Why Sunday Market uses a time-weighted economy

Sunday Market is a public Minecraft survival server for Java and Bedrock where coins come from playing. Mining ore, fishing and sleeping can roll for a payout, while eligible mob kills pay on a short cooldown. Rare ore has a better chance to pay than stone. An hourly reward and some cooldowns give time a part in the balance alongside what you do. Both editions use the same economy, with a balance for each account. Players run their own market stalls, while staff stalls can also have unlimited stock. We call that a time-weighted economy, and the rest of this piece explains why we built it.

The inflation problem

A survival economy needs something scarce to count. The easy choice is an item, and the item always becomes the problem. Our own economy page records two earlier attempts on this server. Diamonds as currency inflated overnight: once a few players built diamond farms, supply outran value and prices spiralled. Cobblestone as currency was honest about time but joyless, because counting cobble is no one's idea of a good evening.

The pattern behind both failures is simple. When the currency is something a machine can produce, money follows machines. The player with the biggest farm sets the prices for everyone else, and a newcomer walks into a market where nothing they can gather in an evening buys anything worth having.

We wanted time in the world to count without making every task pay the same. Mining diamond has a much better chance to earn a coin than mining stone; an hourly payment gives a newcomer a starting floor.

How the weighting works

The server pays for a long list of ordinary actions. Some have a chance to pay; others use cooldowns. For ore, a successful roll currently pays one coin, while the chance rises with rarity. You hear the XP-orb pickup sound when a payout lands.

How it pays has the full list. The shape is visible in the rates: rare ore has better odds, while an hour online pays even when you find none.

Where time comes in

Time enters the economy in three places. The online drip is the floor, a modest payment for being in the world. Cooldowns are the ceiling on repetition: a mob farm is limited by the kill cooldown, a player kill locks per victim for 10 minutes, and bucket and vehicle actions carry their own short cooldowns. The daily streak rewards habit without demanding it, since you can skip a day and lose only the bonus.

Standing AFK earns the drip and nothing else, because no action rolls when you take no action. Crafting a known recipe can still roll for the ordinary crafting reward; only the separate recipe-discovery roll is limited to a newly unlocked recipe.

There is no hard daily cap, and that choice is deliberate. A cap punishes the player who logs a long Saturday session. Cooldowns do the same job without that cost: they slow repeated actions without setting a limit on a long play session.

The shape we aim for

The wiki names two failure modes. Too generous, and players pile up coins so fast that prices climb and the market means nothing. Too stingy, and players grind for nothing and the economy turns into decoration.

The target sits between them: a small steady drip with occasional satisfying spikes. The drip tells you the server counts your time. The diamond payout reflects a rarer find. The advancement payout tells you the game noticed. Flatten every action to the same value and the spikes vanish. Pay only for spikes and the floor disappears. The wiki says both shapes existed in past versions of the economy, and both failed.

What staff watch

We watch the curve against what players build. If someone builds a new farm that breaks it, staff retune the payouts and announce the change. The server also logs trade transactions, so staff can verify a disputed deal after the fact.

The rules around money are fixed and public. There is no pay-to-win, no rank for cash, no real-money item sales, no coins for votes and no donor tier, and Sunday Market accepts no donations. If anyone claiming to be staff asks you for real-world payment, that person is not staff. There is no real-money rank store.

Where the coins go

Coins only matter if you can spend them on something worth having. Most food, blocks, books and brews in the market come from other players. Staff stalls can also sell with unlimited stock. Three tools carry that market.

• /pay <player> <amount> sends between 1 and 100,000 coins in one payment. It cannot be reversed, so check the name before you press enter.
• /trade <player> opens a confirmed exchange with someone in the same world, with no distance limit. Each side gets 16 offer slots plus coins. A change resets both accepts, and the items and coins stay held for 120 seconds after confirmation.
• /tradecash <amount> turns coins into a redeemable cash paper you can hand over like any item.

Coins also buy land protection. A Ward, the block that protects your build, comes from /ward shop, and bigger Ward tiers protect bigger areas. Building and claiming explains the tiers. Brewing is the other long game: a drink's quality locks in when you bottle it, barrel ageing runs about 20 real minutes per in-game year, and aged brews fetch premium prices in player trades.

How to earn in your first week

Play the way you would anyway. In your first few hours, get to a spot for a base and start collecting, and the drip covers the rest. Mining rare ore gives a better chance of a coin than mining stone, while fishing, crafting and combat give you other chances to earn. Once your farms outgrow your own needs, sell the surplus through the trade window. Offer food, building blocks or enchanted books if you have more than you need.