Faucets and sinks, nothing else
Every coin has a source and a destination, and an economy is nothing more than the sums. Inflation happens when faucet sum beats sink sum — always, no exceptions, regardless of how the shop is themed. So list yours honestly:
- Faucets: mob drops, jobs, vote rewards, daily login, quest lines, admin sell shops with infinite stock.
- Sinks: repair, rank purchases, cosmetics, auction house tax, plot rent, command costs.
Most servers I audit have never written both lists down. The exercise takes an hour and finds the printer immediately.
The two numbers to watch
First: coins per player per hour — the faucet rate, measured not guessed. Pick a target (a fresh player should afford iron gear in an evening, a rank in two weeks) and defend it. Second: velocity — how fast coins change hands. Rising balances plus fast spending is exactly when auction prices climb and nobody knows why.
Both come from one habit: log every economy transaction to a table and query it weekly. A dashboard beats a feeling.
Sinks players don't hate
Repair cost scaling with tier — the richer the gear, the steeper the bill. Cosmetics and ranks with zero gameplay attached. Auction tax between five and ten percent. Rent on shop plots. What players don't forgive is a direct balance tax: it reads as punishment, it drives trading underground, and it earns forum threads you can't close.
Every update is a new faucet
New content ships with new rewards, and that's where inflation sneaks back in. Before every launch week: grep every reward command in the new files, run the content on staging with a bot economy for a simulated week, and adjust the two numbers. That loop is the difference between an economy that lasts a year and one that needs a reset in three months.
RnK is a Minecraft developer with six years in the game — plugins, server setups and performance work across Paper, Spigot and Folia backends. Three networks run day to day; the rest of the time is client work. The bench is open on Discord.