Black hole & next star

The black hole

Feeds made while mass is under 1 SOL count toward the star's early volume and toward that wallet's feed share. Last-hit pushes don't count.

If the star reaches 21 SOL without a nova, it collapses:

• The feeder pot is the whole prize (final_prize = prize_pool).
• Each feeder's payout = their feed share × final_prize ÷ early_volume.
• Each feeder claims their share once, with claim_hole_share.

If nobody fed the star (early_volume == 0), nobody can claim, and the prize is recycled into the next star.

Over many stars, this happens exactly 1 time in 21. Why →

The next star

Anyone can create the next star once the previous one is finished, or as soon as it has 21 SOL committed. The old star's queue doesn't have to be empty first.

Each new star's seed is derived from the last one:

sha256("soldust:star-seed" ‖ prev.seed ‖ prev.star_id ‖ new_star_id)

Endowment

Prize money that has no claimant goes into the next-star reserve. That covers a black hole nobody fed, and the leftover after a stalled-star collapse has refunded the feeders. The reserve seeds the next star's mass and prize, so it doesn't sit in the vault forever. It can never be withdrawn.

The endowment is rounded down to the 0.01 step and capped at 0.99 SOL, so a recycled prize can never open a star at or above the nursery cap.

That cap is structural, not cosmetic. A star born past 1 SOL would have no nursery, so no feeder could buy a hole ticket. If that star then collapsed, its pot would have nobody to pay and would recycle again, carrying an ever-larger, unwinnable pot forward. The cap makes that impossible, not just unlikely.