How it works

You don’t need this page to use Locked In — it’s here for the curious. The short version: your money lives on the blockchain, your learning lives with us, and the two only meet at the finish line.

Three layers

Your money is on Solana. When you lock USDC, it goes into an on-chain vault that Locked In’s servers cannot spend. While locked, it earns yield in an established lending protocol (Kamino). Everything about custody — the caps, the payout rules, the 180-day safety valve — is enforced by the blockchain itself, and you can verify all of it on a public explorer. The details are in Your Money.

Your learning is judged by our servers. Lessons, grading, streaks, Shields, and Lapses are handled off-chain — grading a written answer simply isn’t something a blockchain can do. Grading always happens server-side, so there’s nothing in your browser to tamper with.

The app is just a window. The website shows you what the other two layers already know. It never holds your funds and its claims are always checked against the chain and the servers.

Where they meet

When you complete a course, our servers issue a single, signed claim voucher stating the yield share you earned. The on-chain program checks that signature and pays out accordingly — your full principal, plus your share of the yield. That voucher is the only influence the game layer has on the money layer, which is exactly the point: even if everything above the blockchain failed, your principal would still come back to you (see Claiming & force return).