What is a no-loss lottery in crypto? Prize savings
A no-loss lottery pools deposits and pays the yield out to depositors picked at random. What you give up, how Tramplin runs it on Solana, and the risks.
A no-loss lottery is a prize savings game: everyone’s deposits are pooled, the pool generates yield, that yield is paid out as prizes to depositors picked at random, and every depositor can withdraw what they put in. You will also see it called a no-lose lottery or a zero-loss lottery. Cherry (cherry.fun) is a wallet-to-wallet messenger and community app for crypto, and one Solana version of the format, Tramplin.io, opens as a mini app inside Cherry chats.
How a no-loss lottery works in crypto
“No-loss” refers to the deposit only. What you give up is the yield you would have collected by staking or lending the same funds yourself.
The prizes come out of the pool’s yield, so all prizes together can never exceed what the pool generated, minus fees. On average, a depositor expects at most what they would have made alone, less those fees. Weighting rules move that expected value between small and large depositors without adding to it, and in any single draw most depositors receive nothing.
Prize-linked savings and pooled contracts
Outside crypto the format is called prize-linked savings, sold as a prize-linked savings account or bond. NS&I, the UK provider of Premium Bonds, put it this way on its product page in October 2026: “Premium Bonds don’t earn interest. Instead, there’s an annual prize fund rate that funds a monthly prize draw.”
On EVM chains, PoolTogether is the pooled-contract version (its user guide covers Optimism, an Ethereum layer 2). In October 2026 the guide described smart contracts that take USDC deposits, route them to DeFi protocols such as Aave, and award the yield at random. Your funds sit in those contracts until you withdraw.
How Tramplin runs it on Solana
Tramplin’s docs, as of October 2026, describe a different design. Tramplin is a Solana validator: you delegate SOL to it as you would to any validator, and the docs say delegators keep custody and can unstake at any time. The validator’s rewards are pooled and split across three draws:
| Draw | Share of rewards | How often | Picked per draw | Weighting |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Regular Draw | 30% | About 144 rounds per epoch, roughly every 20 minutes | 1 | Equal odds per staker |
| Epoch Draw | 50% | Once per epoch | 7 | Effective stake (SOL plus a boost from Tramplin’s referral points) |
| Big Draw | 20% | Once every 15 epochs | 1 | Square root of stake |
The randomness, per Tramplin’s Fairness and Transparency page (October 2026): the list of eligible stakers is fixed on-chain before each draw, the operator commits to a hashed secret, and ORAO Network’s on-chain verifiable random function (VRF) supplies the randomness. The page says the result combines both, so neither party can steer it alone. A selected wallet must claim before a deadline; unclaimed rewards go back to the protocol.
Example on Cherry
Tramplin.io has a public room at chat.cherry.fun/@tramplin, where its storefront describes it as a Solana staking app that pools rewards into random draws. Cherry lists it in the Marketplace under DeFi, and the room had 1,494 members in October 2026.
Tramplin is a third-party app: Tramplin runs the validator and the draws, and Cherry does not vet an app’s contracts. Any transaction the mini app asks for is signed in your own wallet.
Risks
- Unstaking waits for the epoch to end. Solana’s staking page says stake changes state only at the start of a new epoch, about two days long.
- The pool is only as large as the validator’s rewards, which depend on its uptime and commission.
- A draw is only as fair as its randomness and the people running it.
- Lottery and prize-draw rules differ by country, so check the rules where you live.
Nothing here is financial advice.
Related terms
- Mini apps on Cherry
- Crypto mini app
- Are crypto mini apps safe?
- Mini apps running inside Cherry
- Is yield farming safe?
- Crypto snapshot
FAQ
Can you lose money in a no-loss lottery? Yes. The name covers the deposit only. You give up the yield you would have collected yourself, most depositors receive nothing in a given draw, and the contracts, the validator or the randomness behind the pool can fail. PoolTogether’s own FAQ said in October 2026 that the risks of a blockchain-based protocol “could result in losing some or all of your money.”
Sources
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