URL: Official website (requires Android or iOS app download from official app stores, does not work on Chromebook)
A daily SATs earning app that became popular in recent years, Ember Fund may now be entering its "cash out and crash out" phase (at least as far as earning possibility goes)
NATURE OF WORK AND PAYMENT
Ember Fund's big attraction has long been its "free daily mining." Like Pi, this isn't really mining, it's basically opting into an airdrop daily by opening the app and tapping a button. But the long and short is you get 24 SATs per day ... in "casino fun money." You have to then take it to the app's various slots and sports betting and play it through at least once to get redeemable funds.
When the app first got big a few years ago, it didn't require casino playthrough and you could get at least $2 per day in SATs this way. You could also boost this daily earning with referrals. Well, as always, times have changed and the deal is now nerfed.
So what else is going on? Aside from the gambling, Ember Fund is ostensibly a GPT site, but one with far FAR fewer options than the big names. If you click on "games" you're presented with one (1) game option to play for not-great pay in SATs; take it or leave it. We can find a bit more going on hidden under the "games" tab at the bottom of the app, scrolling past the casino stuff to a "Tasks" section. Checking out "games" here just loops back to the one single offer, but there's also a small offerwall that only had two options whenever I've checked it out (signing up for a Dave account with your paycheck and something else).
It gets better when you get to the withdrawal restrictions! This very recently changed from 10k SATs to 50k (about $10 to $50 USD), costs a $2 processing fee to transfer to a private wallet, can only be done once per month, and ONLY in the second half of the month for some reason.
SITE HISTORY / LEGITIMACY
Crunchbase lists the founder's names and a San Francisco phone number, but beyond that it's kind of hard to find out who these people are or where they are, even from the official website and app.
A 2019 SEC filing indicates they were at least once actually headquartered in Los Angeles as something called "OpenDeal Portal LLC" ... which comes up with a New York City address.
This thing has been running legitimately for at least a few years without big complaints about stiffing or ripoffs, but all that runaround and opaqueness is at least something of a red flag.
INTERNATIONAL ACCESS
Their official page on this seems to have vanished; the only official word beyond that is "it's available in most countries, check your app store to see."
STARTING OUT
Download and go, but you may have to KYC with an ID to cash out.
You can purchase optional "Ember Tokens," at about one million for $1 USD, which buy you temporary power-ups of various sorts, the most notable being extending your free mining session for up to seven days. You can also purchase no ads for seven days (you have to watch a video ad to click your daily mining button), new avatars and something called "Streak Freeze" that I can't find any details on. There are periodic offers where you get some bonus SATs thrown in with these purchases too. But don't get too excited about that 1 mil for $1, most of these power-ups start at 1 mil for the lowest level.
PROBLEMS WITH EMBER FUND
It's already something of a questionable proposition, but longtime users are up in arms right now about changes introduced in the last couple of weeks. We mentioned the cashout requirement going from 10k to 50k SATs, but there is also word the free mining is being limited to just 10 days out of every month. And free tournaments for slots and such were a big draw, but those seem to have been entirely eliminated recently as well.
FINAL VERDICT - MAY WORK FOR YOU
I'm not ready to "not recommended" this one just yet, as maybe it'll make a rebound to something closer to what it was two years ago and/or maybe you can find some utility by paying for mining and working the casino games somehow (I don't think it's worth the effort). But to me this has the feeling of being something that started out as a legitimate crypto project a few years ago and gradually shifted to being an unlicensed casino as whatever that original plan was went sideways.
As far as the casino aspect goes, it is apparently a fee-free source of sports betting, though that's an aspect for a different sort of site to get into. However, I presume they're freely offering this on US app stores due to the "sweepstakes loophole", which has already been closed in about 20 states and two more (Oklahoma and Utah) are very likely to pass similar laws by the end of 2026.
Personally, I think I'm about to just go blow my few dollars of accumulated faux-SATs at a slot or something and delete it to stop the notifications. I'm just not seeing the potential here.
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