serving
A node takes transactions from players, checks them against the contract, agrees the block with its peers and serves the resulting state back out. On this cluster it also serves the application itself, which is why the app keeps working without anybody hosting a website.
- Validates every move against the same rules engine the app runs.
- Settles blocks in roughly a hundred milliseconds.
- Pushes updated game state to both players.
- Serves the app's own files to anyone who opens it.
Earning from the game
The contract already carries the plumbing for an economy: a treasury wallet, a fee split in the payout maths, and on-chain identity for every player. What it is waiting on is the coin itself.
- Transaction fees from rated play.
- A share of the rake on wagered games and tournament entry.
- Validator rewards from the network itself.
No figures are published yet. Rates, minimum stake and hardware requirements are not settled, and this page will not invent them. Register below and you will get the real numbers when they exist.
The shape of it
What you would actually be running
An ITZA node is a normal server process. It keeps the chain state, talks to its peers, and answers a WebSocket that clients connect to. ITZA Chess talks to exactly that interface and nothing else - there is no separate game backend anywhere in the system.
Because the workload is many small writes rather than a few heavy ones, the things that matter are a steady connection and low latency to peers, more than raw processing power. A cluster is only as quick as the agreement between its members.
Specifications, supported platforms and the operator guide are published with the operator programme. Nothing on this page is a commitment about hardware.
- Network
- ITZA
- Cluster in use
- 2
- Client interface
- WebSocket
- Settlement
- About 100ms per block
- Contract language
- Rust, compiled to wasm
- What the node serves
- Chain state and the app itself
The economic model, whole
Nobody owns the table
There is no company taking a cut of anyone's winnings as profit.
A small protocol fee runs the network and it goes to two places. To the operators running the nodes that serve the games, who are the actual infrastructure and are paid for keeping it fast, available and honest. And to the players and holders who stake into the network to secure it.
That is the whole of it. The people who keep the platform running are paid by the platform running. Not by subscriptions, not by advertising, not by selling anybody's data, and not by a company taking a margin from between two players at a board.
There are no servers anyone can switch off. There is no account anyone can freeze. There is no balance sheet that improves by going easy on a paying cheater.
That last one is not a philosophical flourish. It is the specific reason the integrity model can work here and cannot work on a subscription platform, where every ban is a lost customer.
- Node operators
- Paid for serving and validating games
- Network stakers
- Paid for securing it
- Company margin
- None
- Subscriptions
- None
- Advertising
- None
- Data sold
- None
Rates, minimum stake and hardware requirements are not published yet. This page will not invent them. Nothing here is an offer, an invitation to invest, or a promise of return; see the disclosure document.
The case, plainly
Why a chess cluster is worth running
Chess is enormous and it does not churn
The audience does not arrive on a trend and leave on the next one. People play chess for fifty years. A network whose flagship tenant is chess has a load profile that looks like a utility rather than a launch.
The workload is the sales pitch
If a cluster can referee bullet chess move by move, it can carry things far less demanding than that. The game is the proving ground and the shop window at the same time.
The economy is designed to arrive
Rated play is live now and free to start. Wagered games, prize tournaments and a jackpot are the stated destination, and each of those puts real volume through the same nodes that are validating free games today.
Early operators shape it
The cluster is small. That is the honest position and it is also the opportunity: the people who show up now help decide how the network is run rather than inheriting somebody else's decisions.
Register your interest
The operator programme is not open yet. If you want the specifications, the reward model and the launch details as soon as they are published, get in touch through any of the channels in the footer and say you are interested in running a node.
You will get real numbers or nothing. This page would rather stay short than publish a projected yield.
Nothing on this page is an offer, an invitation to invest, or a promise of return. Running a node is a technical undertaking with costs and no guaranteed income. See the disclosure document.
The cluster grows with the game.
Rated play is live and free to start. The economy it is built for - wagers, tournaments, a jackpot - runs through the same nodes.