Overview

What STAKELANE Pools is

STAKELANE Pools is a monthly fitness challenge where strangers bet on themselves, not against each other. You pay an entry fee, set out to hit a shared goal, and at the end of the month the people who made it split the fees from the people who didn’t. No recruiting friends, no group chats, no waiting for someone to accept a challenge — just you, the goal, and everyone else who signed up for the same one.

Here’s the math made concrete: Vlad joins the May 7k-steps pool for $20. Another 246 people join the same pool. The pot sits at $4,920 (fees minus platform cut). Vlad hits 7,000 steps on 26 of his 31 days, so he “made it.” About 60 % of participants make it; they split the 40 % who didn’t. Vlad walks away with more than he put in — not because he ran faster than anyone, but because he showed up consistently when others didn’t. Side bets can layer on top: other users can wager on whether Vlad specifically will finish, adding a separate market on top of the main pool.

What you bring to a pool

Joining a pool takes three things: one connected activity source, one entry fee, and one month of honest effort. At launch the only supported source is Strava — connect it once with a single OAuth click and every subsequent pool reads your data automatically. Apple Health and Google Fit are on the roadmap for after launch.

The entry fee is fixed per pool — typically $20 for a monthly challenge. You don’t need to bring friends, manually log workouts, upload screenshots, or do anything other than move. As long as Strava syncs your activity, the pool sees it. If you disconnect Strava mid-month, the pool freezes your progress at whatever was last recorded; it doesn’t zero you out, but it won’t count anything new.

What the pool sees vs. what friends see

The pool tracks your daily activity at the resolution the goal requires. For a steps pool, that means one boolean per day: did you hit the daily target? For a running-distance pool, it means cumulative kilometers. Either way, the pool only sees what it needs to settle — not your heart rate, your route, your sleep, or anything else Strava stores about you.

The public leaderboard shows your name, your progress toward the goal, and your current standing. If you opt into the side-bet market, your entry also becomes available for other users to bet on — they can wager on whether you’ll finish or not. Opting out means you’re invisible to the side-bet market entirely; your pool entry stays public, but no one can place a bet on you personally.

What happens at month end

When the pool period closes, settlement runs in three steps. A 24-hour audit window opens first — late Strava syncs land and the anti-cheat pass runs over the full activity set for every participant. Then a 48-hour dispute window opens, giving anyone with stake in the pool a chance to flag a specific activity and explain why. Once disputes are resolved — or the window closes without any — payout runs automatically and funds move to your wallet. For the full timeline, edge cases, and what happens when a dispute escalates, see the settlement detail page.