Economy

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The exchange of resources in ECO is based on an entirely player-created economy which players can use to sell goods and services. Unlike most games which only allow players to sell items, Eco allows players to sell contracts for labor, which the game will enforce.

Need someone to build you a house? Take out a contract and they will complete the job, with payment being held in escrow until completion.

This system of contracts forms Eco's "quest" system, where a quest is an actual job needed by another real human in the game, which your player has the specialized skills necessary to complete. Through specialization and game-enforced exchanges and contracts, a rich economy will develop in Eco that forms the basis of all resource allocation.

Stores

Stores are the backbone of the player economy system. They are furniture which must be placed inside a room for players to trade items. Stores can be set by the owner to buy and sell certain items.

This can be useful for all players. For example, a smelter may buy Iron Ore and sell Iron Ingots. They would make a profit because they have a higher smelting efficiency than the player selling them the Iron Ore.

Contracts

Players may write their own contracts and post them on a Contract Board.

Currency

Currency is what players use to buy and sell items or services.

There are two types of currency in ECO: player credit and minted currency.

Player credit

Player currency is created automatically when the player joins the world for the first time. Each player currency is unique to a specific player and can only be acquired by selling items to their Store(s).

Minted currency

Since player currency is inconvenient, players may want to invest in creating a Mint, which uses certain items to craft currency that can be used globally. Any player may create a currency, assuming there are no laws to prevent it, which others may mint if they have access to the mint. Minted currency can be created from resources as widely available as wood pulp, as rare as gold, or many things in between.

Transferring

The economy view window has a "Make Transfer" button that can be used to transfer money between your own bank accounts or to another player's bank accounts.

Inflation

Any number of Mints can be created, and more currency can be made with various resources. Since any player can mint any currency (except player credits) this behavior can cause rampant inflation. Eco players may use the law system to deal with this in various ways: By restricting the production of Mints or by taxing the creation of new currency.

Treasury

Various transactions in the Eco economy can be taxed globally using a Treasury, which can only be controlled by the server leader. For more information about this process, see Government.