Only 200 people have mentioned $37: Zulti used a fragmented prize pool to win hundreds of thousands of users in emerging-market make-money-online circles

A small Australian team's "free lottery" site sells nothing and runs no ads, yet this summer it suddenly took off in Nigeria, India and the Philippines. What made it go wasn't the lottery itself but a simple piece of arithmetic: $10 at sign-up, a $37 withdrawal threshold, and the $27 gap filled by referrals. Below: how it spun up, where the money comes from (currently nowhere), why it has already flattened, and what you can take from it.

A Nigerian blogger's late review

In Oct 2026 6, Eric Chidi, the author of the Nigerian make-money-online blog LeavingTrenches, published a Zulti review titled "How I made $37, and what I found." He opened with an apology: the post was late because he had joined months earlier but still hadn't scraped together the withdrawal minimum.

His words: "I had to refer 200 people before I earned the minimum I needed to withdraw."

The verdict is contradictory: it does pay out. He reached $37, submitted government ID, and received a Solana transfer. But he doesn't recommend it, because "if you have no referral channel, you basically can't withdraw." The article still ends with his invite link.

That is the whole growth secret of Zulti, spelled out by one of its users.

What it is

Zulti (zulti.com, formerly zultifree.com) is a free raffle site built by Tree3 Solutions in Australia. In Jan 2026 20 it also shipped an Android app. How it works:

• Spin the wheel daily (up to 3 times), play mini-games, level up, refer friends, and collect gems.
• 100 gems buy a ZultiBall ticket. Pick numbers from 1–50. Every 10 minutes a $10k pool draws, and once a day a $100k jackpot.
• Draws use "provably fair": a server seed combined with an Ethereum block hash. The algorithm is open source, so anyone can verify it.
• Withdrawal threshold $37 (raised from $30 in July). Identity verification is required. Payouts are Solana / USDT only.

The homepage shows three numbers (as of 10-22 when I opened it): 15M tickets sold in total, over 106k people have won, and "$55K+" paid out cumulatively. 413 people online.

Divide the last two numbers: the average win is about 5 cents. The lowest prize tier on the draw page is $0.01. For the $100k jackpot I found no public evidence that anyone has won it, and Eric also says he's never seen it.

When it took off

The timeline is clear:

Traffic followed this line. In Chrome's real-user data, its global tier was in the top 500k in May, moved into the top 100k in June, and into the top 50k in July. In global website rankings, it was still beyond 280k at the end of July, got inside the top 100k in early September, and was at 5k in 83 (rankings are a 30-day rolling average, so they lag real traffic by more than a month).

On Google Play, 10-29 installs were 214k, 11-06 was 233k, and in the last 8 days it added about 19k, over two thousand a day. It only ranks 62–88 on the Nigerian Entertainment free chart.

Where users came from: everyone who wanted to withdraw became a promoter

Nearly all traffic came from one network:

• YouTube make-money-online channels: small creators in India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Indonesia filmed "live withdrawal proof," with Telegram groups and invite codes in the descriptions. The earliest I could find is from February 2026, a withdrawal proof from the Indian channel apsearningguru, 18k views.
• Telegram / WhatsApp / Facebook make-money-online groups: there's a Facebook group called "Don't sleep on Zulti."
• Nigerian task sites: GoJelly.com.ng's "easy sign-up tasks" listed "Zulti new users, $10,12 free slots", which means paying people to sign up.
• Official X and Discord: @zulticom has about 4,100 followers and posts limited-time codes for "the first 250 people"; single posts get 5–10K views.

What I couldn't find is also worth noting: almost no organic TikTok content about it; I didn't see it in the common ad platforms (not finding it doesn't mean it wasn't running); no mainstream media coverage; and X discussion has been nearly zero for the last three months. It only took off in one circle: make-money-online and airdrop users in emerging markets.

Why this one, and why now

1. The sign-up reward sits below the withdrawal threshold, so the gap forces referrals. $10 lands in your account, visible but not yet usable. The remaining $27 can barely be earned through the wheel and raffles, so invites become the only route. Everyone who wants to cash out has to post invite codes, and creators have an incentive to film "withdrawal proof."

2. Prizes are denominated in USD and paid in stablecoins, which is exactly what this crowd wants. Make-money-online users in Nigeria, India and the Philippines hold Binance or Solana wallets and are used to airdrops and tap-to-earn. For them, $37 in USDT is real money. "Anyone can play, no upfront payment" also sidesteps the scams they're wary of. Long-running US free raffles (FreeLotto, PCH) are US-only, so this crowd couldn't join them anyway.

3. The prize pool is sliced very thin, so acquisition costs almost nothing. 106k total wins distributed only about $55k. There are lots of win screenshots and very little real payout. In return, it bought over two hundred thousand app installs and more web users, at an estimated cost of a few cents per user.

4. In a category full of scams, it makes "it really pays out" credible first. Open-source draw logic that lets you verify tickets yourself, plus a batch of real withdrawal videos, earned a Trustpilot score of about 3.9. In this circle, that is enough to get people to click.

Where the money comes from: nowhere yet

The Play page says no ads and no in-app purchases. The official FAQ says "paid features coming soon." In other words, Zulti is buying users with its prize pool and has not started collecting money. Whether it moves into paid tickets, memberships, or a full lottery or gambling business isn't visible from the outside (my inference: a paid direction is most likely, but it will run into lottery and gambling compliance issues across countries).

Has it already plateaued?

Probably. Rankings have barely moved since September, rising only 30% in the last 6 days. In Chrome's real-user data, Canada, Indonesia, Poland and Turkey each dropped a tier in September, and Germany and Mexico fell back to the top 500k. Trustpilot reviews complaining about the withdrawal threshold, identity verification, and account bans for "multiple accounts" are increasing. This is the common shape of referral-driven growth: a surge, then decay. The moment it took off in July, the threshold was raised from $30 to $37, which itself shows the payout cost was squeezing it.

Who it's competing with

I haven't found a new site that does all of these at once: free + global + USD prize pool + stablecoin withdrawals + referral cash-back. The Zulti content online is almost all pushing its invite codes, and nobody is building a similar product.

If it were you

In one line: you can learn a very cheap acquisition mechanic here, but cloning Zulti isn't a good deal. It hasn't made money yet, its traffic has flattened, and it sits on the edge of lottery and gambling.

Who it's for: teams already running earn-money apps, task walls, or watch-ads-for-rewards products with reliable income (offerwall revenue share, rewarded video), who want to push acquisition costs down in emerging markets. Put Zulti's three moves into your product: use small-pot draws in place of part of the ad budget; set the signup bonus deliberately below the withdrawal threshold so users refer others to reach it; accept withdrawals only in USDT / Solana to bypass country banks and payment rails.

Who it's not for: anyone who wants to build a "free lottery site" from scratch and figure out monetization later; people in places or target markets that tightly regulate raffles and lotteries; people who can't stand "scam" reviews and account-ban disputes.

How to build it: make revenue first, then add the draws. Revenue comes from offerwalls and rewarded video (the part Freecash-style apps have already proven pays), and draws are just a retention and sharing hook. Make draws verifiable, and make the first withdrawal fast and filmable.

How to acquire users: do what Zulti did: give exclusive invite codes to small earn-money YouTubers in Nigeria, India, Pakistan, and the Philippines, and have them film real withdrawals; join earn-money groups on Telegram and WhatsApp; buy signups on Nigerian task sites to cold-start. For languages, pick the ones it hasn't covered (Hindi, Urdu, Hausa, Vietnamese).

When to move: this crowd chases "new platforms that still pay," and Zulti's buzz peaked in 7–August and has already faded. To ride its wave, launch before Q1 next year, before these creators move on to the next platform.

Signs you read this wrong: if Zulti's traffic held or grew again after it added paid features, it means this crowd will pay and the opportunity is bigger than written here. The reverse: if it starts delaying withdrawals or mass-banning accounts before year-end, buying users with small prize pools doesn't add up, so don't follow it.