胖娃胖嘟嘟

Who else carries a phone everywhere like me? Man, in just four months this year, I made 200 U by trading Alpha. Yesterday, I pulled some U to play the market, and a girl asked me: "Big bro, is scamming really profitable nowadays?" I said it's all from my Pixels gains. She pulled my hand to her thigh, looking at me with those eyes, begging me to take her along. I gently pressed her head between my legs and, with a smirk, agreed: "Sure."

Twenty minutes later, I was satisfied telling her that I saw Luke, the founder of @Pixels , saying: "The rewards we're issuing in 2024 will far exceed the ecosystem revenue." The girl didn’t get it, so I translated it into plain English: — they used to dump tokens like crazy, now they can’t afford to lose.

So they came up with a new algorithm called RORS: for every dollar given out in rewards, they need to earn back at least one from players. I'm not saying the math is wrong; in a bear market, everyone has to be frugal. But you need to understand, this math is about the project's revenue, not how much my $PIXEL is worth. So what if RORS hits 1.05? The coin price has plummeted 99% from its peak, worth just a few cents each. You stake for a year and earn 15% in PIXEL, but if the coin price drops 70%, you're in the red; you hold for six months afraid of withdrawal fees, and the price gets cut in half first.

What’s worse are those three tools: Stacked filters for "high-value players," vPIXEL locks you in for spending, withdrawal fees can take up to 50%. You think this isolates "traders"? No, it punishes the retail investors who didn’t buy VIP, didn’t build credit scores, or didn’t hoard land. If you hold chips, the system rewards you; if you're just freeloading, you get skinned before you leave. #pixel

What keeps me up at night is the unlock. In May, over ninety million coins are set to flood the market, nearly 12% of the current circulation. The project is counting on "a dollar in, a dollar out," while I’m calculating "a dollar in, how much can I keep?"

I’m not saying Pixels is going to run away. It's stronger than most projects, at least they’re still building. But the foundation of this house is built on the time and coin price of retail investors like me. I've decided to keep playing, but only in free land; I’ll take out whatever I can even if I lose half. It’s not that I don’t believe in it; it’s just the math at the end — I’m always on the losing side.

The girl listened and said with concern: "Big bro, it's really tough for you to make money!"

Not long ago, I told a female colleague that playing Pixels could make money, and she was all excited to jump in, but ended up losing big time. So, she was feeling down and asked me to come over to her place for some drinks. During our time together, her eyes were a bit glazed, and she was dropping all sorts of hints, but I was too far gone to pick up on any of it. She said, 'You're not really into this, huh?' I replied, 'But I’m great at licking, my specialty is DL diamond.' She laughed happily after hearing that.

Later, she flushed and satisfied told me, 'Did you see the official announcement? @Pixels T5’s daily active users broke six hundred thousand after the upgrade!'

I stayed silent and quietly checked the on-chain data. Unique active wallets? One hundred ten thousand. That’s a discrepancy of nearly five hundred thousand. My goodness, did they just wipe the decimal and multiply by four?

After watching the data for two days, I discovered something even crazier. Those so-called 'active addresses,' many of the transaction hashes were duplicates, coming from the same batch of address clusters, trading amongst themselves like it was legit. You call that users? That’s clearly the project team running their own 'background actor company.'

The staking part was even more magical. The real on-chain staking volume was about twelve million coins $PIXEL , but through various maneuvers—re-staking, unlocking, and re-staking again at specific block heights—they inflated the data to fifty-eight million, another four times. I stared at the screen, feeling like I wasn’t studying a game but unboxing a magician’s tricks.

Gas fees were only a third of the normal value. Zero point three seven RON, which clearly had the characteristics of being run by batch scripts, not real players. The retention curve was even funnier; the retention addresses from the fifth to the seventh day were all clustered on the same IP segment. If the official team dares to say it’s 'students in university town gaming all night,' I’ll respect them as a man.

To be honest, the project team is just trying to make the data look pretty to keep everyone’s confidence up. But the more they do this, the less secure I feel. On-chain data is immutable, but they found a way to build a 'filter' in the communication protocol, packaging fake data as real and pushing it in front of you. Third-party browsers can’t catch it because they’re only checking what they want you to see.
#pixel

Times are tight lately, so I'm planning to cash out some USDT to get by. I opened C2C and the exchange rate is really heartbreaking. Small amounts of USDT are even lower. Back when I entered around 7.2, I thought I was earning interest, but my balance just keeps dwindling.

I was already feeling down about the exchange rate, and then tonight I pulled a dumb move in Pixels. A big order popped up for 30 of $PIXEL , with only three minutes left on the countdown, but my energy meter was empty. In a moment of impulse, I spent two bucks on energy drinks, dived in, and cleared a bunch of low-value tasks—only to miss the big order entirely. I just stared at the screen, feeling like my IQ was being ground into the dirt.

Later, it hit me: this isn't just my blunder; the project team brought the "Skinner Box" into Web3. Why did those previous blockchain games flop? Because fixed actions yielded fixed rewards. The studios calculated it all out—mine, cash out, and repeat, with tokens crashing through the floor. Pixels got smart, shattering the "certainty"—high-reward big orders pop up randomly, but if you want to catch one? You first have to burn energy on a bunch of money-losing small tasks.

It’s turned into a blind box game. You think you’re running a farm, but your brain is already shackled by the thought of "what if the next one is a big order?" For that uncertain jackpot, you keep pouring in time and real cash. What’s worse is the energy anxiety. When you see a big order counting down, but your energy is empty, FOMO grabs you by the throat—you can't even do the math, you just want to rush and top up so that this "windfall" doesn’t slip away. The @Pixels project team didn’t even say “Hold on, family,” relying solely on the human aversion to loss to squeeze you into giving back the coins you just earned.

This mechanism is essentially a class cleansing. Those who can’t handle the trial-and-error costs, the free riders and studios, get filtered out as stepping stones. But you need to stay sharp: behind the randomness, the project team can adjust the odds at any time. You think it’s just bad luck, but it’s really the algorithm deciding it’s time for you to pay tuition. #pixel

Now, I’ve set a daily limit for myself: when my energy runs out, I log off. If the big orders don’t pop, I pretend I didn’t see them. Don’t ask me why—I don’t want to be that gambler spending two bucks on blind boxes anymore.

History always seems to repeat itself, from RAVE to TRADOOR, the essence of altcoins is just passing the buck, and in the end, what you get is a candlestick chart that's truly shocking.
Thinking back, @Pixels may not make a ton of cash, but it’s steady. Last night, I went through the Pixels project documentation and on-chain data, and the more I looked, the more I realized this is far from a 'game'.

It's a data-driven economic system. The simplistic design isn't due to a lack of tech — the minimal 2D grid standardizes every move players make: planting, watering, harvesting; all actions are fixed. This 'low-entropy' design is extremely friendly for data collection. In return, the system accurately rewards high-value actions with token incentives: you contribute data, and it gives you economic rewards.

I personally tested Animal Care. With incubators and potions, I figured I'd make five hundred, but after completing five cycles, I realized that as soon as potion prices went up, it was all for nothing. Meanwhile, the official team significantly reduced the daily token issuance, and through factors like animal lifecycles and tool wear, they’re pulling back excess BERRY and $PIXEL from the market to destroy. The essence of this combo isn't to make you money, but to recover liquidity.

After the V3 update, the project shifted from 'game content' to 'platform infrastructure'. Retail traders have changed their role — no longer core players, but data nodes within the ecosystem. From 'holding is believing' to 'consumption is believing'. The token's value depends on whether the project can reinvest platform revenue (like SDK licensing fees) back into the ecosystem. This closed loop is still spinning, but most people are still calculating their break-even period — just that the project has made the calculations more complex.

Pixels' execution is indeed impressive. But you need to know, this system is more like an elaborate loyalty rewards card. You think you're here to play a game, but in reality, you’re just a precisely incentivized node in a massive data web. Consumption gets recorded, then cycled through.

🔥 April 24: 17:00 Binance Alpha Airdrop Mystery Box is here, 228 points
The mystery box comes in common, rare, and hidden types, with expected values of 30u, 40u, and 100u respectively.
Binance has three airdrops a week, keeping those with no options on a tight leash, all arranged clearly.

Let’s talk about Pixels. Recently, folks in the group have been ranting about the withdrawal fees being way too steep. I was also in the same boat at first. But after crunching the numbers, it turns out the official cut is actually quite precise.

If you withdraw $PIXEL directly, the fee ranges from 20% to 50% depending on your reputation score. Low score? Sorry, half of it just vanished. Another option is to withdraw vPIXEL, which has zero fees, but here's the catch: you can't sell it directly, only use it in-game to buy pets, level up items, or stake it for dividends.

Staking gets interesting. You lock vPIXEL in the pool and slowly earn $PIXEL rewards. After a long haul, you can cash out, but the wait might make you question your life choices. Plus, the dividends depend on how lively the game is; if it cools down, your earnings could tank.

To put it bluntly, the official stance is to block “pump and dump” traders with high fees. Want to cash out fast? You’ll have to shed a layer first. Not in a rush? Then keep your earnings in the game and let them ride. This system effectively snatches millions in rewards from bots and hands them to real players. But for those in urgent need of cash, the vPIXEL route might drive you crazy waiting.

I set a personal rule: I reinvest the small daily gains into PIXEL and keep it rolling in the game; once I hit over 500, even if I get hit with fees, I’ll withdraw and secure some profits. After all, money in my pocket is what counts. Don’t wait until rent’s due to remember you’ve got some coins locked in a pool; that’s when you truly become a digital refugee.
@Pixels $PIXEL #pixel

Today I decided to grind with GENIUS, thinking that since there’s a competition, there would be more people participating and the volatility wouldn’t be too wild. But as soon as I entered the first trade, I got squeezed for 14U, and I was instantly thrown off.

At five in the morning, the blue light from the monitor was making my eyes sore. The iced Americano on the table was completely cold, with a layer of oil floating on top. I stared at the Pixels farm interface; that 8-bit style land was quietly lying there, waiting for me to water it, harvest it, and water it again.

It’s not that I’m physically tired, but my mind is feeling uneasy. The game Pixels is just too ‘smooth’. Every step of what you should do is clearly laid out on the task board. You don’t need to think, you don’t need creativity; you just need to execute instructions like a machine: click A, harvest, go to B, deliver, collect rewards. The actions are maximally compressed, and the choices are simplified to almost none. You think you're playing, but in reality, you're being 'played'.

This simplistic pixel style in Pixels isn’t due to a lack of technology; it’s a grand strategy. When you play triple-A titles like Genshin Impact, the freedom of behavior is too loose, the data is too chaotic, and the algorithms can’t capture your patterns. But Pixels is different; it locks every click and every movement within a few pixel grids. What you plant, which path you take, what resources you exchange—all of it is under the system’s watchful eye, orderly, like elementary school kids lining up for the restroom.

This is called ‘low-entropy’ interaction. It compresses people from complex emotional beings into a predictable sequence of behaviors. You’re no longer yourself; you’re just a data sensor tagged with ‘daily active user’ and ‘token consumption rate’. The Pixels system doesn’t need to know if you’re happy or sad; it just needs to know how many times you clicked the mouse, how many coins you spent, and when you logged off.

The most ironic part is that the tasks in Pixels that keep you grinding until dawn aren’t designed for you at all. You’re free labor, AI training data, consumables in an economic model. Tokens have dropped almost 70%, you’re staking and losing money, grinding for gold is futile, but the system doesn’t care. It cares about the little bits of behavioral value extracted from your body—your fatigue, your inertia, that phrase ‘just five more minutes before I sleep’.

Thinking about this, I shut down the computer. At the moment the screen went dark, my reflection looked like a squashed pixel duck.
@Pixels #pixel $PIXEL

🔥Yesterday's OPG told everyone about my perspective until this morning. I checked to see if it could double, and sure enough, it doubled. I sold 100u. Although it wasn't at the peak, I achieved my expected profit, which satisfied me. Yesterday, there were two airdrops, and many partners have left, causing the number to drop below 90,000. Alpha has probably reached equilibrium by now.
Back to the point, last month I was bragging to my friends, saying that the game Pixels is great, a laid-back farming game where you can earn some pocket money just by harvesting crops every day. But when I logged in this week, I was completely dumbfounded.

The orders that refreshed on the Pixels task board resulted in a significant drop in earnings. Before, I could easily take a few PIXELs from a casual order, and now I can barely gather enough capital to buy seeds. I stared at the screen for half a minute, wondering if I was just unlucky. Later, I browsed around Discord and found that foreigners were all cursing—it's not just me having a hard time; everyone has been affected.

At first, I thought the Pixels project team was trying to control inflation and protect the coin's value. But after observing the data for a few days, I slowly realized the truth. This is not about "enhancing the gaming experience"; it's a precise clearance aimed at pure gold farmers and studios.

Think about it, the days when hundreds of accounts could mindlessly grind and easily exchange for U at harvest time are completely gone. The system got smarter. Want to take big PIXEL orders? You can, but the materials required for those tasks are all obscure and expensive, clearly intended only for VIPs and those holding core assets. This is just a clear message: if you want to keep profiting, you need to spend money first and then make your investment back.

I pondered for a bit, isn't this just "paying for a ticket to work"? When a blockchain game completely blocks off the paths for zero spending and minimal spending players, relying solely on the remaining heavy spenders to compete, how long can the activity level of Pixels last?

Forget it, I can't keep up with Pixels anyway. I opened the food delivery app and ordered a plate of sauerkraut fish with the money I originally intended to spend on in-game purchases. At least after this meal, I truly felt satisfied.
@Pixels #pixel $PIXEL

Did everyone enjoy the two airdrops today? OPG at 226 points, and CHIP has dropped to 225 points. I haven't sold OPG yet; let's see if it can double by tomorrow morning. I didn't receive CHIP 😭. Today's double dip is the best opportunity to exit...

Let me share something funny. Last weekend, I was bored and sneaked into the Pixels Discord to see what the foreigners were chatting about. After lurking for three days, I found the channel filled with real people and hacking scripts arguing online. The scene was comparable to a neighborhood homeowners' group arguing, and I finished two bags of sunflower seeds while watching.

First, let me tell you something that made me both laugh and cry. I originally wanted to create a small account in Pixels to try different gameplay. However, after I set up a simple auto-click script, the account was gone the next day. They banned it so quickly that I didn't even get a chance to appeal. I can understand targeting studios, but to mistakenly harm ordinary people like me who just want to create an extra account to farm feels a bit unfair, right?

However, to be fair, Pixels does have some skills in attracting new users. You can log in with a Google account and get into the game with two steps, no more messing around with wallets and crashing RPCs like before. But smooth as it is, there are real pitfalls. My main account is only at level twenty-something, and I found that the big profits are all after level 35. A friend of mine who runs a factory laughed and said, "Aren't you just online screwing in screws?"

He really hit the nail on the head. The gameplay in Pixels is no longer about quietly being a farmer. There are metal guilds and faction battles, and every day there's a materials order to receive, leaving me dizzy. However, back in the main city, it felt quite lively with a bunch of people crowding together to recover energy; it was a bit chaotic, reminiscent of playing with a small game console in my childhood.

Now, let's talk about money. The Pixels project team previously cut the useless inflationary token, which has helped maintain their current stance. But look at the unlocking calendar; every month there's a wave of massive selling. Who can withstand that? They keep boasting about launching a Web3 version of Steam, and I went around to check out the so-called ecological mini-games, which are all half-finished, not even completing the beginner's tutorial.

So my conclusion is straightforward: change your mindset, go in and enjoy the experience of being a digital farmer, and that's completely fine. But if you're thinking of getting rich overnight with this—take my advice and back off. @Pixels #pixel $PIXEL

Alpha continued to have only 86,000 today, three days in a row at 86,000. It seems that these 86,000 brothers are undoubtedly true love. Today, I went to brush PRL, 15-minute block, 1500 per transaction, finished after 6 transactions, and unfortunately encountered a waterfall in one of them, with prices suddenly plummeting down three thousand feet, lost 9u but couldn’t bear to cut, and eventually lost 17u when I did cut. 😭

Heartbroken, I went to the kitchen to cook instant noodles. The water hadn’t boiled yet when I brushed a post about how to use algorithms to control the scene in Pixels. I suddenly recalled what happened last month. Back then, I had just entered the game for a few days, diligently planting crops and running orders every day, feeling particularly clever—specifically choosing the highest yield crops and taking orders that gave more PIXEL. I even proudly told my wife: “Look, I’m not just playing, I’m arbitraging.”

What happened? As I kept planting, that crop suddenly became worthless. The high-yield orders on the order board were all replaced overnight with other materials, and I had over two hundred unsellable scraps piled up in my warehouse. At the time, I thought it was just bad luck, but now I realize—I was set up by the Pixels system.

The analysis in the post was quite insightful. The old trick in blockchain games was to grow and sell directly, simple and crude. But Pixels is different; that order board is not randomly refreshed at all, but rather controlled by an invisible hand. The system detects an oversupply of certain materials and forcibly lowers the order prices, pushing you to consume scraps or enticing you to reinvest the tokens you just earned back into the game for upgrades. You think you’re making the optimal solution, but in fact, you’ve already become consumables in the algorithm.

What’s even more absurd is the stamina and reputation system. If you’re a white account that hasn’t charged for VIP and has no records on the chain, the system only assigns you those money-losing tasks. The real profitable paths are all fenced off for veteran players who spend money. Isn’t this just using code to isolate retail investors and studios?

I can’t even eat anymore. I dumped it and restarted, thinking, what is this, not a game at all, but clearly the project side has written human greed and fear into the code, and then watched us run around like lab rats. @Pixels #pixel $PIXEL

I used to think being cut was just bad luck; now I understand—Pixels never intended for you to win from the very beginning. No matter how well you calculate, you can’t outsmart the underlying code that can be changed at any time.

🔥The number of participants in Alpha has dropped to 86,000, thinking of the glorious past with over 500,000 people, the studios should have mostly scattered. I went to check the recently ended trading competition stable, for non-4x coins, everyone basically just came on the last day for the big brawl, with a minimum qualifying amount of 165,000. Can I make money by刷ing 165,000 in one day? I don't believe it, so I didn't刷.

To get to the point, I want to talk to everyone about the issue of spending money in pixels.
Last month, I met a guy from Henan named A Kun in the game. He has been playing Pixels for about half a year, clicking the mouse for two hours every day after work, earning a few dozen dollars to treat his wife to hot pot. As a result, after the second chapter update, he started cursing in the group: "I did one hour of tasks and got 0.2 PIXEL! I can't even afford a bun!"

I laughed, and then I felt a bit sad.

Actually, there's a more heart-wrenching question that I have always been confused about: what is the point of spending money in Pixels to buy PIXEL? For fun, or to make money?

The white paper wrote: PIXEL is a decoration outside of the core gameplay, you can still play without buying it. Translated into plain language, it means - it is dispensable. So, what about making money? Over the past year, the coin price has dropped by nearly 70%, with staking annualized at around 15%, resulting in a net loss of over fifty points. If you invest a thousand dollars, earn one hundred and fifty in interest, but lose six hundred and eighty in principal, you end up losing five hundred and thirty. This is called paying to work.

What makes me feel even colder is that the project party said in the AMA in February that the rewards will gradually be changed to USDC, and PIXEL will only retain the staking function. Even they know that issuing PIXEL just allows others to dump it, so they avoid issuing stablecoins. So why do I still spend money on it?

In traditional games, spending money is about buying skins and items for showing off, having fun, and saving time. But in Web3 games, spending money has never been about buying a game experience, but about buying expected returns. Once the expected returns disappear, the logic of spending money collapses. Even getting something for free is hard to earn coins, who would still put money into it?

A Kun said he wouldn’t play for now and would come back to check when the returns normalize. I didn't reply to him.

I closed my phone and thought about playing arcade games when I was a kid. I would put a coin in, the screen would light up, I didn’t have to think about anything, I just knew I was going to have fun. No one calculated annualized returns, unlocks, or selling pressure with me, and no one asked me, "What are you really aiming for by investing this coin?"

I just aimed for happiness. But now, the Web3 games seem to have lost that simplest answer.
@Pixels $PIXEL #pixel