The Heist

The Heist is an NFT game on Solana, not the wallet hack or the memecoins that share its name. It is an idle game from the studio Longwood Labs, launched in April 2023.

Each NFT is a primate character. Chimps and Orangutans run heists to earn tokens, while Gorillas act as police and try to arrest them. You stake a character at a location, wait, then claim. The longer you stay, the bigger the reward and the higher the risk.

The current season is set on Primate Island and pays out the $KIWI token. The game has gone quiet, though: the team last posted about it in August 2025.

How The Heist game works: staking primates on heists

In The Heist you play by parking an NFT character at a heist location and leaving it there. The game rolls for good and bad events while you wait. When you claim, you collect your tokens, or you get caught.

The Season 3 heist rules set out seven Central Bank locations across the island's districts. Heists are the only place to earn $KIWI. You can claim any time after four hours.

The odds come from an event table that updates every 15 minutes. The chance of a good event stays fixed for each location. The chance of a bad one, such as an arrest or an ambush, rises the longer you stay. That is the whole tension of the game: wait longer for more, or claim early and keep what you have.

Each NFT earns a baseline amount of $KIWI per day, per the KIWI docs. Less crowded, riskier locations get a bonus multiplier, so packed safe spots pay less. Only Chimps and Orangutans roll the event table. Gorillas earn from the arrests and fumbles of the players they catch.

The first season worked differently. In Peel City, players chose between three venues, the Safehouse, Goldman Racks and the Federal Reserve, and earned $NANA. Phantom's guide to the game describes that version, where a Federal Reserve run could pay 10 times your stake or cost you the NFT.

The Heist NFT collection: Chimps, Orangutans and Gorillas

The Heist NFTs are the game pieces. You can't play without one, and each also works as a profile picture.

There are three factions. Chimps and Orangutans are the criminals who run heists. Gorillas are the law and earn by catching them. Players often call Orangutans "Tangs" and Gorillas "Rillas".

In Season 3, every NFT has fixed stats that are locked to it for good, per the stats and rarity page. Chimps and Orangutans carry four:

• Yield, which raises token earnings
• Exploration, which raises the chance of finding loot
• Stealth, which lowers the chance of bad events
• Combat, which helps you ambush others and avoid being caught

Gorillas carry Reputation, which raises their cut from arrests, and Enforcement, which raises their chance to steal newly bred NFTs. Rarity is set by total stat points and never changes. You can only boost stats for a while, with items and power-ups.

You buy the NFTs on secondary marketplaces such as Magic Eden ME$0.043-5.7% and Tensor TNSR$0.025-4.7%, then connect your wallet at theheist.game, per Phantom's guide. At the 2023 peak, standard Chimp and Orangutan floors reached about 20 SOL and rare Gorillas traded above 100 SOL, according to SolanaFloor.

NANA token and KIWI: The Heist's in-game currencies

The Heist has used a different reward token in each season. $NANA came first, $COCO arrived in Season 2, and $KIWI is the Season 3 token. The Season 3 overview says the seasonal design is a way to manage emissions and sinks, with a new deflationary token arriving as each season starts.

$NANA is now the premium currency. The NANA docs say supply is capped at 1 billion and that new emissions stopped after the first season. You can only get it from liquidity pools or other players.

Any $NANA spent in the game is burned, so supply only shrinks. In April 2025 the team posted that another 40 million $NANA had been burned.

$KIWI is the token you earn from heists today. The team first teased it on X in February 2024. You spend it on breeding and can stake it in the game's Vault.

$COCO was the second season's currency. The StepData newsletter put its market cap at about $25 million in September 2023. The current docs no longer cover it.

Breeding, Loot Trips and Land in The Heist Season 3

Season 3 added much more than heists. The update brought Jail Breaks, Loot Trips, power-ups and land, per the team's season overview.

Jail Breaks are how you breed new characters. You spend $KIWI and Donuts to send two apes on a 24-hour trip, and a new ape comes back. The breeding rules say the child is one generation after its lowest-generation parent (two Gen 0 parents make a Gen 1), and both parents then wait seven days before they can breed again. Genesis parents improve the child's rarity odds. A newborn has a 10% base chance of being stolen by a Gorilla.

Loot Trips are timed outings that find items, Donuts and consumables. There are eight, one in each district and one in the Safezone. You unlock harder tiers with items from easier ones.

Land lets you own a plot, build on it and harvest resources. Each claim has a chance to break one of your buildings. Gangs let friends buy land together and stop them stealing from each other. In April 2025 the team added Rilla Raids, which let Gorillas steal from other players' land claims.

The Safezone is the island's hub. It holds the leaderboards, a Black Market for NFTs, the cosmetics store and the $KIWI Vault.

The Heist seasons: from Peel City to Primate Island

The Heist has run in seasons since it launched on 18 April 2023. The team marked that date with a two-year anniversary post.

The first season, set in Peel City, paid out $NANA. The second, running by late summer 2023, added new heists, Scavenger Trips, new locations and $COCO, per StepData. The Heist also featured on the Solana ecosystem call in August 2023.

The third season moved the game to Primate Island in 2024, after the team teased $KIWI that February. It brought $KIWI, breeding, Loot Trips and land.

The game peaked in its first year, when Solana activity leaned heavily on NFTs. SolanaFloor wrote that "the birth of the 2024 bull run spelled the end for The Heist", as memecoins pulled attention away from NFT games. Even so, the team kept shipping into 2025, with raffles, cosmetics and Rilla Raids.

Is The Heist still active in 2026?

The Heist looks dormant, though the team hasn't announced a shutdown. The website and docs still load. But the account's last original post on X was on 1 August 2025.

Since then the account has only reposted Cash City, Longwood Labs' newest game, which went live on 13 February 2026. We couldn't find any notice of new seasons, updates or a sunset for The Heist after that.

If you are thinking of buying in, check that the game still pays out before you stake anything. The Heist Discord, linked from the official docs, is the most likely place to find that out. The price widgets on this page show how much the tokens still trade.

Who The Heist suits

The Heist suits collectors who already own Heist NFTs or like the art and the lore, and who see any rewards as a bonus. It rewards patience and a feel for odds. You check in, decide when to claim, and accept that some runs end badly.

It is a poor fit if you want income. Your rewards are paid in game tokens that the game itself mints or burns. The studio's attention has moved to newer games. And the worst outcomes can cost you the NFT you paid for. If you are new to Solana, you also need a wallet, SOL and a marketplace account before you can play.

Is The Heist safe? Risks to know

We found no public smart contract audit for The Heist. The docs don't list its program addresses either, so we couldn't check who can upgrade the game's on-chain code.

The game is built to make you lose sometimes. Arrests and ambushes can take your rewards. A newly bred NFT can be stolen by a Gorilla. The Season 1 rules even allowed losing the NFT itself.

The bigger risk now is the project's state. Since August 2025 the team has posted nothing new about The Heist, and its effort has gone into Cash City. If the game stops running, its tokens and NFTs lose most of what makes them useful. $NANA can only be traded through pools and between players, so how easily you can sell depends on whoever is still trading.

Longwood Labs: the team behind The Heist, DeFi Dungeons and Cash City

Longwood Labs is the Solana game studio that makes The Heist. It started in October 2021, per the team page.

Before The Heist, it made The Remnants, which the studio calls "the first playable game on Solana". It has also built custom games for other Solana NFT collections.

After The Heist came DeFi Dungeons, a fantasy idle game with a $GOLD token. SolanaFloor reported that its token sale drew over $11 million in deposits. The studio's newest game is Cash City. The Cash City docs describe it as a trading-firm simulator where players run firms, hire interns and compete for daily $CASH rewards. They credit "Longwood Labs, the team behind DeFi Dungeons and The Heist".