Economy: SHARDS and KEEP
How Pixel Kingdom Wars' two currencies work: SHARDS for building, KEEP the devnet token, how each is earned and spent, and what a raid can take.
Pixel Kingdom Wars runs on two currencies. SHARDS are your base's building money: you start with some, your Mines dig more, and raids can move them between bases. KEEP is the game token: it belongs to your wallet, comes out of one limited reward pool, and flows back into that pool whenever you spend it. This page explains what each one buys, how you earn it, and what is safe from raiders.
Everything here is playtest, Solana devnet money. Devnet SOL and devnet KEEP are test-net tokens with no real value, and most of the numbers below are playtest settings that may still change.
Quick facts
- SHARDS are off-chain points owned by your base (your Land Deed). They cannot be withdrawn and they move with the deed if it is ever sold.
- KEEP is the token (on-chain name "Pixel Kingdom Gold", symbol KEEP, 9 decimals). Your in-game KEEP balance is wallet-owned and is the only currency you can deposit or withdraw.
- New bases receive 5,000 SHARDS once, at creation.
- SHARDS become KEEP in exactly one place: the GOLD FORGE. KEEP becomes SHARDS anywhere, one-way, at 1 KEEP = 1 SHARD.
- All gameplay KEEP rewards come out of a single bounded emission pool seeded with 500,000,000 KEEP. Spending KEEP in-game returns it to that pool.
- Quests pay SHARDS, never KEEP. PvP loot is SHARDS, never KEEP.
- Withdrawing KEEP: minimum 500, a 2% fee, one withdrawal per rolling 24 hours, and a daily cap by Keep level.
The two currencies at a glance
| SHARDS | KEEP | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it lives | Server ledger, owned by the base / Land Deed | Server ledger, owned by your wallet |
| On-chain? | No | Yes on devnet (SPL token), plus an in-game play balance |
| Main use | Building, upgrading, feeding the GOLD FORGE, PvP ante | Extra Mines, heroes, speed-ups, converting to SHARDS |
| How it is earned | Mines, Daily Cache, quests, raid loot, starter grant, KEEP conversion | GOLD FORGE, PvE bounties, budgeted reward mail, deposits from your wallet |
| Raidable? | Yes, partly | Never |
| Withdrawable? | No | Yes (devnet) |
A third thing you will pay with is SOL, straight from your connected wallet. There is no prepaid SOL balance in the game: land, builders, expansions, raid energy, shields and high-level Mine and GOLD FORGE upgrades are each paid as a single wallet transaction that the server verifies before it grants anything. SOL is covered in Deposits, withdrawals and 2FA and Land deeds and the globe.
Why two currencies? SHARDS are deliberately cheap to hand out and cheap to take away, so building and raiding can be generous without touching the token supply. KEEP is kept scarce: it is issued only from a fixed pool, it recycles when spent, and nothing a raider does can ever move it.
SHARDS: your building money
Starter grant
When a base is first created it receives 5,000 SHARDS. This is a one-time, creation-only grant; there is no daily or repeat top-up. (Players who joined in an earlier version with a 500-SHARD grant received a one-time compensating top-up to 5,000.)
How SHARDS are earned
- Mines. Your main income. One Level-1 Mine at a Level-1 Keep makes 500 SHARDS per day; more Mines, higher Mine and Keep levels, a 7-day Daily Cache streak and active referrals all multiply that. Each Mine holds at most one day of output, so collect at least daily. Details in Mining and the Daily Cache.
- Daily Cache. A free once-a-day pickup: 100 × day in your first week (100 up to 700), then 500 per day while your streak is 7 or more, or 100 per day if you broke it.
- Quests. Daily quests pay 10–30 SHARDS each, finishing three in one UTC day adds a 25-SHARD bonus, and the weekly quest pays 100 SHARDS. Quests never pay KEEP.
- Raid loot. Winning a PvP raid moves SHARDS from the defender's base to yours. See Raids and loot.
- Converting KEEP. Any whole amount of KEEP can be turned into SHARDS at 1:1 (see below).
How SHARDS are spent
- Buildings and upgrades. Most structures, including your first Mine (400 SHARDS) and the GOLD FORGE (2,500 SHARDS at Keep L3), are bought and upgraded with SHARDS. See Base building.
- The GOLD FORGE. SHARDS you smelt are burned for good at settlement and become your share of that day's KEEP. See Gold Forge.
- PvP ante. Every PvP attack costs the attacker 100 SHARDS at Keep L1, rising by 100 per Keep level to 2,000 at L20. These SHARDS are burned.
- Loot tithe. A slice of raid loot is burned rather than handed over. See Raids and loot.
Tip: SHARDS belong to the base, not to you personally. If you have more than one Land Deed, each base keeps its own SHARDS, and selling a deed sells its SHARDS with it.
KEEP: the token
KEEP is the on-chain game token. On devnet the mint currently has a supply of 500,000,000 KEEP with its mint and freeze authorities still enabled; the 1,000,000,000 fixed-supply allocation you may see in project documents describes the intended mainnet model, not the current devnet mint.
Inside the game, your KEEP is a ledger balance tied to your wallet. Deposited KEEP and earned KEEP share that one balance and one withdrawal allowance. Deposited KEEP is held 1:1 in a custody wallet and is never used to fund rewards.
How KEEP is earned
All gameplay KEEP comes from a single emission pool (decision D-062). It was seeded with the 500,000,000 KEEP play allocation and can never go below zero, so its balance is literally the remaining lifetime reward budget. Two things draw from it:
- The GOLD FORGE. Each UTC day, 273,972 KEEP is shared among every base that smelted SHARDS that day, in proportion to what they put in. If the whole server smelts 350,000 SHARDS or fewer, the rate is about 0.78 KEEP per SHARD; above that, everyone's rate shrinks pro rata. The rate is always below 1 KEEP per SHARD by design, which is why the 1:1 KEEP-to-SHARDS converter cannot be used to print value. Payouts land as claimable and expire back to the pool after 30 days. Full rules on Gold Forge.
- Reward mail. Occasionally the team sends KEEP by in-game mail; it is budgeted from the same pool, and unclaimed mail KEEP returns to it.
You can also deposit KEEP from your wallet at any time; that is your own token moving in, not a reward. See Deposits, withdrawals and 2FA.
How KEEP is spent (and why it recycles)
Spending KEEP in the game does not destroy it. Every ordinary KEEP sink pays back into the emission pool, so the reward budget is replenished by play:
- Extra Mines. Your first Mine costs SHARDS; Mines 2 through 8 cost 1,500 / 4,000 / 10,000 / 22,000 / 45,000 / 80,000 / 130,000 KEEP. Building a Mine costs no SOL.
- Heroes. Recruiting Vex costs 3,000 KEEP and Theodor 10,000 KEEP, unless you consume a hero-contract item. See Troops and heroes.
- Speed-ups. Finishing a timer early costs KEEP that grows with the time remaining: 2 KEEP per 30-second unit, plus a gentle quadratic term for very long timers (ceil of 2 × units² ÷ 9,000), minimum 1 KEEP.
- Converting to SHARDS. Also recycles to the pool (next section).
The only KEEP that is actually burned is the 2% withdrawal fee.
Why recycle? A fixed 500M pool would run dry sooner if every reward left it for good. Recycling means the pool only loses the KEEP players hold or withdraw, not every KEEP that was ever paid out; the Forge's daily amount is sized for a five-year emission schedule.
Converting between the two
- KEEP to SHARDS: open the KEEP WALLET screen and use the converter. Any positive whole-KEEP amount becomes the same number of SHARDS on your selected base (1 KEEP = 1 SHARD). It is one-way and instant, needs no land, and the KEEP goes back to the emission pool.
- SHARDS to KEEP: only through the GOLD FORGE, only up to your Forge's daily cap, and only at the shared daily rate, which is always below 1 KEEP per SHARD.
Tip: Because the Forge pays less than 1 KEEP per SHARD, converting KEEP into SHARDS and smelting them back always loses value. Convert KEEP to SHARDS when you need to build, not as a loop.
The KEEP WALLET screen also shows BUY KEEP WITH SOL marked TEMPORARILY UNAVAILABLE. Buying KEEP from the treasury with SOL is currently disabled; the only ways to get KEEP are to earn it in-game or deposit your own.
What a raid can take, and what is safe
- At risk: up to half of your base's liquid SHARDS and open GOLD FORGE SHARDS combined (how much of that the attacker actually takes scales with the stars they earn), and the uncollected output of any Mine the attacker destroys; Mines left standing keep their buffers. A standing Vault shields part of the lootable share by level (a Level-1 Vault trims it to 48.5%, a Level-20 Vault to 20%); a Vault destroyed during the raid protects nothing. See Defenses, traps and walls.
- Safe: all KEEP (play balance, claimable Forge payouts, and anything frozen for withdrawal), your SOL, your items, and your Land Deed.
Why: "Mined wealth is raidable, KEEP never is." Raids are meant to punish hoarding SHARDS, not to expose anyone's token balance.
Tip: SHARDS that have already been settled by the Forge are gone (burned) and the KEEP they earned is untouchable. SHARDS in the Forge before midnight UTC are still lootable, and a live raid on a contributing base delays that day's settlement until it resolves.
Withdrawals and fees
KEEP is the only thing that leaves the game. In brief (all devnet):
- Who: you must own a paid Land Deed to withdraw.
- Minimum: 500 KEEP per request.
- Fee: 2% of the gross, burned; 98% is sent. A 1,000 KEEP request sends 980.
- Frequency: one withdrawal per rolling 24 hours.
- Daily cap by Keep level: 50,000 KEEP at L1, rising to 250,000 at L20. With several bases, your strongest active paid base sets the cap; caps never add.
- Hold: standard withdrawals unbond for 24 hours (cancellable). An authenticator app that has been enabled for at least 24 hours lets you skip the hold.
The full cap table, statuses and 2FA rules are on Deposits, withdrawals and 2FA.
Leagues and trophies
Winning a raid earns trophies by stars: 8 for 1★, 12 for 2★, 16 for 3★; a 0★ loss costs 10. Gains are damped by the rating gap between attacker and defender. Trophies place you in Bronze (0), Silver (400), Gold (800) or Sol (1,200), with a weekly Monday reset. These values are playtest placeholders.
The design splits a weekly KEEP prize between the Sol and Gold tiers (60% / 40%, shared equally within a tier). Right now that prize pool has no funding source in the code, so expect the weekly league reward to be 0 KEEP until the team funds it or wires one in. Trophies and tiers themselves are live; the payout is not.
Not yet live or still being tuned
- BUY KEEP WITH SOL is disabled.
- League KEEP prizes are unfunded (0 KEEP).
- Numbers marked as playtest placeholders in the game's source, including the Forge daily caps and soft cap, PvE bounties, league thresholds and the trophy curve, may change without notice.
- A runtime emission controller can throttle mining SHARDS (down to ×0.1) based on pool health, withdrawal outflow and player count. It does not change the Forge's daily KEEP or any KEEP reward.