Unhinged
Is this the hill you die on?
Created on 3rd October 2025
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Unhinged
Is this the hill you die on?
The problem Unhinged solves
Unhinged is a social "gaming" app where you put your money where your mouth is. Twitter is full of hot takes and contrarian views, but do you think you can debate the world, Jubilee style, or are you gonna chicken out?
The gameplay is very simple, you sign up and enter in a spicy view you hold near and dear along with a meme template and get to swiping, Tinder style! See a particularly egregious ragebait? Swipe down and battle it out in public with some money on the line. Be careful though, others are swiping on you too!
How do you win? Run out your opponent's clock or make them tap out. Do that, and the pool is yours. Or if you'd rather not be in the arena, bet on two gladiators on a decision market from the sidelines!
Challenges I ran into
The challenges with this project were mainly theoretical and encountered much before any coding began. Code is simple, and largely involves just piecing together different components as one whole, but the design of the project (mechanism and otherwise) is what has taken the most time.
Mechanism Design
The mechanism design of the app was the biggest hurdle by far. Implementation of the design is relatively straightforward, since at its core, its about combining multiple solved problems (eg, swipe mechanics, market math, chat interface, etc.).
Unhinged hinges on incentive design and as such that took the longest time to get right. Getting it right involved multiple conversations with ChatGPT and Grok, listening to professors and podcasts talking about prediction markets, reading about prediction markets in blogs and papers, and also diving deep into how existing prediction markets work.
UX Design
The experience design was also rather time consuming. Going beyond clean user interfaces, the goal is to reduce friction for the user to engage with the project. As such a number of steps are taken to ensure that, from using Privy and X to login, sponsoring gas, to having a bot on X. This challenge was overcome by talking to people (in person and on calls) about the project, soliciting feedback, and synthesizing insights. In fact, the idea of the bot on X (and also using decision markets as a resolution method) came from an engineer in the Coinbase Data team!
Link to the GitHub Repo of your project
Live URL of your project
What is your product’s unique value proposition?
Unhinged offers two distinct value propositions, depending on the type of user you are,
Highly Opinionated
For users who are highly opinionated, Unhinged invites them to prove their mettle and defend their opinions and hot takes on the platform. The app incentivizes these users by offering them an opportunity to make money, gain clout, or both!
Just want news
For users who don't have any strong predilections, can simply use Unhinged as a news site (of sorts) to answer the question "What is the collective consensus of a particular community around a specific topic or [hot] take?"
DISCLAIMER
My alpha build is not complete yet and will likely take ~2 more weeks. As such, all information on this page is written as if writing after those weeks have passed.
Who is your target customer?
Until PMF is reached, the ideal customer would be crypto native folks who are also quite active on twitter.
Fully scaled out though, the target customer is anyone who is vocal about their opinion, and anyone who is not!
Who are your closest competitors and how are you different?
TL;DR
No [major] direct competitors currently, however some adjacent ones exist
Differentiation lies in core designs and resultant capabilities for Unhinged
Afaik, there is no one really doing anything similar. Though the idea of futarchy and decision markets have been around for a long time, no one has really implemented something. Having said that, one of the core aspects of Unhinged revolves around prediction markets, and thus, existing popular markets could be considered as adjacent competitors.
Current Markets
ie, Polymarket and Kalshi
The primary difference between the markets that Unhinged enables and existing prediction markets is how the markets resolve. For existing systems, markets resolve based on some real world outcome, while the decision markets on Unhinged are self-resolving. Additionally, all markets on Unhinged depend only on (publicly verifiable) in-app data, thereby eliminating the need for an entire layer of trust (in oracles)!
These subtle differences enable major capabilities for the markets on Unhinged. While existing markets can only ask questions with limited vocabulary, Unhinged can answer questions like "What is the consensus around any topic by some collective?"
Additionally, the UI of existing markets is very "trader friendly", while Unhinged is intentionally designed to be "normie friendly".
Inspirations
good artists copy, great artists steal
Unhinged draws inspiration from various sources, and this variety creates a moat against potential competition.
- Battles :: Battle mechanics are almost 1-1 from how Jubilee Media conducts their Surrounded debates.
- Swiping :: Swipe mechanics, and related "dopamine highjacking", is taken from dating apps like Tinder
- X Bot :: Having a bot on X for replaying battles and for interactions is heavily inspired by existing agents like @grok and @bankrbot
What is your distribution strategy and why?
TL;DR
Primary strategy is community driven, with some opportunities for virality sprinkled in
Unhinged is a product that will benefit deeply from network effects, and scaled usage. As such, sales and paid acquisition is not viable for sustained growth, and the core strategy is to reduce the amount of friction for discoverability, intrigue, and usability of Unhinged.
Public Battles on X + x402
ie, providing space for luck and virality
Unhinged only allows logging in via X. This is by design. As such, all "hot takes" and consequent battles will be replayed on X for visibility. Additionally, users may perform actions on Unhinged by simply tagging the bot (inspired by bankr). This strategy should provide the space for viral organic growth and user retention.
The Base App
ie, a rising tide lifts all boats
Publishing mini-apps on The Base App (and Farcaster) also allows for another vector of frictionless engagement with the app. The plan is to have one mini-app per user journey so users of TBA can interact with Unhinged in the area they prefer. For instance, one mini-app handles the swiping and battling, one mini-app handles the primary decision markets, and one mini-app handles the secondary prediction markets.
Technologies used
Cheer Project
Cheering for a project means supporting a project you like with as little as 0.0025 ETH. Right now, you can Cheer using ETH on Arbitrum, Optimism and Base.