Folded, Month Two
Aug 22, 2025

🎴 Introducing: FOLDED

Manifold’s first large-scale social experiment & art project

A test of patience. A battle of routine. A war of attrition.

Join the experiment. Win the prize.
💰 12,000+ mana up for grabs -- and the prize pool is growing!

WHAT IS FOLDED?

FOLDED is a minimalist game with a single rule:

🕛 Check in once per day. Or be eliminated.

It sounds simple, but there’s a catch - it won’t stay that way.

🗓️ DAILY CHECK-IN

You must visit the check-in page once per day before midnight UTC.
Miss a day? You’re out. No second chances.

❌ ELIMINATION

Players who don’t check in are instantly eliminated.
Each day, the pool gets smaller. The tension rises.

💸 ENTRY FEE

To enter, send 2,000 mana to the prize pool via Managram.
Think of it as your ticket to the endurance games.

🏆 WINNER TAKES ALL

The last player standing takes everything.
Every mana from every eliminated player goes to the final survivor.

🔒 DIFFICULTY

It will become harder to check in over time.
The interface may evolve. The rules might twist.
Stay alert. Adapt. Survive.

HOW TO JOIN

Step 1: Pay your entry fee (CLOSED)

Managram 2,000 mana:
👉 https://manifold.markets/Bandors?tab=payments&a=2000

Step 2: Make your FOLDED account

No email required. Just your manafold username.
👉 https://folded-three.vercel.app/

Is this a game? An art piece? A psychological experiment?

Yes.

bandors

mfw sitting down at my desk after trying to operate on a laptop the last week


Folded, day 43: Economy

-Removed 10 chip collection cap
-Future chips collected can be used later
-Dedicated server tomorrow fr fr

I had an interesting adventure for the last ~10 days or so. I feel so comfy to be back at my desk. Music submissions changing today, look out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPbeEtjo70g

https://youtu.be/JewTq92dSRY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1EhaANeYCI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1ynC1RB3kY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXaqVL-vpp4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWl1Tu9oZmY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxgCTXF1Qck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy8kmNEo1i8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhaVZ4ygTaE

bandors

@Bandors oh 1 moment I didn't actually push the update yet, it should be live shortly

Simon Westlake
(edited)

FOLDED Jukebox 13: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ4_N0nG49fhyMB0hm9kTP8elOu10dols

One of the songs is region-blocked in the US, so I replaced the video link with one that's not region-locked (but is still the same version). If you want to see the music video, here are the links:
US: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4rKvWA6w20
Other: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6hKNlMLOsY

Also, I forgot to enable voting on Jukebox 12 originally, so here's the link for that again: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ4_N0nG49fgXQ03KPcacZf87OLRNxju3

Logan Turner
(edited)

Livestream delayed—Edit: indefinitely. cable internet is out again

Logan Turner

@Bandors Is it a bug that jumping into the chips doesn't collect them?

bandors

@LoganTurner click the chips

Simon Westlake

> (should I punish him for the &list ? )

Yes, along with all of the other violations promised for bad submissions that never got added

Simon Westlake

@Quroe, @LoganTurner, and I have been discussing what a coordinated, intentional exit might look like in an older comment thread. Let's move that discussion up here.

Quroe 🫘

See previous comment chain here: https://manifold.markets/post/folded-month-two#As6phy2P

Quroe 🫘

It's so tempting to continue the conversation there, though. 😅

Simon Westlake

I brought up the idea of bidding how much we'd each be willing to end the game for, and @Quroe brought up doing that as a Simultaneous Multiple-Round Auction (SMRA), but since our bids need to total 48k, I don't actually think that's the move. I believe an SMRA is really intended for an adversarial process, but in my view this should really be a cooperative process. If one person reduces their bid, that reduces the amount everyone else needs to reduce in order to hit 48k, so one person reducing encourages further reductions.

Simon Westlake

Once all bids total 48k, we all put 48k in escrow (assuming we can all get low-interest loans; my RISK base insurance fee would literally be 100%), and if everyone puts their money in, it will pay out on the designated exit day according to the rules that @Quroe laid out here: https://manifold.markets/post/folded-month-two#h0p2C9lO

Simon Westlake
(edited)

I also like @LoganTurner's idea of allowing anonymous donations to the pool to allow it to go above 48k, making it easier to reach an agreement. I don't know how we'd be able to make them anonymous, but I also don't know if it's critical that they're anonymous.

Edit: This would be useful in case someone really wants to be listed among the final pool and is willing to spend mana to reach an agreement that gets them that more easily.

Quroe 🫘

@SimonWestlake To summarize my escrow idea:

Each player stakes 48k as a promise that they won't defect.

If you cooperate, you get your 48k back and a share of the FOLDED prize pool.

If you defect, you lose your stake, and all other cooperators share your stake.

Quroe 🫘

Part of me worries that things might get hostile if we go down the exit-bidding route.

Such a system rewards stubborn, strong-arm players who won't budge on their bid. It seems to resemble The Ultimatum Game in game theory.

Thoughts?

Simon Westlake

For me personally, the big concern before I can even start negotiating details is obtaining the loan. I haven't done a lot to develop relationships on this site outside of this group, so y'all are probably my best odds of that (and you'd be incentivized to, since without everyone on board, this doesn't work).

I (mostly) do my best to keep this account separate from my real identity, but I'd be open to sharing some details and talking about the kind of person I am privately in an effort to build trust.

Quroe 🫘

@SimonWestlake There are 4 living players who currently do not have the balance to stake themself. We'd need to coordinate something grand here if we want to go through the staked escrow route.

Simon Westlake
(edited)

@Quroe This game rewards stubborn players. I don't see this as a situation where we're likely to strike a deal quickly. Instead, I see it as an opportunity to have a framework for how the game could end early with everyone's agreement. As time goes on and resolve weakens, it makes sense to reduce your bid periodically, as you develop fear of dropping out or weariness of checking in every day.

I don't really see what would incentivize/enable strong-arming. The most you can do is say "I want at least X", and if everyone else is unwilling to give you that, the game continues until the bids reduce sufficiently. Everything remains a game of how long you think you can last. If you want to call that "strong-arming", I think that's a bad definition in the context of this endurance game.

Quroe 🫘

And, like, to lose your stake, you need to make an active effort to solve the daily challenge, and knowingly choose to check in.

Cooperating is passive. Defecting requires effort.

But you could still make enough back to pay back the loan if you were the only player to check in. So, the only fail state here is if 2 or more players check in with the staking system, with one of them being loaned their stake.

Quroe 🫘

@SimonWestlake That's a fair rebuttle.

Quroe 🫘

Does anybody want to chime in by saying that there is no circumstance where they would share the game pot?

If so, that ends the conversation pretty quickly.

Simon Westlake
(edited)

@Quroe Great point about the failure mode. Going to also tag @crowlsyong for their thoughts on this comment.

We also need to keep in mind that the RISK credit score system is based purely on determining the likelihood that a given user will be able to afford to pay back the loan. It assumes that if a user can afford to pay back the loan, they probably will. It assumes that users are trustworthy socially, if not always fiscally.

So if the system trusts that users will be trustworthy and pay back the loan if they are able, why not go one step further and trust that these particular users will take the guaranteed payout instead of chasing profit that likely will not be there if just one other person does the same thing? It seems to me that if you can't trust that, you also shouldn't be trusting users to pay back large loans based purely on the fact that they are likely to have plenty of liquidity.

That being said, RISK insurance on a 48k loan with just 25% coverage for a single day to a top-tier "Extremely Safe" user like Bayesian costs 1920 mana. So in the end, even if RISK were to offer insurance for this situation that did not depend on credit score, the cost of the insurance would still be a huge percentage of people's bids (which as long as there are still 10 players, would need to average to just 4.8k mana).

I don't think the escrow is viable unless RISK provides additional, deep, insurance discounts beyond ignoring credit score, or everyone who needs a loan is able to find someone willing to give them such a loan uninsured.

Simon Westlake

It is interesting that @100Anonymous and @nikki are two of the largest owners of shares in formalized loan funds.

Quroe 🫘

For additional numbers to entice people, if everybody cooperated and shared the FOLDED prize equally, each player would get 5,333 mana.

Given that the original buy-in to the game was 2,000 mana, that's a 2.67x multiplier on their buy-in.

For scale, this is the equivalent to betting 2k on YES and filling somebody else's arbitrarily large NO limit order resting at 37.5% on a YES/NO prediction market and winning your bet (if I ran my numbers right).

Simon Westlake

Another topic that needs to be brought up is anti-cheat, as being able to check in with minimal effort is a strong deterrent from making a deal. I'll go ahead and tag @Bandors on this one.

While the anti-cheat has certainly improved, I'm pretty confident that it can be worked around at least up to getting the secret code (I haven't tested the limits of what the server seems to be checking, but based on what data is being collected, it's definitely not enough to catch all forms of cheating).

As far as the secret code itself, hopefully there are rate limits to prevent brute-forcing, but I haven't tested the limits of that either.

Now that we're in the era of server-side checking, I haven't felt comfortable attempting any automated check-ins, since I don't know for sure that it's still possible to check in once you've been flagged as a cheater (though I imagine it probably is).

Here's my view on anti-cheat: if there is not already sufficient rate-limiting in place to prevent brute-forcing, that would be the highest-value improvement. For everything that's not the secret code, it's an arms race that will be very difficult for @Bandors to win unless the risk of even trying is high (because the server will permanently lock you out if it thinks you're cheating). Obviously there would need to be an appeals process and high-quality server logs, but I think such a lockout system would be a big deterrent. If everyone thinks they need to manually click the box 301 times in order to proceed if they don't want to risk getting flagged, people's bets will probably be much lower.

This all ignores the possibility of direct database manipulation and such.

Simon Westlake
(edited)

@Quroe Those would be extremely compelling numbers if I hadn't put so many hours into trying to win 48k. Those hours have value in themselves of course (this has overall been very fun), but still.

Quroe 🫘

@SimonWestlake Ah, but that 48k is still in superposition. You have the hypothetical, wavering, and unsure promise of 48k, not 48k in hand.

Simon Westlake
(edited)

@Quroe Certainly, but that's why I probably wouldn't accept a 5.3k buyout at this time. A 10k buyout might be a different story.

Quroe 🫘

@SimonWestlake It seems you have a buyout price in mind.

Simon Westlake
(edited)

@Quroe I'd want to think about it more before committing to a number, and it's a moot point if I can't be bought out without a massive loan that I can't get. One thing at a time.

Quroe 🫘

@SimonWestlake True. I'd also love to see how other players react to this discussion.

I'm interested to know who would be open to a seat at the negotiating table.

Simon Westlake
(edited)

@Quroe It would also be impacted by what I see from others. If I see most people making a good faith effort to compromise and make a deal happen, I'm going to be much more willing to reduce my number. Right now, a deal feels just as hypothetical, wavering, and unsure as winning, especially with the loan situation. It would be very interesting if that changed! (hopefully talking through the difficulties in the open ultimately helps toward that)

remedy
(edited)

@SimonWestlake @Quroe I'd probably be willing to split if I got ~5-6k mana.

Simon Westlake

Besides anti-cheat improvements, another game change that could be extremely interesting for this discussion would be the return of voting for punishments.

That (too brief) era of the game was definitely my favorite. As a Big Brother fan (shameless plug for my market about this season's winner), the explicit introduction of social gaming was such a cool and unexpected addition. @Bandors also teased a new punishment system a while back, and I think its hypothetical eventual introduction could be much more exciting when paired with the reintroduction of the ability to wield punishments against your opponents.

A voting battle between those who want to negotiate for an exit and those who want to fight to the end could be really fun.

Logan Turner
(edited)

Livestream: https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1RDGlAVlDVjJL (edit: the first link timed out as my home internet was having problems)

Logan Turner

@LoganTurner Going live now!

Simon Westlake

FOLDED Jukebox 11: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ4_N0nG49fisvInu8-mCLfUcvi4wqCzk

My submission was Told You So, and my favorite was Monsoon

Simon Westlake

FOLDED Jukebox 10: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ4_N0nG49fhkvao7qTqlL9wprvD8P3QQ

My submission was Baby Queen, and I went to a theater to watch Hackers last night, so I have to pick All The Things as my favorite.

Simon Westlake
(edited)

Actually, my favorite is Freeman You Fool. Truly an addictive earworm.

Logan Turner

Livestream (Happy Birthday Naomi!): https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1OwxWeldQBnGQ

Simon Westlake

I plan to post the Jukebox for the past two days later tonight (US time)

Logan Turner

@Bandors Vocaroo recording: https://voca.ro/1ozb5Jwcp6Ys

Quroe 🫘

@Bandors If ALL living players fail to check in on the same day, what happens to the pot?

Quroe 🫘

@Bandors This is not an attempt to sabotage your game via hacking. I'm trying to strike a 9-way consenting deal.

bandors

@Quroe Idk I'd probably extend a day in that case

Simon Westlake

@Quroe Whether Bandors splits the pot or we do, trust is required regardless, since we'd have to trust that everyone else will also drop out. If you want to make a big deal, I wouldn't let this answer stop you.

Quroe 🫘
(edited)

@SimonWestlake Here's the system I propose.

We set up a bounty market as an escrow account. Each player stakes 48k mana (equal to the prize pot for FOLDED) into the escrow bounty market. With 9 players, we would hold 9*48k mana for 432k mana total.

We designate a day to all fold and purposefully fail to check in.

Anybody who cooperates is entitled to an equal share of the escrow'd bounty. In theory, if everybody cooperates, everybody is refunded their stake of 48k mana and also gets an equal share of the FOLDED prize pot on top of that. Anybody who defects and checks in forfeits their stake, and everybody who cooperated gets that share of the forfeited stake.

For example, if 1 player defects, the 432k mana bounty is split equally among the remaining 8 cooperators. Each cooperator would get 54k mana and the defector would get 0 mana from the bounty, but would still probably win FOLDED and get 48k mana back. In effect, the cooperators still profit.

If 2 or more players defect and check in, this is negative expected value, and therefore they should strive to cooperate if there is already 1 defector.

There is an impetus for 1 player to defect in this setup. The defector would be striving to profit on Evan's derivative FOLDED markets -- they should wager that they will win.

If all players cooperate, fold, and do not check in on the designated day, the hope is that Bandors would split the prize pot equally among all of the players who survived up until that point and get their stake back.

What does everybody think? Does everybody want an off-ramp to FOLDED? Or is there somebody holding out to greed the entire prize pool for themself?

Logan Turner

@Quroe Seems interesting, and I’m open to the idea, but:

  1. I would need a loan to stake that much.

  2. > greed the entire prize pool

    You mean… play the game as designed?

  3. Those with a likelihood of winning higher than 10% may be unhappy receiving an equal portion.

Simon Westlake

@Quroe as a starting point, 48k is higher than my net worth, so as-written, that can't work for me

I also think it could be interesting if we all bid on the minimum amount we'd be willing to leave with. Someone who doesn't think they have a great chance of winning or just wants it to be over more badly would be incentivized to accept less payout than someone who is ready to be in this for the long haul. It would be a negotiation to see if there's a split everyone will accept in order to get it ended.

Quroe 🫘

@LoganTurner You're correct, some people would need to get a loan to pull off the original idea.

I am one step ahead of you on that one. @crowlsyong, the executor of RISK, has been briefed on my scheme here and may be able to grease the wheels for people to be loaned mana with a RISK policy. Or, perhaps you can find somebody willing to loan with no RISK policy if there is somebody who wholeheartedly trusts you.

I'm interested in the modification you propose, though. How could it be executed?

Logan Turner
(edited)

@Quroe I like Simon’s idea. We encourage everyone to post their buyout price. As soon as they sum to less than the pool, we ask Bandors to pay out proportionally. Edit: Also allow anonymous donations to to pool to help it happen faster.

Quroe 🫘

@LoganTurner I was just about to post the same thing!

This is a Simultaneous Multiple Round Auction, or SMRA. I think this idea won a Nobel Prize in economics, actually!

The twist, as you mentioned, is that all bids need to sum to 48k or less.

Bidding ends when all players have submitted the exact same bids on 2 consecutive days and when the sum is less than 48k.

That seems like a robust system. Thoughts?

Quroe 🫘

If the sum is less than 48k and the bids are stable on 2 consecutive days, then the leftover change is split evenly among all players.

Logan Turner

@Quroe Why not split the change proportionally to the bids? Seems like less of a gotcha to top players

Simon Westlake

@Quroe Would the RISK loans be based on your RISK credit score? Mine is utter garbage thanks to some poor decision making in the past, so normal RISK loans are entirely not worth it for me.

What happens if not everyone pays in to the escrow?

As far as the SMRA goes, I think the game should just continue indefinitely until the bid drops to 48k. Is the problem with that that the escrow would stay locked up until that happened? I'm not clear on some of the finer points of how the escrow would work.

Simon Westlake

I'm going to make a top-level comment with my version of this proposal

Quroe 🫘

@SimonWestlake The idea with the escrow is that we all converse and see if we want to do it in the first place. Then we lock up our mana for, like, 1, 2, maybe 3 days tops before the designated fold-out date.

Quroe 🫘

@SimonWestlake And yeah, that might make things tricky, then. A RISK policy isn't necessary if you can find somebody with the capital for the 48k mana stake and is willing to vouch for you and take on the risk of you deciding to defect and go for the game show win instead.

retr0id

@LoganTurner fwiw, I place my own likelihood of winning at significantly higher than that market, at least 40%. I don't correct the market because I want to mostly bet against myself, as a hedge.

bandors

Check in code is spacex BTW if it wasn't clear

Logan Turner

Day 39 Livestream will be delayed until 01:30 UTC at earliest: https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1DXxyWwObddGM

Simon Westlake

The jukebox will also be delayed. Anyone who wants to should feel free to make the playlist (the voting option is only available by editing the playlist after it has been created)

Logan Turner

@LoganTurner Starting the stream now!

Anonymous

The wizard plugin isn't working for me. yesterday there was no narcan or timer at all, and today the wizard hasn't died

bandors

@100Anonymous hmm strange, I'll look into that.

bandors

@100Anonymous there was a one minute timer, database shows that you did not reach the narcan in time and it despawned

bandors

Folded, day 38: Consequences

-New, unique, interesting challenge tomorrow

-I am home from my trip! Very small update for today.

Quroe saved their wizard friend

SimonWestlake saved their wizard friend

Wott did not save their wizard friend

100Anonymous did not save their wizard friend

retr0id did not save their wizard friend

evan saved their wizard friend

nikki did not save their wizard friend

koadma saved their wizard friend

LoganTurner did not save their wizard friend

Jukebox:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mGBaXPlri8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogMNV33AhCY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-4YDk6kTvk

https://youtu.be/kK1WmqTOUNs?list=RDkK1WmqTOUNs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3OJUwILelU

retr0id hacked and checked in without a juke box submission

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrzKT-dFUjE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3EPExPBKw4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1XZHVYqenw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdYeESzyQeE

Logan Turner

Livestream (alongside Starship launch stream): https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1lDGLBZQRbzxm

bandors

@LoganTurner ooo a double

Ben S
(edited)

So true hahahahahaha

Evan

New market:

Simon Westlake

@Bandors This is just 8 songs. Is it possible your anti-cheat is letting someone check in without a submission? (I know you're on a trip, just asking)

bandors

FOLDED, DAY 35: I had a lot of really fun labs queued up for this week. I am on a trip for a couple more days, so kind of hard to reengineer a way to issue private servers to players. I am not sure what the 'strategic advantage' of breaking the lab when it's not an elimination day. I could understand messing with things if you had a way to knock out another player, but as it was, it was just a way I was trying to teach some people some fun website security. I don't know, I guess I'll just smoke a cig and feel bitter that my plans got screwed. Anyway, I guess no exciting challenges for a couple days? I'll think of something I can do besides labs. I get home in a couple more days.

-The wizard fell off the wagon

-Yes, you will be eliminated if you fail to check in today.
-Yesterday was scuffed, no jukebox for day 34. Sorry.
-

Simon Westlake

Yeah, I wish now that I'd pointed out the pointlessness of locking us out

retr0id

@SimonWestlake first one was accidental, second one was because I forgot lol

Simon Westlake
(edited)

@Bandors I love that you actually added the wizard hug mechanic... I won't share any spoilers about how that goes today in particular

Logan Turner

oh no @bens, did you forget to read the announcement carefully 😦

Ben S

@LoganTurner no I just… am out of my depth and busy… but I do hope I can still log in for journalistic reasons, perhaps as an old-timey ghost detective @Bandors so I can write a good piece about this for the newsletter when it’s all over?!

Logan Turner
(edited)

Note: to see earlier comments, here is Month One:

https://manifold.markets/post/introducing-folded-12000-mana-prize

The threads got so long that the page was crashing on some devices.

Alysha
Comment hidden
Evan

@mods spam

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