The prints economy
How ink, packs, drops and sets should work so that prints is fun every day, trading stays alive, and nothing breaks at 10,000 collectors. Reviewed by two independent critics and tested in a simulation of the live economy.
Raise rewards, never cut them. Pay for playing in packs, not ink. Size every new drop to what collectors can actually afford, and make hard sets worth the trouble.
Drop 02 stays on sale as the base set, and every pack prints gives away comes from it, so its huge stock gets used up instead of capping the price of every common print. New drops arrive more slowly and smaller, sized to collectors' ink, so they sell through and the market takes over. The scale problems (sell-outs, piles of idle ink at 10,000 collectors) are fixed almost entirely by how drops are sized and timed. The rest of the design is about fun, fairness and making farming not worth it.
What prints is for
prints is meant to be an alternative to NFTs with all the fun and easy onboarding, but without the scams, bots, wallets and gas. Other people release collections too, and prints does interactive things a chain can't.
What the review changed
Two independent critics took the first draft apart. One played a veteran game-economy designer; the other audited the model line by line. These were the findings that mattered, and what changed because of them.
Lower starting ink, lower pulping, a smaller Drop 02 set bonus, a limited free pull turned into a Proof, slower invites, and lower bonuses for late finishers.
Now nothing is cut. Set bonuses only go up, and earlier finishers get topped up. Invite changes apply only to codes issued from now on.
At today's size the design meant less ink through the market, and the reported "+8-13% trading" was really swaps in the last week. The model also had bugs: weekly goals never reset, the fee was counted twice, and arrivals were missing for 14 days.
The model was rebuilt and recalibrated to the live numbers, and its claims are restated honestly in section 09.
Pull-through set a ceiling on what a missing print could sell for. Rerolling a #1 for Gold was possible. Mass-made Variant sets would have cheapened Master prints.
Pull-through and Proofs are deferred until growth needs them. Reprint comes later as a plain reroll with strict limits (section 10).
That was more than most collectors could ever hold, so each /8 holder could hold out for all of it.
Bonuses are now four readable tiers, capped at 1,500. Beyond that the reward is prestige.
Every pack prints gives away comes from Drop 02 until it runs out, with no new concept needed.
It now follows the median. For the first 8 weeks it only recommends and a person approves, with one dial per cycle, at most ±25%.
Launches are now a 12-hour order window filled by lottery. Packs past the 3rd of a drop in a day cost 50% more instead of being blocked.
There's now one rule, sizing to purchasing power, with its floor stated and Drop 02 left out of it (section 06).
the rare meter (by prints' own odds it would almost never fire), the 5% fee on 24-hour resales (it's 1 ink on a typical sale), weekly goals paying ink for a trade (easy to farm), and announcing a pulping cut (it would set off a rush).
Even at today's size it empties Drop 02 within a month and gives each collector 17 prints a day.
The streak pays packs instead.
The plan
Three phases, each measured before the next. Every new piece gets its own on/off switch.
Better rewards, nothing taken away
Set bonuses by difficulty, with earlier finishers topped up. Milestones and a public "one short". A streak that pays packs, with a weekly freeze. A weekly trading goal. Wantlists and the swap finder. Ink drops as a shared pool. A second daily auction. Invite rewards on new codes. Every pack prints gives away comes from Drop 02.
Drops sized to the crowd
The sizing rule and cadence, the 12-hour lottery launch, the 50% premium past 3 packs, and the ladder of sets in each new drop. Then the set registry.
The scale valve and the patron layer
Proofs and pull-through once Drop 02 is nearly gone. Reprint with strict limits. Master prints. Artist drops under the same sizing rule. Seasons.
Sets that are worth finishing
From a collector's feedback: a 20-collection set pays the same as a 2-collection one, impossible sets kill trading in their other prints, and the payoff has to keep up with the difficulty.
Four tiers, by how hard the set really is
A set's difficulty is how many draws it takes to finish, which for n collections is about n × (1 + ½ + … + 1/n), times how scarce its smallest run is. Behind the scenes that number picks one of four tiers collectors can read at a glance. The bonus is never lower than it is today.
| Tier | Bonus | Sets today |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | 100 | Drop 02's eight sets; Drop 03's sets of 2-5 collections in runs of 256+, plus Outposts and Winter |
| Core | 300 | Fairground, Sprite Stacks, Backstage, Rooftops, Caravans, In Transit, Lit Relief |
| Chase | 1,000 | Pixel III, Pixel IV |
| Legend | 1,500 | Systems, Pixel, Pixel II |
Topping up the sets already finished costs about 14k ink once, for about 19 finishes. That's mostly Drop 01: Systems ×5, Pixel III ×5, Pixel IV ×4 and Pixel ×1, plus a few Drop 03 Core sets. Single-collection sets still pay nothing.
Rewards on the way
Better-shaped new drops
No more sets of anything from 1 to 32 collections. Each new drop gets a ladder: two Starter sets (4 collections, big runs), three Core sets (5-6 collections), and one Chase set (6 collections with one small run). Every drop then has an easy win, a main chase and a trophy.
Daily play
Everything here pays in packs, and every pack prints gives away comes from Drop 02 until it runs out. Quests, the free pull and starting ink stay exactly as they are.
Visit, take the free pull (a limited print, as today), and do the daily quests (50 ink each). Check your wantlist and the swap finder, then bid in one of two daily auctions.
Do 3 of the 4 daily quests to keep it. Day 3 pays a Drop 02 pack; day 7 pays a pack from any drop you choose, then the count starts again. One freeze a week, so a busy day doesn't cost a long streak.
A fair trade with another collector (at least 80% of what prints like it recently sold for), or a swap, plus three active days, pays a Drop 02 pack. It resets every Monday.
On codes issued from now on: once the friend has played 7 days, the friend gets 250 ink (newcomers need ink to trade) and the inviter gets 2 Drop 02 packs. Codes already handed out keep today's 250 each side, and the Getting started invites quest works the same way.
A fixed pool shared by the claimers, for example 4,500 ink at up to 150 each, so a drop costs the same however many people claim it.
Why not a free pack every day: in the model, a daily Drop 02 pack emptied Drop 02 within a month even at today's size, and gave each collector about 17 prints a day.
Drops sized to the crowd
This is where the scale problems get solved. One rule, stated in full.
Prints in a new drop ≈ 70% × (the ink collectors hold + two weeks of what they earn) ÷ the pack price × 5, and never fewer than 10,000. Drop 02 doesn't count toward it, and artist drops share the same total.
When: at most one new drop every 14 days, once the newest is down to about a week of sales. It can come after just 3 days if the newest has sold out and Drop 02 is down to its last week too, which only happens in a growth rush.
Launch: a 12-hour order window, filled by lottery if it's oversubscribed. Whatever's left goes on open sale. Packs past the 3rd of that drop in a day cost 50% more, which slows a rush without blocking anyone.
Ink in and out
What changes, with nothing reduced.
| Ink in | Today | Refined design |
|---|---|---|
| Starting ink | 600 + a pack | same |
| Daily quests | 50 each | same plus the streak's packs |
| Set bonuses | 100-300 | up four tiers up to 1,500; never lower |
| Invites | 250 each side | new codes 250 to the friend, 2 packs to the inviter |
| Ink drops | per claim | pool a fixed total shared by claimers |
| Pulping | 2 to 250 by band | same (looked at again with real data, never cut by surprise) |
| Ink out | Refined design |
|---|---|
| Packs | Drop 02 100, new drops 150; +50% past the 3rd pack of a drop in a day |
| Auctions | new a second daily auction, so wealthy collectors have more to spend on |
| Market fee | 2.5%, as today |
| Cosmetics | phase 2 showcase frames, themes, name changes |
The governor
Three measures, checked weekly. For the first 8 weeks it only recommends and a person decides. After that it moves one dial per cycle, by at most 25%.
The model, honestly
A simulation calibrated to the live data, rebuilt after the audit. Seeds change the results by under 10%. In its first week at 416 collectors it opens 780-880 packs a day (live: about 900) and pays about 22-29k a day in set bonuses (live: 15-20k). But it makes fewer sales (240-290 against about 400) and fewer duplicates (36-41% against 58%), and its collectors spend down faster than real ones.
| 30 days | Today | Sizing | Design |
|---|---|---|---|
| 416 collectors | |||
| No-pack days | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Trades | 13.9k | 13.9k | 13.5k |
| Market ink | 770k | 782k | 602k |
| Median, day 30 | 605 | 268 | 231 |
| 2,500 collectors | |||
| No-pack days | 16 | 0 | 0 |
| Trades | 13.0k | 33.9k | 30.3k |
| Ink a head, day 30 | 3,189 | 477 | 478 |
| 10,000 collectors | |||
| No-pack days | 25 | 5 | 5 |
| Trades | 15.1k | 110k | 93k |
| Ink a head, day 30 | 4,477 | 627 | 505 |
Sizing = today's rules with drops sized to purchasing power; Design = the whole refined design. Trades = sales + swaps. Ink a head = ink held per active collector (about 1,130 on day 1 in every run).
- The scale fix is drop sizing. Today's rules run dry for 16 of 30 days at 2,500 and 25 at 10,000, while ink piles up 4x. Sizing drops to purchasing power alone fixes nearly all of it; the rest of the design adds little at scale.
- At today's size, the model doesn't show a busier market. Trading is flat, and ink through the market is about 20% lower with the full design, because more ink goes into streak packs and the second auction. In this model, people trade to fill sets and their spare ink goes to packs, so the parts meant to grow trading at this size (the registry, milestones, public "one short", wantlists) can only be judged with real collectors. Phase 1 is set up to measure exactly that.
- Smaller drops that sell through mean lower balances (median about 230-270 instead of about 600) and more prints per collector (12-13 a day instead of 9), because collectors buy each drop out. If that happens for real and the market goes quiet, the dial is the cadence: three weeks between drops instead of two.
- A 10k rush still has 5 empty days in its first week, before the first sized drop can open. Opening the next drop 3 days in covers most of it; a faster valve is Proofs (section 10).
Later, when prints grows
Kept from the first draft, with the review's limits, for when the numbers call for them.
Proofs and pull-through
Once Drop 02 is down to about a month of given-away packs: a free open edition of the same art, with a Proof stamp, tied to the account and unsellable, so there's always something to open. Pull-through (10 Proofs of a collection plus 50 ink for one limited print) only works on runs that are at least 75% sold, with no discount. The market stays the fast way to get a print.
Reprint
3 prints of one collection become 1 with freshly rolled traits, with no guaranteed upgrade. The result takes the highest edition number of the three, editions #1-10 can't be used, runs of 128 or less are excluded, and the result is marked "Reprint".
Master prints, artists, seasons
Master prints: burn a Matched set whose smallest run is 64 or less into a one-of-a-kind print, at most one per set per season. Artist drops: 20% of primary sales to the artist, plus royalties, all under the sizing rule. Seasons: registry leaderboards, a free season track, and announced trait weekends logged in the public record.
About this page
A design proposal for prints' economy, published 2026-10-16. Nothing here is live: the rules on prints.wtf are what count. Figures are totals from day 3; no collector is named.