Let’s Have An Upgrade!

Let’s Have A Word! is a massively multiplayer word hunt on Farcaster & Base where players eliminate wrong answers until someone hits the ETH jackpot

Here’s everything that shipped between the end of Round 13 and beginning of Round 14 in Let’s Have A Word! But first, some fun facts:

Fun facts

In the 13 rounds since launch:

• Players have submitted 25,470 guesses
• Nearly 1 ETH has been awarded to players in total, with 0.826 ETH awarded to jackpot winners, 0.132 ETH awarded to early guessers, and 0.0120 ETH awarded to referrers
• Rounds have averaged 62h 52m in duration with an average of 1959 guesses

$WORD token integration

The upgrade from $CLANKTON to $WORD is complete, and $WORD is now woven into gameplay:

• Bonus guesses. Bonus guesses earned by holding $WORD are now tiered based on amount held and market cap. When market cap is below $150K:

  • 100M tokens → +1 guess/day (Tier 1)
  • 200M tokens → +2 guesses/day (Tier 2)
  • 300M tokens → +3 guesses/day (Tier 3)

  Balance requirements halve at $150K–$300K mcap and again at $300K+ mcap. Staked tokens count toward your balance.

• Burn words. Every round now also has 5 hidden Burn words. Finding one immediately and permanently burns 5 million $WORD. Found Burn words auto-announce via @letshaveaword just like Bonus words.

• New/updated Wordmarks. Wordmarks are permanent collectible badges earned for in-game achievements. Players who find Burn words are awarded the new “Arsonist” wordmark as a badge of honor (and +100 XP). “Double Dub” (find two or more special words in the same round) has also been updated to reflect the addition of Burn words. 100M+ $WORD holders also now display the “$WORD whale” badge on leaderboards.
• Top 10 $WORD rewards. The top 10 guessers in each round now receive $WORD tokens on top of their ETH payouts. The amounts awarded scale with the $WORD market cap.
• Bonus words. Each round’s 10 hidden bonus words now distribute 5 million $WORD straight to the guesser’s wallet (was previously rewarded in $CLANKTON).
• New $WORD sheet. Shows player balance, buy & stake options, a live Game Activity section tracking burn words found (and tokens burned) and bonus words found (and tokens distributed), and more.

• All bonus/burn words are committed onchain before the round starts using keccak256 hashes, so everything is provably fair and verifiable after the fact.

The $WORD contract address is 0x304e649e69979298BD1AEE63e175ADf07885fb4b

$WORD staking

• Synthetix-style streaming staking. Players can stake $WORD tokens and earn more $WORD over time. Rewards stream continuously (not in lump sums) proportional to the share of the total staked pool. 30-day reward periods are started by the admin (starl3xx).
• Staking UI. The staking modal shows a live ticking reward counter, estimated APR, period countdown, and your XP tier progression. Players can stake, unstake, and claim directly from the app.

XP

• XP-boosted staking yields. Players’ lifetime XP now determines their staking tier: Passive (1.0x), Bronze (1.15x), Silver (1.35x), or Gold (1.60x). Higher XP means higher staking rewards.
• Stats update. “Share my stats” now includes found Bonus and Burn words, as well as lifetime $WORD earned

Economics

• Lowered the jackpot seed from 0.03 ETH to 0.02 ETH. The minimum amount needed to kick off a new round is now smaller in order to steer the game closer to self-sustainability. This required upgrading the smart contract on Base (the proxy address stays the same, only the code behind it changed).

Round recovery & reliability

• Recover stuck rounds. Built an admin tool to rescue “zombie rounds” — situations where the winner was locked in the database but the onchain payout never went through. This happened in Round 13 and the tool fixes it without manual database surgery.
• Zombie round alerting. If a round gets stuck, a Sentry fatal alert fires immediately. A backup cron check also runs every 30 minutes to catch it if the alert is lost.
• Guess submission resilience. Added a 12-second timeout and automatic retry on the client side when submitting guesses. This prevents the infinite SUBMITTING... hang that caused a player to lose a correct guess in Round 13.
• Notification open tracking. Added a backend proxy for Neynar notification analytics so we can see how many people tap push notifications to open the app. (Finally)
• Automated push notifications. Round start in-app notifications now fire automatically, as well as daily free guess reset notifications at 11:00 UTC. Both notifications use 8 randomized message templates interpolating live round data so players don’t see the same notification every time.

Admin tools

• ETH airdrop tool. Send ETH to multiple wallets at once from the admin panel (for error compensation, etc.).
• Airdrop manager tab. Dedicated admin tab for managing $WORD airdrops (w/prior 100M $CLANKTON holders in mind)

Verification

• Dual-contract verification page. The /verify page now shows commitments from both contracts: JackpotManager (SHA-256 for the secret word) and WordManager (keccak256 for bonus + burn words). Links to both contracts on BaseScan with manual verification instructions.

Rebranding

• CLANKTON → $WORD. Renamed the token everywhere: frontend, backend, database column comments, documentation, API responses. The old name is gone.

---

That’s (mostly) everything... the in-game FAQ has received a significant update with specifics about all of the above. Message me on Farcaster if you have issues or feature requests!

Play Let’s Have A Word!