Ask HN: Where does this adversarial prize mechanism break?

I'm looking for adversarial review of a mechanism design problem involving real money.

There is a fixed on-chain prize pool and a physical cache at a pre-committed deterministic location. Clues unlock for a fee, and each unlock adds to the prize pool. Anyone can attempt a claim at any time. No rule changes after deployment.

The operator commits the location in advance, which introduces a trust assumption. Claims are validated against committed coordinates within a tolerance radius.

First round is active with a small initial pool.

Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0x04d71b7bCD29BA68D7Ec92d41f444814EcB42119

Spec: https://hashclue.com/technical-documents

Site: https://hashclue.com

Questions I am keen to answer:

- What are the economic attack vectors? (griefing, collusion, info asymmetry) - Is the clue pricing floor structurally unstable at small pool sizes? - Does the operator trust assumption make this fundamentally flawed? - Is this effectively just a lottery under a different interface? - What happens when rational players model each other's clue-buying behavior? - Is there a dominant strategy that collapses the game before it plays out? - Would you participate? Why or why not?

I'm more interested in structural criticism than product feedback.