The game layer for small-dollar giving.
CHIP is a platform that lets any cause launch a gamified, radically transparent micro-donation arcade. Players chip in, steer their money, build streaks, fight bosses, and watch every dollar in a public Glass Ledger.
Chip in → Steer → Win → Recruit → Trust → Repeat.
A Creator launches an arcade.
A cause, nonprofit, campaign, or community group sets up on CHIP in under 10 minutes. They pick their cabinets (game mechanics), set their first boss (a real funded objective with a real deadline), and their Glass Ledger goes live automatically.
Players discover and chip in.
Donors — now players — find causes they care about. They chip in micro-amounts, set their own monthly caps, and earmark every dollar toward a specific boss or objective. Money is always a move.
Players build streaks and join squads.
The Streak turns giving into a habit. Daily, weekly, monthly — the player sets the cadence. Squads of up to 5 players share a scoreboard. Badges mark milestones. The game layer keeps people coming back, not because they're nagged, but because it feels good.
Bosses make progress visible.
Every boss has a name, a budget, a deadline, and a live HP bar. Players see their strikes land. When a boss is funded, the objective happens. When it's not, that's public too. Wins are real. Losses are honest.
The Glass Ledger publishes everything.
Every dollar in. Every dollar out. Line items by date, amount, and purpose. Public, real-time, clickable. A player can follow their $5 from chip-in to FOIA request to published result. A creator's ledger is default-public — no dark lines, no hidden fees.
Trust brings players back — and brings new creators in.
Retention isn't manufactured with fake urgency. It's built on the structural fact that this platform will not lie to you. Creators join because CHIP offers the retention engine and trust infrastructure they can't build themselves.
12 game mechanics. You pick which ones to run.
The cabinets are the building blocks of a CHIP arcade — configurable modules a creator toggles on for their cause. Each one is a different way for players to engage, give, steer, and win.
MVP cabinets (live at launch):
- The Streak — daily/weekly micro-action habit. Highest retention mechanic.
- Boss Battles — time-boxed co-op raids on real, named objectives.
- Glass Ledger — always on. The public money trail.
- Badge Vault — earned-not-bought collectibles.
- Chip-in Payments — 1-tap recurring micro-gifts with caps.
Post-MVP cabinets:
Swear Jar, Penny Parliament, Round-Up, Buy Back Vote, Drops, First-Gift, Micro-Bounties, Squads (at scale).
Every chip, followable.
The Glass Ledger is CHIP's structural answer to "where did my money go?" It's an append-only, public, real-time money trail for every arcade on the platform.
What it shows:
- Every chip-in (anonymized — individual donor identities are never public)
- Every expenditure: line item, amount, date, category, outcome
- Platform fees, broken out separately
- Aggregate totals by boss, by month, by cause
How it works:
- A player chips in $10 toward "Sunlight FOIA Batch."
- The cause spends $47 on a specific FOIA request — line #4412.
- That line appears on the Glass Ledger with date, amount, and description.
- The player clicks line #4412 and sees their $10 contributed to it.
What it enforces:
- Creators cannot have "dark" expenditures. Every dollar out has a line.
- CHIP publishes its own platform-fee ledger first. We hold power accountable, starting with us.
- The ledger is append-only. Lines are never edited or deleted. Corrections appear as new lines that reference the original.
For Creators
- Launch an arcade. Configure cabinets. Set bosses. Publish your ledger.
- CHIP handles payments, compliance, and the game engine.
- You keep your cause, your voice, your relationship with players.
For Players
- Find a cause. Take a free action. Chip in. Build streaks. Fight bosses.
- Follow every dollar. Set your own caps. Earn badges.
- Never get lied to.
This isn't a feature. It's the foundation.
Most fundraising platforms run on manufactured urgency — countdown timers, fake matches, "we tried 7x" emails. CHIP runs on the opposite premise: a donor who trusts you gives more, stays longer, and brings their friends.
Every mechanic on this page — the Glass Ledger, the caps, the earmarks, the real deadlines — exists to make the relationship structurally honest. Not honest in the copy. Honest in the code.
"We will never lie to a player." — CHIP Constitution, Article 1