pebble whitepaper

3.1 match structure

A Pebble match is best-of-three rounds between two players.

Each round, both players have five seconds to select one of three moves: Attack, Defend, or Counter. Picks are simultaneous and blind. When both players have locked in (or the timer expires), moves reveal and the round resolves.

Each player starts with 100 HP. A clean win deals 40 HP. The first player to reach 0 HP loses the match. Drawn rounds do not consume HP but do not count toward a win — they extend the match.

That's the entire combat system. Anyone gets it in one screen of tutorial.

3.2 characters and archetypes

The game launches with nine playable characters, divided into three archetypes:

• Strikers — wins on Attack deal 50 HP instead of 40
• Guardians — wins on Defend deal 50 HP instead of 40
• Tricksters — wins on Counter deal 50 HP instead of 40

This is the only mechanical difference between characters. No stats, no levels, no abilities. Skill and read-game decide every match, but the archetype creates a soft meta-rock-paper-scissors at the character-select layer: Strikers are slightly favored into Tricksters, Tricksters into Guardians, Guardians into Strikers. Knowing your opponent's character before the match starts is part of the strategy.

Characters are distributed as on-chain NFTs (ERC-721 on Base). Owning a character lets you play with it permanently and rent it to other players. The base nine characters are available through a fair-launch mint. Additional characters are released through limited seasonal drops.

3.3 the five-second timer

Five seconds is short enough that there is no time to think, only to read. This is intentional. Pebble is a reaction-and-pattern game, not a deliberation game. Long timers reward analysis paralysis; short timers reward intuition, opponent reading, and tilt control. It also keeps matches under 45 seconds total, which is essential for streamability and short-form video.

3.4 skill floor and ceiling

The skill floor is approximately zero. A new player who has never seen the game can play their first match within 30 seconds of opening the app and have a roughly 50% chance of winning, because the system is RPS-based.

The skill ceiling is high. Top players learn:

• Opponent tells in pick timing
• Archetype-vs-archetype matchup theory
• Round-to-round conditioning (training your opponent to expect a pattern, then breaking it)
• HP-state-based decision trees (when you are 60 HP behind, the optimal play changes)
• Tilt management across the four wager tiers

This shape — low floor, high ceiling — is the same shape that makes poker, StarCraft, and Magic: The Gathering durable as competitive games.

4.1 tiers

Pebble runs four wager tiers in parallel:

Tiers are isolated. A Casual-tier player only matches against other Casual-tier players. This protects new players from being farmed by whales and protects the integrity of the matchmaking pool at each level.

4.2 fee structure

Of every match pot, 95% goes to the winner. The remaining 5% is split:

• 3% to the Pebble Treasury — funds development, weekly leaderboard prize pools, tournament prize pools, and ongoing operations
• 2% burned permanently — removed from $PEBBLE circulating supply forever, creating deflationary pressure proportional to game activity

A $10 match (pot of $20) distributes:

• $19.00 to the winner
• $0.60 to the treasury
• $0.40 burned

If Pebble runs 10,000 matches per day at the Standard tier, the daily burn is $4,000 worth of $PEBBLE permanently removed from supply. The more the game is played, the more deflationary the token becomes.

4.3 matchmaking

Each player has a hidden MMR (Matchmaking Rating) that adjusts after every match using a standard Elo formula with K=24. Players are matched within their wager tier against opponents with MMR within ±100 points where possible, widening the window every two seconds until a match is found.

Median time-to-match at Standard tier in steady state is targeted at under five seconds.

5.1 $PEBBLE token

$PEBBLE is the native token of the Pebble game. It is implemented as a B20 Asset token on Base.

• Total Supply: 1,000,000,000 $PEBBLE (one billion), fixed
• Standard: B20 Asset variant
• Decimals: 9

Full tokenomics — distribution, vesting, and allocations — will be published before public launch.

6.1 gas paid in $PEBBLE

B20 allows transactions on a B20 token to be paid for in that token itself, rather than ETH. For Pebble, this means a player never needs to acquire or hold ETH. They buy $PEBBLE, they play. The single largest source of GameFi onboarding friction — "I have the game token but I can't transact because I don't have ETH for gas" — disappears entirely.

6.2 virtual deposit addresses

B20 supports virtual deposit addresses that forward to a shared account. Pebble uses this to assign every player a personal deposit address tied to their session, simplifying both the deposit UX (one address per player, easy to memorize) and the internal accounting (all funds route to a single hot wallet without manual reconciliation). On a standard ERC-20 deployment, this would require either a separate smart-contract wallet per player or a meta-transaction scheme. With B20, it is a chain-native primitive.

6.3 indexed data from base nodes

B20 exposes aggregated balance, transfer history, and token metadata directly through Base Node RPCs, with no external indexer required. For a game that resolves 10,000+ matches per day and needs near-real-time leaderboard updates, this removes a substantial operational burden. We do not need to run a Graph subgraph, an Alchemy indexer, or our own RPC archive node. The chain itself answers the query.

6.4 why not solana

Similar games have proven out the casual on-chain game format on Solana. Pebble's choice of Base is deliberate:

• Coinbase distribution — Base is the only L2 with a direct on-ramp from a top-three centralized exchange. Smart Wallet onboarding is one click for any Coinbase user.
• Ethereum settlement — value secured on Pebble inherits Ethereum's security guarantees through Base's proof system, with the dual-proof path settling withdrawals in approximately one day.
• B20 timing — Pebble is among the first consumer applications to leverage B20 at launch. Being a flagship use case for a new chain primitive is a meaningful distribution advantage.
• Lower noise — Solana gaming is a crowded category. Base gaming is open territory in 2026.

7.1 on-chain components

The on-chain footprint of Pebble is intentionally small. Three smart contracts and one B20 token, deployed on Base:

• $PEBBLE Token — B20 Asset variant, configured with the burn precompile enabled and a gas-payment paymaster registered.
• Character NFT Contract — Standard ERC-721 representing the playable character roster.
• Match Escrow Contract — Holds wagered funds during a match. Accepts a signed match result from the authoritative match server, verifies the signature against the registered server key, and distributes the pot per the fee schedule.
• Rental Contract — Allows character owners to list characters for rental at a fixed daily price. Renter pays the price, gains play permission for the rental window, owner receives 80% and the protocol receives 20%.

7.2 off-chain components

• Matchmaking Service — Maintains the queue per wager tier, runs MMR-based matching, and pairs players. Written in Go for low-latency concurrency.
• Match Server — A stateless authoritative server that runs the five-second rounds, receives move inputs over WebSockets, applies the resolution logic, and signs the final result with the server key for on-chain settlement. Edge-deployed in multiple regions for sub-100ms latency.
• API and Indexer — Read-only public API for leaderboards, match history, and character data. Heavy use of B20's native indexed RPCs to avoid running a separate subgraph.
• Frontend — Browser-based React application with Base Smart Wallet integration. No download, no install, mobile-friendly.

7.3 match settlement flow

1. Two players in the same tier and MMR band are matched.
2. Each player's wallet signs an authorization for the Match Escrow contract to debit their entry amount. Both deposits land in a single on-chain transaction.
3. The Match Server runs the match in real time over WebSockets.
4. On match end, the server constructs the result payload (winner, loser, signed timestamp, match ID) and signs it with the server key.
5. The signed result is submitted to the Match Escrow contract in one transaction. The contract verifies the signature and disburses the pot: 95% to the winner's wallet, 3% to the treasury, 2% burned via the B20 burn precompile.

Gas on every on-chain transaction is paid in $PEBBLE. The end-user experience: connect wallet, click play, see result, see balance update. The wallet never asks them to acquire ETH.

7.4 anti-cheat

Pebble's anti-cheat surface is small because the game's information set is small. Both players have access only to: their own character, their opponent's character, the round number, current HP totals, and the round timer. There is no fog of war, no hidden information that can be exploited via memory reading.

The primary anti-cheat concerns are:

• Bot play — A bot can theoretically play optimally against the RPS cycle, which converges to a Nash-equilibrium 33/33/33 mix. We accept this as fundamental and address it by ensuring the human strategic layer (archetype matchmaking, round-to-round adaptation, tilt control) outperforms naive bots in practice.
• Collusion (wash matches) — Two colluding accounts could deliberately funnel wins one direction to launder funds or game leaderboards. Mitigated by MMR-bracketing (an account farming low-MMR matches earns very few MMR points), pattern detection on repeated win/loss ratios between the same wallet pair, and treasury-flagging of suspicious volume.
• Sybil farming of leaderboard rewards — Mitigated by requiring meaningful game volume across multiple opponents to qualify for prize pools.

7.5 server trust model

The match server's key is currently a permissioned input to the Match Escrow contract. This is the centralization point of Pebble v1 and we acknowledge it. Roadmap item: migrate to a commit-reveal scheme where each player's moves are committed as hash(move + nonce) on-chain at submit time and revealed at round end, eliminating server authority entirely. This is feasible on Base with B20 gas-in-token pricing but adds 4–6 round-trips per match, so v1 ships with the server-authoritative model and we migrate as we measure latency budgets.

a. glossary

• B20 — Base's native token standard, implemented as Rust precompiles in the node software rather than as a deployed EVM contract. Provides gas-in-token, virtual addresses, native indexing.
• MMR — Matchmaking Rating, a hidden Elo-style number that determines a player's matchmaking pool.
• Archetype — One of three character classes (Striker, Guardian, Trickster), each with a favored move that deals bonus damage.
• Tier — A wager bracket. Pebble runs four: Casual ($0.10), Standard ($1), High ($10), Whale ($100).
• Burn — The permanent destruction of tokens, removing them from circulation forever. Pebble burns 2% of every match pot.
• Founders Alpha — The first closed testing phase, seeded with early community members.
• Pebble Open — The monthly premier tournament event.

b. token contract reference

• Token: $PEBBLE (B20 Asset variant)
• Network: Base (Chain ID 8453)
• Decimals: 9
• Total Supply: 1,000,000,000
• Contract address: To be published at launch

c. useful links

• Website: playpebble.online
• X: @PlayPebble
• Discord: To be published
• GitHub: To be published at audit completion