SolChess - OnChain Chess

I just submitted Solchess to the Colosseum Hackathon on Solana 🎉

Here's what I built and why it matters.

In Nigeria and across Africa, chess tournament organizers regularly collect prize money and disappear. Communities pool funds for competitions and the person holding the money vanishes. There's no recourse. It happens constantly.

Solchess eliminates that problem entirely.

It's an on-chain chess platform where the smart contract holds all funds, validates the game, and pays the winner automatically. Nobody touches the money. Nobody can steal it. The code is the referee and the treasurer.

What the platform does:
→ Players challenge each other and wager SOL on their games
→ Spectators watch live matches and stake on who wins
→ Communities host their own tournaments, seed prize pools, and invite members to compete and stake — all settled on-chain
→ Giveaways and community events with trustless prize distribution

The tech stack:
→ Rust + Anchor for the Solana smart contract (live on devnet)
→ Vite + React + TypeScript for the frontend
→ Node.js + Socket.io for real-time gameplay
→ react-chessboard + chess.js for the chess engine

I built this solo. Same energy just applied to a much bigger problem this time.

Chess has 600 million players globally. None of them have a trustless way to wager, compete, or watch with skin in the game. That changes with Solchess.

Full demo 👇
 

Would love feedback from anyone in the Solana ecosystem, chess community, or anyone who has experienced the prize fraud problem firsthand.