> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://theluckyducks.gitbook.io/docs/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://theluckyducks.gitbook.io/docs/economy/refunds-and-rent.md).
# Refunds and rent
Every path money takes back to you, from withdrawals and cancellations to expiry, rent and the surcharge.
How money comes back when a race does not finish as expected.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
A{"What happened?"} -->|"You left during the lobby"| B["Full entry back, 0.01 SOL penalty from your wallet"]
A -->|"Creator cancelled while the window was open"| C["Full entry back to everyone, 0.05 SOL penalty from the creator"]
A -->|"Join window passed without starting"| D["Full entry back to everyone, no penalty"]
A -->|"Oracle produced no seed in time"| D
D --> E["Anyone can submit it. It refunds the whole lobby and closes the race"]
C --> E
```
## Withdrawal during the lobby
Leaving a lobby has two time constraints:
* **Within 2 minutes of your own join.** Longer than that and the withdraw button is disabled.
* **Never in the last 60 seconds** of the join window, which is locked for everyone whenever they joined.
{% hint style="warning" %}
The vault then refunds your **full entry fee** and charges a fixed **0.01 SOL** penalty from your wallet to the platform fee wallet. It does not scale with the pot or the token, it is always in SOL, even on a token race, and it never joins the prize pool.
{% endhint %}
Details worth knowing:
* The penalty is a separate transfer, not a deduction from the refund. Same net effect, but on chain you see two movements: a credit and a small SOL debit.
* It comes from whatever signed. Sign yourself and it leaves your wallet; leave during a [delegated session](/docs/races/delegated-play.md) and it leaves your vault, so even a sponsored race you are leaving needs a funded vault.
* On a sponsored race joiners paid nothing, so withdrawing just frees the seat: no refund, no penalty, and the sponsor's deposit untouched.
* In a **1v1** the creator cannot withdraw, since that would strand the other player. They cancel instead.
Withdrawn players stay in the participants list with a strikethrough, and stop counting toward the fill counter or the underfilled threshold.
The button disables itself once either window closes.
## Full refund on race cancellation or expiration
A race that never finalizes refunds every paid participant in **full**, all of them in one transaction, whether the creator cancelled it or it expired. A lobby has a fixed maximum size, which is what lets a single transaction always pay the whole of it. Two cases.
### Creator cancellation during the join window
The creator can cancel while the window is open, even with nobody in yet:
* Every player who joined, the creator included if they joined, gets their **full** entry back.
* The creator pays a fixed **0.05 SOL** penalty to the platform, the same for SOL and token races, in SOL either way, and flat regardless of the pot.
A race past its start point cannot be cancelled. See [Hosting, cancelling, and refunds](/docs/races/hosting-and-cancelling.md#cancelling-a-race).
### Expiration (join window passed without starting)
A race that never reached its start condition expires and becomes refundable. Anyone can trigger that, not only the creator, players get their full entry back, and there is **no** penalty. The penalty belongs to a manual cancel inside the window.
### Other refund paths
The race records why it was cancelled, and the app shows that reason on it. Beyond a manual cancel, two lead here:
* **The join window passed** without the race becoming startable, which is the expiry path above.
* **No seed arrived** inside the oracle's window. Rare; the oracle is reliable.
{% hint style="info" %}
Either way anyone at all can trigger the refund, and **it refunds the whole lobby in one transaction and closes the race**. There is no refunding yourself alone and no leaving the others behind, and the money reaches each original payer whoever paid for the transaction.
{% endhint %}
### Who triggers it, and who pays for it
Nothing happens on chain when a deadline passes. The race simply becomes refundable, and somebody has to submit it.
* **Races the platform created** are swept automatically, and the platform pays the fee.
* **A race a player created is left alone on purpose.** It is theirs to close, because the platform does not close a race somebody else paid for, so it waits for the creator or any participant.
You are never left guessing: a race past its window joins the Unclaimed Items banner as soon as it is refundable. The banner sits in the top bar, on every page, and it carries anything owed to you: refunds like this one, and prizes you have won but not taken. One button clears the lot.
Everything owed to you collects in one banner, with the button that clears it.
Triggering it yourself costs the network fee, and during a [delegated session](/docs/races/delegated-play.md) that comes from your vault. See [Provable randomness](/docs/trust-and-fairness/fairness.md#what-if-the-seed-never-arrives) for the deadline itself.
### When a player has no token account
On a token race, the refund or cancellation is sent as it is. Only if it fails because someone it pays has no token account for that token, for instance because they closed it, are the missing accounts opened, and the refund is then sent once more. Signing yourself, you approve both in one prompt. A retry that still fails shows its error and is not repeated automatically.
Whoever sends it pays the rent on the accounts it opens: your wallet when you sign, the platform when it sends the refund, delegated sessions included. Your vault is never charged for these. The one account a refund sent for you can bill your vault for is your vault's own, covered in [What it costs](/docs/races/delegated-play.md#what-it-costs).
## Race account rent
Creating a race allocates a Solana account, and the creator pays its rent up front. The account is sized for a full lobby, so the rent tracks the seats: at today's rate roughly 0.0057 SOL for a 1v1, 0.0078 SOL at 5 seats and 0.018 SOL at 20. When the race finalizes or is cancelled, the contract closes the account and returns all of it to the creator.
Solana sets the rent rate, not The Lucky Ducks, and the rate can change, so treat every rent figure on these pages as approximate. The app reads the live rate and shows the exact amount before you sign.
Net cost of creating a race, then: oracle fee, archival fee and any opt in costs. The rent is a deposit, not a charge.
## Your player account rent
Your first create or join allocates a small per-wallet account holding your race history, profile and [player vault](/docs/economy/player-vault.md) balance. Rent is about 0.0017 SOL, added to that first transaction rather than asked for separately, and the modal that explains it shows the exact figure.
That rent is what Solana requires to keep an account open. It sits apart from your vault balance and is never spendable, which is why your balance is always withdrawable in full.
It is refundable too. The close button on the Player page returns everything in one transaction: your SOL, every token balance and the rent. Your race history resets, and the account comes back on your next race, so the rent is only held while you are using the platform.
One transaction returns your SOL, your tokens and the rent.
## Start-when-underfilled surcharge
Opting into start-when-underfilled deposits a small surcharge into the race vault at creation. Two outcomes:
* **The race auto starts underfilled.** The surcharge goes to the platform for starting the race for you.
* **It fills naturally, cancels or refunds.** The surcharge stays in the vault and returns to the creator with everything else.
## Where the money lands
Refunds, prizes and returned rent follow your payout setting: your wallet by default, or your [player vault](/docs/economy/player-vault.md) if you pool them. The setting is yours alone, which matters here because anyone may trigger a refund on a lobby that never filled: whoever submits it, your money goes where you chose. [Where your winnings land](/docs/economy/player-vault.md#where-your-winnings-land) has the setting itself, what it covers and its one exception.
## Very small SOL payouts
Solana will not credit a wallet holding no SOL at all with less than the minimum balance an account needs to exist, and it refuses any transaction that tries. So a SOL payout that small, to a wallet that empty, is held back instead of sent: it stays in the vault it would have come from, and the transaction records who was owed it and how much. On a refund or a tournament claim, which pay many people at once, this is what stops one empty wallet from blocking everyone else's payment.
{% hint style="danger" %}
A held-back amount is not paid later. It stays in the vault until the vault closes and leaves with whatever else is left there: to the race's creator, by their payout setting, on a race, and to the platform on a tournament.
{% endhint %}
It applies only to SOL, never to a token payout, and only to a wallet at zero. The minimum entry fee is never set below that threshold, so in practice it is a very small tournament share, split many ways, that meets it.
## Where to claim
Most refunds and claims run through the Unclaimed Items banner in the top bar, where any race with something pending shows up with a single Claim button. The race detail modal carries per-race claim buttons too.
