Central to the success of Pixels is our pioneering metric: Return on Reward Spend (RORS). RORS measures the direct economic impact of rewards distributed to players. It is analogous to ROAS - Return on Ad Spend - it is a very simple measurement comparing the amount of rewards distributed to the amount of revenue a protocol recieves back in fees. Currently around ~0.8, our clear and ambitious goal is surpassing a RORS of 1.0, meaning every reward token spent generates net-positive revenue for the ecosystem. Achieving RORS > 1.0 solidifies our economic sustainability and positions Pixels as the leader in efficient, effective player rewards.

Initially, Pixels became widely recognized as a popular farming game in the Web3 gaming space, quickly achieving one of the highest daily active user counts. Yet, from the beginning, the ambition has always been broader than a single game: Pixels was founded to solve play-to-earn (P2E), unlocking a fundamentally new model for game growth and user acquisition that transcends Web3 into mainstream gaming.

Play-to-earn, when executed correctly, introduces powerful economic incentives capable of reshaping the relationship between players and publishers. Pixels is addressing the challenges of traditional play-to-earn through targeted rewards, clever economic structures, and better incentive alignment. By combining data science with innovative token mechanics, we're creating a hardened ecosystem designed to reward genuine player contributions and optimize long-term player engagement. Our approach rests on three interconnected pillars...

Fun First

No matter how you plan to grow and monetize the application layer - there needs to be an intrinsic motivator that drives users to use the platform. For games it's quite obvious - though hard to execute - games need to be fun!

Our design team needs to focus on creating real value for our users - by creating a game that people genuinely enjoy and want to spend time playing. As we design, we need to work out how to keep the game experience fun for all types of users while still exploring the new realms of gaming that the blockchain can unlock.

Smart Reward Targeting

Pixels utilizes a comprehensive data-driven infrastructure - akin to a next-generation ad network - to allocate rewards effectively. By leveraging large-scale data analysis and machine learning, Pixels identifies player actions that genuinely drive long-term value, directing rewards accordingly.

Publishing Flywheel

We've designed a cycle for growth that connects data insights, publishing strategies, and player incentives:

• Attracting better games generates richer player data.

• Richer data allows for increasingly precise targeting, dramatically reducing user acquisition (UA) costs.

• Lower UA costs attract even more high-quality games to the Pixels ecosystem.

This continuous loop creates self-sustaining growth, with each cycle enhancing the ecosystem’s overall health and profitability.

Quick Reference / FAQs

One token. Many “validators.” The validator is the game.

Pixels introduces a decentralized publishing model powered by staking, where games themselves replace traditional validators. Instead of securing transactions on a blockchain, stakers participate directly in determining which games receive resources and incentives from the Pixels ecosystem. This model decentralizes publishing decisions, aligns incentives across players and developers, and creates a sustainable competitive environment.

Why Stake?

Strategic Benefits:

• Attractive Rewards: Each game pool offers periodic rewards reflecting game performance.

• Influence Ecosystem Direction: Stake allocations drive future incentive decisions and ecosystem focus.

• Risk Management: Diversify across multiple game pools to manage exposure and risk.

• Ecosystem Security: Your participation helps secure and strengthen the overall Pixels ecosystem by incentivizing games to contribute valuable data, utilize ecosystem tools, and maintain healthy economics.

Unlike typical staking, Pixels staking involves directly selecting games to support. Stakers allocate their tokens into individual "game pools," effectively voting on which games deserve ecosystem incentives and resources. The amount staked into each game influences the share of emissions and incentives that game receives in the future, fostering competition among games.

Competitive Publishing Environment:

• Games compete to attract stakers by demonstrating strong player retention, high net in-game spending, and effective use of ecosystem tools

• Staking allocations serve as a clear signal from the community on game quality and ecosystem contribution

Reward Calculation:

• Each game pool distributes rewards based on the proportion of total $PIXEL staked to it.

• Games individually determine their reward contributions to their stakers, ideally aiming to be competitive to attract more stakers

• Rewards are periodic, transparent, and governed by a clear mathematical model

$PIXEL's high level tokenomics remain unchanged from it's original announcement & TGE. You may review the official tokenomics on Binance.com!

$PIXEL is a capped supply token with 5,000,000,000 supply.

$PIXEL will be unlocked on a predetermined schedule that lasts 60 months from the Token Generation Event. All allocations are vested on-chain using Magna.so!

The largest pool of this token exists in the form of Ecosystem Rewards.

Pixels provides studios immediate and significant advantages with no lock-in or exclusivity requirements.

How To Join

Take a look at further documents to describe the initial process to join the $PIXEL ecosystem. This process will be gradually decentralized.

Our growth strategy also includes robust creator and referral programs designed to align incentives closely with ecosystem health:

• Referral Links: Players earn rewards for referring new active participants. Rewards trigger only if the referred cohort maintains a positive RORS.

• Share-to-Earn Snapshots: Players receive rewards for generating and sharing in-game content, fostering organic user-generated marketing.

• Social Monitoring Tool: An advanced platform that tracks and rewards social engagement around ecosystem games, utilizing sophisticated detection methods to prevent manipulation and ensure genuine community growth.

All rewards within these programs are structured to prioritize ecosystem sustainability, reinforcing positive player behaviors and ensuring long-term value creation.

In 2024, Pixels experienced rapid growth, becoming the top web3 title by daily active users and generating $20 million in revenue. However, we also faced significant challenges:

• Token Inflation: Excessive token emissions led to inflationary pressures.

• Sell Pressure: Many players were extracting value without meaningful reinvestment or contribution back to the ecosystem, negatively impacting the token economy.

• Mis-targeted Rewards: Our reward distribution lacked precision, often rewarding short-term engagement rather than sustainable value creation.

Recognizing these issues, we’ve pivoted strategically toward smarter, data-driven incentives designed to improve our ecosystem's fundamental economics. Key changes include:

• Data-Backed Incentives: Leveraging advanced analytics to precisely target rewards, ensuring tokens flow to users most likely to reinvest and support the ecosystem long-term.

• Liquidity Fees: Implementing heavier withdrawal fees for $PIXEL to discourage extraction and to redistribute fees back to stakers.

• A New Publishing Model: Rolling out a phased, stake-to-vote-and-earn system where players directly influence and benefit from the success of individual games.

Our revised vision extends beyond optimizing a single game - it’s about creating a robust, decentralized growth platform and prioritizing an ecosystem. Pixels is building what we envision as a decentralized AppsFlyer or Applovin for both Web3 and Web2 games, driven by our North-Star metric, RORS. By systematically improving RORS, we ensure every token spent generates sustainable, measurable returns.

In practice, for the ecosystem this means:

• Prioritizing high-quality DAU over mere quantity, focusing on engaged players who genuinely support the ecosystem

• Introducing $vPIXEL, an ERC-20c spend-only token, allowing seamless transactions across partner games without additional fees.

• Reinforcing growth-focused incentives such as referrals and content creation.

And more specifically for Core Pixels this means:

• Gating core features and earnings behind VIP structures to encourage deeper engagement and spending.

• Enhancing core game loops and reintroducing popular social and casual mechanics that initially propelled Pixels’ growth.

• Automatically staking in-game balances of active users, boosted by holding our Farm Land NFT.

These strategic shifts may temporarily affect our user metrics, but they lay the foundation for a fundamentally healthier and more sustainable $PIXEL ecosystem. Our long-term goal remains clear: to build the definitive, decentralized user acquisition and reward platform that empowers both Web3 and Web2 gaming economies.

Pixels is introducing significant changes designed to align player and developer incentives within a decentralized publishing ecosystem. At its core, Pixels staking transforms the traditional validator model, turning games themselves into the primary "validators" of the ecosystem.

Key Changes:

• $PIXEL: Remains the primary governance and staking asset, allowing players to directly support individual games. When staking $PIXEL, players influence which games receive ecosystem incentives and determine how rewards are allocated based on each game's economic success.

• $vPIXEL: A spend-only token using ERC-20c technology, backed 1:1 by $PIXEL. This new token allows players to withdraw their rewards fee-free, significantly reducing selling pressure and encouraging in-ecosystem use.

How It Works:

• Players choose games to stake their $PIXEL tokens into, effectively voting for which games deserve ecosystem resources.

• Games compete for stakers by improving player retention, increasing net in-game spend, and effectively using ecosystem tools provided by Pixels.

• Rewards are distributed periodically, based on game-specific performance, encouraging healthy competition and ecosystem growth.

Strategic Goals:

• Optimize Return on Reward Spend (RORS): Encouraging competition among games to achieve higher efficiency in reward allocation.

• Sustainable Ecosystem Growth: Using data-driven insights from staked games to improve user acquisition strategies and overall network health.

• Decentralized Decision Making: Empowering stakers to directly influence ecosystem evolution through staking decisions and reward allocations.

These changes are foundational to establishing a robust, decentralized publishing model, positioning Pixels at the forefront of sustainable, data-driven gaming ecosystems.

Play Now

Stake Now

The Pixels economy is deliberately circular. Each dollar‑worth of $PIXEL that enters the system is pushed through a closed loop that compounds on itself until the Return on Reward Spend (RORS) exceeds 1 and stays there.

$PIXEL staking → UA credits → player spend → revenue share → staker rewards → richer data → smarter targeting → more games → (back to) $PIXEL staking

1. Stake → UA Credits

Players deposit $PIXEL (or 1 : 1‑backed $vPIXEL) into the validator of their choice — in our case a game, not a node. The size of a game’s staking pool instantly converts into an on‑chain UA budget that the studio can spend on targeted, in‑game rewards instead of Facebook or TikTok ads.

2. UA Credits → Revenue

Those rewards pull in new players and re‑engage old ones. When those players spend inside the game, gross revenue accrues on‑chain in the same contract that minted the UA credits, creating a transparent record of spend versus subsidy.

3. Revenue → Staker Rewards

Each game self-determines the rewards it gives to stakers. However, the more fundamentally sound a game becomes and the more, the more competitive it is able to to

4. Staker Rewards → Data

Every purchase, quest, trade, or withdrawal is logged through the Pixels Events API. This generates an expanding first‑party dataset spanning LTV curves, fraud scores, session depth and churn vectors across all games.

5. Data → Smarter Targeting

Our models retrain nightly. Reward budgets are re‑weighted toward cohorts and moments in the funnel that drive the strongest lift in retention, ARPDAU and, ultimately, RORS. Leakage to extractors falls; real players get higher quality incentives.

6. Smarter Targeting → More Games

Because UA efficiency is visible on‑chain, new studios can underwrite an acquisition budget before they write a single line of Solidity. Each launch enlarges the addressable audience, adds fresh behavioural data, and restarts the loop at a higher base.

Why it matters – a flywheel, not a treadmill. The same unit of $PIXEL can cycle through this loop many times: once as stake, again as a player reward, again as revenue share, and finally as a data point that sharpens the next distribution. The result is a compounding ecosystem where capital, users and insight all recycle instead of leak — pushing RORS steadily upward beyond 1.0.

Step-by-Step Process:

1. Choose a Game:

   • Browse game pools at staking.pixels.xyz.

   • Review metrics such as total staked, historical performance (APR), and payout schedules.

2. Deposit Tokens:

   • Stake your desired amount of $PIXEL directly into a chosen game.

   • No on-chain minimum; in-game auto-staking requires at least 100 $PIXEL and a login within the past 30 days.

3. Receive Game Rewards:

   • Each game distributes rewards periodically based on performance and total staked amount.

   • Rewards can be claimed as $PIXEL (with Farmer Fee) or fee-free as $vPIXEL.

4. Managing Stake:

   • Tokens can be unstaked at any time; there's a 3-day waiting period before withdrawal.

   • Restaking during the waiting period resets the withdrawal timer.

Traditional fungible tokens can be withdrawn and market‑sold instantly, creating constant sell pressure the moment rewards hit a player’s wallet. To curb extraction without throttling legitimate in‑game spend, we are introducing $vPIXEL: a spend‑ and stake‑only apptoken, backed 1 : 1 by $PIXEL and implemented with ERC‑20c transfer logic.

How the Flow Works

1. Earn $PIXEL — A player earns Pixel through gameplay or any staking pool

2. Withdrawal Choice — When the player wants liquidity they may:

   • Withdraw $PIXEL  → pay the Farmer Fee

   • Withdraw $vPIXEL  → 0 % fee, but the token is non‑tradable on CEX/DEX.

3. Spend or Stake $vPIXEL

   • In‑game purchases across Core Pixels, partner titles, and future apps.

   • Re‑stake for full APR; $vPIXEL counts 1‑for‑1 toward staking power.

4. Burn‑to‑Unlock Logic — Every $vPIXEL that is spent triggers the permanent unlock of the backing $PIXEL inside the Tokenmaster pool. Studios can recycle those unlocked tokens for UA rewards or treasury operations.

Why Players Choose $vPIXEL

Players who intend to stay in the ecosystem—spending, staking, or hopping between partner games—have no reason to incur the Farmer Fee.

Why Studios Care

• Lower Net Emissions — Spend‑only tokens recycle value instead of hitting open‑market liquidity.

• Programmable Controls — ERC‑20c gates can add task‑gated unlocks or time‑locks if needed.

• Seamless Integration — No new contract work; partner games call the same SDK used for $PIXEL.

Roll‑out Timeline

$ vPIXEL is a practical demonstration of how app‑level programmability can realign token flows toward retention and spend while preserving full transparency. By giving players a friction‑free alternative to market withdrawals, we expect a measurable reduction in net sell pressure and a corresponding uplift in RORS once the mechanism is live.

There will be 2 key differences with $PIXEL moving forward...

Ecosystem Reward Distribution

Ecosystem Rewards will no longer be reserved for just Core Pixels - as the ecosystem brings in more games & Phase 2 of the staking rollout releases...

This will change how the ecosystem rewards are distributed amongst games! When Phase 2 rolls out, Dynamic Pools - the 28m $PIXEL budget of Ecosystem Rewards per month will be split amongst games based among how much $PIXEL is staked to each game. The users will get a large say on where ecosystem rewards will go in the long-run.

Token Splits

Previously, $PIXEL spent in-game was sent to a community-owned treasury. This treasury is to be owned by a DAO. Historically whenever $PIXEL was spent in-game...

• 80% of spent $PIXEL will be sent to the Community Treasury

• 20% of spent $PIXEL will be sent back to Ecosystem Rewards

Now a portion of the 80% sent to the Community will be sent to stakers, and the remaining will still be sent to the community treasury for governance.

First‑Party Titles

Our internal game development pipeline focuses on leveraging the Pixels ecosystem to create sustainable, engaging, and profitable experiences:

• Pixels Pals: A casual, social mobile game launching its beta in June 2025. Players collaboratively raise virtual pets, enhancing retention and generating valuable cohort data. This data feeds back into our Smart-Reward system, refining reward allocation strategies.

• Core Pixels Mobile (R&D): Streamlined version of Core Pixels designed explicitly for mobile platforms, aiming to replicate the success of the flagship title in a more accessible form. Planned for exploration in 2026.

All first-party games integrate $vPIXEL from launch, establishing an immediate and sustainable monetization pathway and contributing crucial data to the ecosystem.

Partner Game Criteria

As the publishing model begins to decentralize, the following criteria will be used to determine future partners eligible to $PIXEL ecosystem

• Strong Economic Potential: Capable of achieving a Return on Reward Spend (RORS) of at least 0.9 within six months post-integration.

• Complementary Gameplay: Preference for casual, social, and builder-style games that synergize with existing ecosystem data.

• Open Data Sharing: Commitment to streaming anonymized player data via the Pixels Events API.

• Robust Monetization Models: Proven or planned monetization strategies converting at least 2% of monthly active users.

• Agile Development Teams: Demonstrated ability to regularly release updates and respond to community feedback.

• Token Integration: Willingness to incorporate $PIXEL and $vPIXEL into their reward systems and contribute revenue share back to the staking pools.

Accepted studios gain access to:

• Free user acquisition power proportional to community staking.

• Advanced analytics tools for fraud detection and lifetime value optimization.

• Extensive co-marketing opportunities targeting over 300k engaged ecosystem participants.

We actively pursue partnerships or full acquisitions when potential studios outperform ecosystem average benchmarks, ensuring continuous growth and strategic alignment.

Pixels staking will deploy strategically over several phases, gradually shifting reward control directly to the staking community:

A reward is a micro-ad with perfect attribution. Instead of paying an ad exchange to show an impression, the studio pays the player after the player performs a verifiable action that lifts a key metric, ie. finish the tutorial, come back seven days in a row, invite three friends, make a first purchase, and so on. The budget that would have gone to Google’s or Meta’s rake now goes 100% to the user who moved the needle.

• Players see an immediate, tangible upside for their time and data.

• Studios buy retention, k-factor, or LTV at a known unit cost instead of renting eyeballs.

• Every token can be traced from treasury-to-wallet, so customer-acquisition cost (CAC) is transparent by design.

The concept works in Web3 first as on-chain rewards are cheap to move and easy to audit, and have less up-front capital risk than using fiat currencies. This model then extends to Web2 once the models are proven.

The Platform

Pixels aggregates first-party data from all games within the ecosystem to create a powerful, unified dataset. Participating games contribute valuable insights into player demographics, behaviors, monetization patterns, and retention metrics through the versatile Pixels Events API—a straightforward REST endpoint supporting batch and real-time data collection. By integrating this data across multiple titles, Pixels continuously strengthens its ability to deliver precise and impactful rewards.

The strength of this aggregated data allows Pixels to develop sophisticated predictive models that forecast player lifetime value (LTV), retention probabilities, and spending behavior, thereby optimizing reward allocation. The collective intelligence gathered from multiple games creates a reinforcing data loop that continually refines reward efficiency and effectiveness.

Studio Integration & Toolkit

Pixels is building a toolkit for other studios. Studios can integrate the Pixels Events API, a straightforward REST endpoint supporting batch and real-time event logging. Our comprehensive ID graph integrates wallet, device, and social identifiers, enabling seamless user experiences even for traditional Web2 studios that don't yet support blockchain logins. The scale and quality of this unified dataset significantly enhance our ability to accurately predict user behavior and optimize reward targeting.

Studios keep full ownership of their data, yet benefit from the cross-game model improvements.

If a player has Pixel in-game, we will simulate staking on their behalf! Players can stake their in-game balances of $PIXEL directly, provided they meet:

• A minimum balance of 100 $PIXEL.

• An active login within the last 30 days.

Land-Boost Feature

Players who hold Farm Land NFTs gain additional staking power calculated by:

STAKING_POWER = STAKED + [NUM_LANDS × min(STAKED × 10%, 100000)]

• STAKING_POWER: Total staking amount including land-based bonuses.

• STAKED: Base amount of $PIXEL tokens staked.

• NUM_LANDS: Number of Farm Land NFTs owned.

Essentially, each Farm Land NFT will give a 10% staking power boost to Pixel in-game. However the max amount of staking power per Farm Land caps out at 100,000 $PIXEL (1,000,000 $PIXEL would be needed to hit that cap).

Distribution Cadence

At first in-game the in-game staking distribution cadence will happen on a monthly basis, but will move to a daily cadence in the near-future.

Despite achieving leading Web3 DAU, Core Pixels revealed two fundamental challenges: (i) an incomplete core loop that recycled coins without sufficient sinks, and (ii) limited end-game activities leading to player withdrawal rather than reinvestment.

Fixing the Core Loop

The immediate priority is addressing core economic issues to elevate Return on Reward Spend above 1. Key interventions include:

These strategic adjustments complete the economic cycle (craft → earn → upgrade → craft), embedding sustainable coin sinks that dynamically scale.

Chapter 3 — The End-Game Social Meta

In parallel, a significant update known as Chapter 3 aims to transform late-game balances into social engagement and meaningful player progression. Do note - a lot of this is subject to change as we develop and progress - but we want to give you an idea of where we are headed!

• Exploration Realms. Procedurally generated islands accessible via Voyage Contracts (purchased with $PIXEL), rewarding players with cosmetic blueprints and rare items.

• LiveOps Templates. Regularly scheduled, easily deployable events (e.g., Fishing Frenzy, Harvest Rush) designed to increase player engagement.

• Social Enhancements. Proximity chat, emote-based interactions, referral-based rewards, and share-to-earn mechanisms designed to organically grow player networks.

Next First-Party Title — Pixels Pals

Alongside Core Pixels enhancements, development is underway for Pixels Pals, a synchronous, two-player digital pet game inspired by popular apps like Sush and Pengu.

Players raise, customize, and trade digital pets, contributing valuable interaction data back into the Smart-Reward Ad Network. A beta release is planned for June–July 2025, initially launching on Android and followed by web access. Pixels Pals targets mainstream adoption with a delayed wallet requirement (introduced after seven days of engagement), featuring integrated $vPIXEL micro-transactions from launch.