Server Economy

(This article is not fully developed yet, other portions still need to be added)

# Server Economy

For most of Purity's history, there has been an overarching player economy. Exchanges of needed goods such as elytras, shulkers, godsets, and other items in a barter transaction or even through currency took place. In an environment without convenient methods to trade (such as the /trade command), commerce on Purity Vanilla has always been a risky endeavor. However, as time went on, trade has become much more reliable, easier, and safer due to various factors. Better traveling methods through highways created easy transportation to spawn and back. Chiefly, the establishment of trade discords and their development made it much easier for players to interact with trade in Purity Vanilla.

At various periods in Purity's history, certain items were more valued than other items. Clearly, this is caused by the process of supply and demand — as more people had access to certain items, they had less value. When getting other items required more effort, these items became very valuable in the economy. Factors that caused this were primarily version changes, which created new farms, removed old ones, and added in new items that had greater value.

The major periods in Purity's economy can be divided by these version changes.

### Early Days (1.13-1.15)

#### Initial Player Economy (March-June 2019)

For the first two months of Purity's life, trade was much different in these times than it is currently. The "infrastructure" that made trade more accessible in later months, such as highways and trade discords had not been developed. Other methods of travel like ender pearl stasis were barely, if ever, used. Further, a reliable currency that could be exchanged for items did not form yet. Items that currently are almost worthless were commonly traded for high values, such as enchanted books (mending), diamond godsets, totems, etc.. The most valuable items were totems and elytras, since these were hard to get and in limited supply. There were no totem farms to mass produce totems (because Purity started before the update 1.14 that added raids), so woodland mansions were the only way of obtaining them. As for elytras, even though they are still valuable today, they were harder to obtain in earlier months because no established trade market existed to trade them on a larger scale. Thus, many people did not have them and no end resets inflated their value.

#### Early development of infrastructure (May-August 2019)

Even though the player economy during the early months of Purity was much smaller, players still desired valuable items and wealth. These players were the first to get shulkers of elytras and totems, and the same players had a profound impact on developing the early infrastructure of Purity. The most powerful group at the time, Dumpster Dogs, decided to start construction on large highways with obsidian (around May 2019). To obtain this obsidian, they traded with people in exchange for their goods, such as godsets, shulkers, and elytras. This was one of the origins of trading obsidian, and the start of a more organized economy on Purity. Players could now have a reliable currency to buy other goods for, that was universally valued by most people. Aside from building highways, obsidian was also useful for building large gold farms. Later, when obsidian became Purity's de-facto currency, it was valued because it was valued. And as a more involved player economy was emerging, more streamlined ways of trading were developed.

The first attempt at creating a "trade discord" was in the Purity Vanilla discord itself. Briefly, there was a discord channel that allowed others to trade with each other. However, little thought was put into this channel, so it became unused and then deleted. But the origins of the first successful attempt to create a trade discord was from an unlikely source. During early June 2019, a random server conversation about forming a server "League of Nations", started by a comment from Richeatue led to the formation of a server called "Purity Alliance". As one would expect, this server quickly became inactive, as alliances on Purity are always very shallow. However, the server gained a new purpose as the main server's economy grew; the players who created this discord, such as TipTopBopp, began to use this server for trading. One day, these players decided to invite a bunch of people who played on the server but were not on the server's discord. This was massively successful, and lots of people joined. TipTopBopp, noticing the community interest in the discord decided to reorganize it around trading — first, by renaming the server to "Purity Market". Then, a discussion in the #general chat among the playerbase ensued on how to organize the trade system. From here, the fundamentals of today's trade discord, Purity Trading Hub, originated. First, that a player will need a certain amount of trades to get Trusted Trader, and these would be verified through reporting. Second, that any person who scams a player in a trade will be marked as a scammer and recorded so traders can avoid them. The formation of this trade discord was crucial to the initial organization of Purity's economy, and made it safer and easier for players to trade with one another.

### Current Times (1.16-Present)

The introduction of 1.16's nether features were revolutionary for many aspects of the server, predominantly the economy. With the one de facto server currency, obsidian losing nearly all value after a server-wide movement to shift away from it, an economic issue plagued the server - what would take obsidian's place?

After many Trading community polls and discussions, the results displayed that out of 200 players, the majority of them opted for 3 substitute resources, those being:

* Gunpowder, easily farmable and had a versatile range of uses, such as fireworks and TNT;
* Shulker shells, exclusively farmable from end cities thus a finite resource back in 1.16, meaning the value only will increase over time;
* finally, netherite ingots, a new addition with the 1.16 update and highly sought after as they introduced the new "end game armor", raising the standard.

Over time, with obsidian flushed out of nearly all the markets netherite ingots took the stage as the new de facto server currency, with most shops only willing to trade with ancient debris/netherite.

As netherite saw exponential growth in stability and utilization on the server, another form of server-wide currency was gradually making itself more apparent- cash trading. Despite sounding like a risk not worth involving one self with on an anarchy server, this market was actually quite well regulated and trusted thanks to Trading Hub moderation. With the server's popularity booming, it was only natural that adults with a lot of spare money on their hands would splash out to gain the advantage, making trading on Purity Vanilla actually profitable time-wise with real profits despite only being minecraft. The cash trade market is still only growing to this day, with oldfags honing some market knowledge making deals that are well over hundreds of dollars. Despite contradicting minecraft's End User License Agreement, Purity's cash market is only expanding.