How Phicoins keep their value.
Phicoins are worth something only if they stay scarce. The game gives some away and destroys others; a public rule keeps the two in balance, and its numbers are published every Monday.
Now
| free Phicoins per active player, last Monday | — |
|---|---|
| active players (last 28 days) | — |
| presence Phicoins today | — |
Why a target
Too many free Phicoins would push prices up.
Every Phicoin given for free adds to the money in the game. If the game gave out more than it took back, there would be more and more Phicoins for the same artworks: prices would climb, and every Phicoin you earned or bought would buy less.
So Phixel watches one number: the free Phicoins held by each active player. The target is about 100, the size of the welcome bonus. Phicoins you buy are never counted, since they were paid for.
Where Phicoins come from, and where they go.
In
Free
- Welcome bonus 100, once per phone number.
- Presence 1 to 10 a day, for time with the app on screen.
- Friends 10 each, up to 100 friends.
Bought
- Packs Bought in the app; every purchase is checked with Apple or Google.
Players' balances
Sales and royalties move Phicoins from one player to another; only Phixel's share, and an artist's unpaid 5%, leave the game.
Out destroyed for good
- Blank canvases Everything you pay, from 10 to 50,000 Phicoins.
- Phixel's share 10% of every sale from an artist's shop, 5% of every resale (at least 1 Phicoin). Phixel keeps nothing.
- Unpaid royalties The artist's 5%, when artists resell their own copy or their account is banned or closed.
- Accounts gone for good The Phicoins left on an account deleted for good, or banned for good.
Also counted as free: Phicoins added by the team, and the shares given back when the sales of a removed artwork are undone. The official Phixel account is outside the game: what players pay it is destroyed, and what it gives counts as free.
What keeps Phicoins scarce.
-
Free Phicoins are few.
100 to welcome you, once per phone number. A number verifies one account at a time, so a fake account would need a real phone number. Presence and friend rewards need a verified phone too, and presence counts only minutes with the app on screen, never more than 10 Phicoins a day.
-
Every canvas and every sale destroys some.
Blank canvases cost from 10 to 50,000 Phicoins, and all of it is destroyed. Phixel's share of every sale is destroyed too.
-
Presence follows the target.
Every Monday, the free Phicoins per active player are compared with 100. Clearly above, presence moves one step down the ladder; clearly below, one step up. It moves one step a week at most, and never goes below 1 Phicoin a day.
-
Bought Phicoins never count.
For every balance, the server knows which part was given and which part was bought. The rule measures only the free part: buying Phicoins never changes it, and never takes presence away from anyone. A refunded pack is taken back in full, and the copies bought with it go back to their sellers while the buyer still holds them.
-
Every Phicoin is accounted for.
Each movement is written in a ledger and never changed. Balances are checked against it every hour. Once a day, the whole ledger is read again and the free part of every balance is recomputed from it. If a balance differs, the team is alerted; if a free part differs, the rule also freezes until it is fixed. A Phicoin cannot be divided.
Phicoins can't be withdrawn or exchanged for money, and selling Phicoins, copies or accounts for real money is not allowed.
How presence is set each Monday.
This is the exact rule the server runs. Every number below can be checked against the weekly table.
- Every Monday at 00:00 UTC, the game looks at the last 28 days. Active players are players with a verified phone, an account in good standing and at least one minute with the app on screen in those 28 days. The official Phixel account never counts.
- m = the free Phicoins they hold ÷ the number of active players. The free Phicoins of any other account that received at least 1,000 Phicoins from sales or royalties in those 28 days are added too, so that free Phicoins can't hide in relay accounts.
- The target is 100, with a zone around it: d = the larger of 10 and 200 ÷ √(active players). The zone is wide while the game is small (± 63 with 10 active players, ± 20 with 100) and ± 10 from 400 active players.
- Above 100 + d, presence moves one step down the ladder; below 100 − d, one step up; in the zone, nothing changes.
- Special cases:
- Freeze: nothing moves with fewer than 10 active players, during an outage week (from 100 active players: fewer than half the usual players, or of the usual Phicoins destroyed), or if the daily check of the free Phicoins found a difference.
- Wait: if the last change already went the same way, m is coming back toward 100 and is within 2 × d, the rule waits a week, because the stock needs time to react.
- Guard: no step up, and no return (below), while the presence Phicoins of the last 4 weeks are more than 4 times the free Phicoins destroyed in those weeks (a sign of bots; the team is alerted).
- Return: one step back up toward 4 a day when m is in the zone but under 100, presence is below 4 a day, there are few long days in the app (less than a quarter of presence Phicoins earned on days of 2 hours or more) and nothing has changed for 4 Mondays.
- By hand: in an emergency, the team can choose a step of the ladder, never zero, from the next midnight UTC. Every change made by hand is listed below with its date, and the rule's own decision is still computed and published each Monday.
m = free Phicoins of active players ÷ active playersd = max(10, 200 ÷ √active players)m > 100 + d → one step downm < 100 − d → one step up
| Step | Per day | One every |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | 15 min |
| 2 | 2 | 30 min |
| 3 | 3 | 30 min |
| 4at launch | 4 | 30 min |
| 5 | 5 | 24 min |
| 6 | 6 | 20 min |
| 7 | 8 | 15 min |
| 8 | 10 | 12 min |
A full day never takes more than 2 hours with the app on screen.
The Mondays so far.
Each Monday's decision, with what it was based on. Free given, free destroyed and bought are the Phicoins of the week that ends on that Monday.
Use the left and right arrow keys to read each Monday.
Free Phicoins per active player
Every Monday, with the target and its zone.
Free Phicoins in and out
Free Phicoins given (welcome, presence, friends) and free Phicoins destroyed, week by week.
| Monday | Active | m | Zone | Step | Free given | Free destroyed | Bought | Why |
|---|
Changes made by hand
- None so far.
Phicoins are the in-game currency. You earn them by playing or buy them in packs, the app's only purchases. They have no cash value and cannot be withdrawn.