How swaps work

1. You pick one item from your vault, the value band it falls in, and which of the four games to enter it in.
2. Your item locks. It can't be traded, withdrawn or entered anywhere else while the group is filling.
3. When the group is full, the game runs — instantly for a Mystery Swap or a Spin the Wheel, over turns for a White Elephant or a Draft Night.
4. All ownership transfers happen in a single database transaction. If any part of it fails, none of it happens and every item returns to its original owner.
5. Your new item appears in your vault immediately, ready to trade, list or enter again.

The guarantee above is identical in all four. What differs is how the items get handed out, and — importantly — how much of the outcome we can prove afterwards.

• Mystery Swap. Nothing is visible until the group fills. Everything is then shuffled at once and handed back out.
• Spin the Wheel. The same shuffle, but every item is visible from the moment you join. The wheel lands and stops; there is no slow-down and no near-miss, because there is no losing outcome to dress up as nearly winning.
• White Elephant. Turns, in an order nobody picks. On your turn you open something nobody has seen or take something somebody is holding. An item can change hands twice and is then settled. If somebody takes from you, you get another turn straight away.
• Draft Night. Every item on the table from the start, a random order, one pick each against a short clock.

In all four, you can never end up with the item you brought. Traditional White Elephant allows it; we don't, because you entered in order to swap.

Bands use the value our inspection team assigned when the item arrived — never a value the owner claimed.

Bands alone aren't enough, though. A $20–30 band would still let someone enter a $30 item and receive a $20 one, and that would be chance deciding whether they came out ahead. So a group only accepts an item if, afterwards, its lowest-valued item is still at least 85% of its highest. That check runs before any randomness does, so it holds for every possible outcome.

Every random value is generated on our servers with a cryptographically secure generator. Nothing random runs in your browser.

Before a group opens, we generate a secret seed and publish its SHA-256 fingerprint. Because the fingerprint is published before anyone joins, we can't pick a seed that produces a result we prefer — we don't know who will be in the group yet.

After the game runs, we publish the seed itself. Anyone can hash it, compare it to the fingerprint we committed to, and re-derive what the seed decided. Every completed game shows this proof on its own page.

What the seed decided is not the same in every game, and we say so rather than implying otherwise. In a Mystery Swap or a Spin the Wheel it decided the whole outcome, so the proof covers the whole outcome: re-run the shuffle and the result has to match. In a White Elephant or a Draft Night it decided only the turn order — everything after that was a choice somebody made, and no seed can or should predict a person's decision. So for those two the claim is narrower and stated that way on the page: the order was not chosen, the outcome was played. What makes them checkable instead is the move log, which records every turn in order, including any move the clock made for a player who ran out of time. Those moves come from the same seed, so they can be re-derived too.

• Identity-verified accounts only.
• 18 or older.
• Up to 5 games per day.
• Games are unavailable in some regions. If yours is one, the games page will say so.
• Accounts we've linked to each other are never placed in the same group.

If a group doesn't fill in time it's cancelled, every item unlocks and any entry fee is refunded in full. You can also pull your item out yourself any time before the group fills. Once a live game has started you can't pull out — your item is somebody's next move by then, not just locked.

If your turn runs out, or your phone drops off the wifi, nobody skips you. The game opens something for you and play carries on, so you still leave with an item. In White Elephant it will only ever open something — it will never take an item off another player on your behalf.

Every event in a game — who joined, the order that was drawn, every move and who made it — is recorded in an append-only log shown on the game's page. That log is what we use to settle any dispute.

Games are between players. Swapz never enters items, never plays against you, never contributes or removes items, and takes nothing based on what you receive. Entry costs the same regardless of outcome.

There are no rare items, no bonus tiers and no cash. Nothing can be added to a group beyond one item per player.

Nothing here rewards playing more. Sound and vibration are off until you switch them on, no animation implies a better item was nearly yours, and your profile shows what you swapped rather than how many games you have played — a games-played badge would be a nudge to play another one.