World Chess's Tower pays in Algorand tokens, and the ledger shows the loop

The Tower is a free rewards ladder¹ on World Chess², the London-listed company (LSE: CHSS) that operates FIDE Online Arena, the International Chess Federation³'s official online platform. Play rated games and win or draw, and Progress points land in your account; enough of them carry you up a floor. Floors pay in Chess coins, which are spent in a store called Exchange on a month of the paid plan, a shop discount code or a postcard by mail.

Where those balances live is what makes it a story for an Algorand reader. Progress points and Chess coins are Algorand Standard Assets on MainNet, issued by World Chess itself. Coins leave the issuer's account for players' wallets, and coins return to it. Both directions sit on a public ledger.

Floors, points and the Exchange

The Tower's own guide⁴ sets the rules. A win pays 2⁵ Progress points, a draw 1⁶, and a tenth game in a day 5⁷ more; losses, resigned games, games against bots, puzzles and streaks pay nothing. Floors 1 to 10⁸ pay Chess coins, from floor 11 the prizes widen to a 5%⁹ shop code and the like, and floor 30 pays a free month of the paid plan. A floor's coin prize depends on the player's plan: 'Pro subscribers get more, for example 6¹⁰ coins instead of 4.'

Prizes are claimed by hand, from the lowest completed floor upward, and balances refresh hourly. The Tower exists on the website only, not in the iOS or Android app.

Exchange is short and concrete. The help centre lists '1¹¹ month PRO subscription — 230¹² coins; 15%¹³ Shop promo code — 150¹⁴ coins; postcards, sent by regular mail.' It adds the line that says what sort of currency this is: 'Only Chess coins work in Exchange — you can't buy prizes with real money.¹⁵'

The two assets

World Chess Coins (WCHESS) and World Chess Progress Points (WCPP) are issued by one account, set up for the Tower programme World Chess launched in 2025. Each was minted at just under a quadrillion units with no decimals, so a balance is always a whole number. The chain is a choice rather than a default: the two companies renewed their partnership in October 2025, and Algorand says¹⁶ The Tower was built on Intermezzo, its enterprise custody product, which handles key management for businesses.

The issuer still holds almost all of both. Among players, holdings stop at round numbers: the largest coin balance outside the issuer is 300, the largest points balance 3,506. That is a rewards balance rather than a position: enough for a month of the paid plan, or a couple of discount codes.

The coins are not built to trade, and there is no market for them: no Tinyman listing, no Pact pools, and no price feed returns a figure. What a coin is worth is therefore what Exchange asks for it. World Chess's longer Algorand record — the rating tokens this paper described in August — involves different assets and puts no value on these.

What the week of 11 November shows

Between 6 and 13 November the coin asset logged 4,724¹⁷ real transfers, carrying about 31,000 coins, and the newest of them was confirmed on 13 November. The sends are small whole numbers — four, six, nine, fifteen — from the issuer's account straight to a player's wallet, one wallet after another. On 11 March the same account worked down a list of separate wallets between ten in the morning and three in the afternoon, six- and nine-coin credits minutes apart. That is the shape of a payout run, not of trading, and this coin has no trading venue to be measured on.

Points travel one way. The only account that has ever sent them is the issuer's, and the sums are ones, twos and fives — the earn rates the guide lists — so a points balance always arrives from World Chess and never from another player.

Where the shop shows

Coins also come back. When they do, they come in two sizes, 230 and 150, and each clawback carried a text note naming a reward: 7 on the 230s, 8 on the 150s. Those are the two Exchange prices, so the return trip reads as a purchase being settled — the player's coins going home while the prize is delivered off-chain. That is an inference from matching figures, not something a World Chess page states.

One wallet's arc is complete in the record. It had been taking small credits since July, and on 29 October, seconds after its latest 10-coin credit, exactly the price of a month's plan left it.

One key, and what it can do

World Chess Coins (WCHESS) asset

Role	Holder	Can	State
Creator	World Chess issuer account		Active
Manager	World Chess issuer account	Reassigns the four roles; cannot change supply or name	Active
Reserve	World Chess issuer account	Marks where unsent supply sits; no power over a holder	Active
Freeze	World Chess issuer account	Freezes or unfreezes any wallet's coins; never used in that week	Active
Clawback	World Chess issuer account	Takes coins from any wallet without consent; used 13 times in the week to 13 Nov	Active

All four roles sit on one ordinary signature account (sig), not a contract. Read 13 November 2026.

• World Chess Coins (WCHESS) (asset).
• Creator: World Chess issuer account (Active).
• Manager: World Chess issuer account (Active).
• Can: Reassigns the four roles; cannot change supply or name.
• Reserve: World Chess issuer account (Active).
• Can: Marks where unsent supply sits; no power over a holder.
• Freeze: World Chess issuer account (Active).
• Can: Freezes or unfreezes any wallet's coins; never used in that week.
• Clawback: World Chess issuer account (Active).
• Can: Takes coins from any wallet without consent; used 13 times in the week to 13 Nov.

All four roles sit on a single ordinary signature account, not a contract. Clawback is the role in routine use, and in the ordinary case it settles a purchase. Because it is one key, a balance in a player's wallet can be frozen or taken back by the issuer without that player's consent. Algorand's own account of the programme describes the result as 'true ownership', with players who 'control their Progress Points and achievements across platforms, stored securely in their Algorand-compatible wallets¹⁸'.

The terms¹⁹ say what the coin rules do not. They are with World Chess Events Limited, they let the company suspend or terminate a subscription or product 'for any reason, with or without notice and without further obligation²⁰', they cap total liability at $50, and they say nothing about Chess coins or Progress points. With no market and no exit, the exposure in a balance is the prize a player was saving for.

The platform's own footing is a live question too. In June 2026 World Chess signed a non-binding term sheet with FIDE to become the sole route from online play to an official over-the-board rating, pending community consultation, with a definitive long-form agreement the stated next step.

Trying it

The help centre says progress is recorded on Algorand and 'lets you connect it to Algorand-compatible wallets²¹', but no article there describes how a player connects one, and a visitor who opens the Tower page logged out meets a login prompt with no wallet option. Starting costs nothing: a free account, on the website, is enough to play rated games and earn coins. The paid plans²² start at $3.99²³ a month, with a free first week, and none of it is needed to earn a coin.