How the Winnings Vault Works: Non-Custodial Lockup on 12 Chains

Published 2026-04-22 · Tags: product, vault, guides

Lock your winnings in an audited smart contract that physically can't release them early. Built on Sablier, supports USDC, WBTC, and more across 12 networks.

Winning a big session on Stake and giving it all back on the next one is the single most common pattern in crypto gambling. It's a willpower problem with a software solution: lock your winnings somewhere you can't easily touch until a future date. That's what the Winnings Vault does.

Non-custodial, on-chain, supports 12 networks, and uses the same audited smart contracts trusted by Uniswap, OpenSea, and Aave to lock billions in tokens. Here's how it works and why it's different from every other "lock my money" tool.

The problem in one sentence

You win $2,000 on Stake. You feel amazing. Thirty minutes later, you're chasing a crash streak and you've given $1,800 of it back. You know this pattern. You've lived it.

The usual advice, "withdraw to a hardware wallet", doesn't work because hardware wallets still let you withdraw in 30 seconds. The friction isn't high enough.

The solution: on-chain time-locks

A time-lock is a smart contract that holds your tokens and mathematically refuses to release them before a date you choose. Not "you'd have to call support to get them" — literally cannot release them. The code is public, the timer is enforced by the blockchain, and nobody including us can override it.

The Winnings Vault is a UI for Sablier, the most battle-tested non-custodial stream/lockup protocol in DeFi. Sablier contracts have held over $1B across 12 chains without incident since 2021. We didn't build our own lock contracts, we'd have to audit them from scratch, we just wrap Sablier's in a form built for Stake players specifically.

Five minutes to lock your winnings

1. Convert your Stake withdrawal to a supported token (USDC, USDT, WETH, WBTC, cbBTC, DAI, etc.) on a supported chain
2. Connect your wallet on the Vault page — works with MetaMask, Rainbow, Coinbase Wallet, WalletConnect, any standard EVM wallet
3. Pick a schedule (see below), enter the amount, hit Lock
4. You approve the tokens (one transaction), then create the stream (one transaction)
5. Done, your tokens are now inside Sablier's contract on whatever chain you picked, on the schedule you set

Total cost: a one-time gas fee (usually ≤ $1 on L2s like Base/Arbitrum/Optimism, higher on Ethereum mainnet). No platform fee.

Unlock schedules

You don't have to pick a single unlock date. The Vault offers multiple schedule types:

• Panic Lock (24h / 7 days), 100% unlocks in one shot at the end. For "I just won and I need to not touch this for 24 hours."
• Hourly / Daily / Weekly drip — steady unlock, good for converting lump-sum wins into a disciplined payout. Daily over 7 days, hourly over 24 hours, etc.
• Every 10 minutes for 24h, highest-granularity option, for people who want to feel the unlock happening constantly.
• Custom unlock date, pick any calendar date up to 5 years out. All deposits with the same date unlock together — so you can stack multiple winning sessions into one big "bag" that all releases on, say, your birthday.
• Custom schedule (RipGuard-style), pick your own window + cadence + optional waiting period. Full control.

Every schedule is enforced by the smart contract. We can't change it. You can't change it after creation. Your future self has to wait.

The "Add More" pattern

If you've already locked some winnings with a custom unlock date, say June 1st — and you win again a week later, you don't have to create a new separate lock. Click "+ Add More" on the existing vault card and the form pre-fills with the same unlock date. Deposit, confirm, and both piles unlock together on June 1st.

Great for treating "vault-until-June" as a single growing bag rather than 15 tiny separate locks you need to track.

Supported chains and tokens

The Vault works on 12 EVM chains:

• Base, USDC, WETH, cbBTC, DAI
• Ethereum, USDC, USDT, DAI, WETH, WBTC
• Arbitrum — USDC, USDT, WETH, WBTC, DAI
• Optimism, USDC, USDT, WETH, DAI, WBTC
• Polygon, USDC, USDT, DAI, WETH, WBTC
• BNB Chain — USDC, USDT, BUSD
• Avalanche, USDC, USDT
• Linea, USDC, USDT, WETH
• Scroll — USDC, USDT, WETH
• Gnosis, USDC, USDT, WXDAI, WETH
• zkSync Era, USDC, USDT, WETH
• Unichain — USDC, WETH

Use whichever chain you have liquidity on. L2s are dramatically cheaper for gas, Base and Optimism are typical favorites. Ethereum mainnet works but expect to pay a few dollars per interaction.

What's non-custodial mean in practice

We never touch your tokens. You interact with Sablier's smart contract directly from your wallet. We're a UI, if our site goes down tomorrow, your locks are still sitting on-chain, and you can claim them from Sablier's own app using the same wallet.

Things we cannot do:

• Release your tokens early
• Change the schedule
• Cancel the lock
• Seize or freeze funds
• Block you from claiming

Things you can do:

• Claim anything that's already unlocked (anytime, as often as you want)
• View all your locks on our page or Sablier's directly
• Let unlocked tokens accumulate and claim in one batch later (saves gas)

Claiming

As time passes, the unlocked portion of your vault grows. You claim it by clicking Claim on any vault card with a non-zero claimable amount. This sends a transaction that transfers just the unlocked portion to your wallet. Unclaimed unlocks don't disappear — they just sit in the contract until you claim. If you're doing daily-drip, you can let 7 days worth pile up and claim the whole week at once to save on gas.

The psychology of why this works

The Vault isn't a willpower hack. It's removing willpower from the equation entirely. When the alternative to impulse-gambling is "submit a blockchain transaction that physically can't succeed because the timer hasn't expired", the impulse dies on its own. Most people who use time-locks report they don't even think about the locked money after 24 hours, out of wallet, out of mind.

Compare to keeping winnings in your Stake balance: the impulse has to fight only a few seconds of friction. Willpower loses that fight ~100% of the time over enough sessions.

When NOT to use it

• If you need the money back soon. Locks are not cancelable. Don't lock rent.
• If you don't understand self-custody. You need a wallet you control, with the seed phrase secured. If you lose the seed, you lose access to the locked tokens forever, we can't help, Sablier can't help, nobody can help.
• For tiny amounts. Gas on Ethereum mainnet can eat a meaningful percentage of a small lock. Use Base or Optimism for anything under ~$500.

The real pitch

You don't need to become a perfect self-disciplined gambler. You need to remove the option to self-destruct for the next 24 hours. Then, if you don't want to gamble when the 24 hours is up, you won't. And if you do, it's a choice, not a habit.

Lock your winnings → — takes about 3 minutes and costs under a dollar on Base.