Hello, Fellow Citizens!
It's been a productive stretch on the TerraCore backend and we have a meaningful update to share today — one that directly changes how $SCRAP flows through the game economy.
We've just shipped a fundamental rework to how daily leaderboard rewards are funded, and we want to be fully transparent about what changed, why we made the move, and what it means for you as a player.
What Changed: From Minting to Treasury
Up until now, every daily leaderboard reward cycle minted fresh $SCRAP tokens and distributed them to the top players. While this worked fine mechanically, it had a quiet side effect — it added a small but consistent drip of new $SCRAP supply to the economy every single day, regardless of what was happening with buybacks or overall token health.
Starting now, that's gone. Leaderboard rewards no longer mint any new tokens. Instead, they draw from the terracore treasury wallet — the $SCRAP balance held by the game account itself on Hive Engine.
How the Reward Pool Is Calculated
The math is simple and fully on-chain verifiable:
// Every reward cycle (once per day):
const treasuryBalance = await fetchScrapBalance('terracore'); // live from Hive Engine
const dailyPool = treasuryBalance * 0.0001; // 0.01% of treasury
// Each player's share is proportional to their leaderboard weight:
player.reward = (player.leaderboardShare / totalShares) * dailyPool;
Every 24 hours the smart contract queries the live $SCRAP balance of the terracore account on Hive Engine, takes 0.01% of that as the day's total reward pool, and distributes it proportionally to leaderboard participants based on their scores.
That's it. No minting, no printing — just recycling existing tokens that the treasury has accumulated.
Why This Matters for the Economy
This is the part we really want you to understand, because it's more than just a technical plumbing change.
The old system meant the leaderboard was a small but real source of inflation every day. New $SCRAP entered circulation purely as a game reward, independent of any economic activity. The new system ties reward size directly to the health and size of the treasury.
So how does the treasury grow? Through buybacks. The TerraCore smart contract automatically converts SWAP.HIVE revenue from in-game activity into $SCRAP by purchasing it on the Hive Engine DEX. Every time that buyback runs, the treasury balance increases — and a larger treasury means a larger daily reward pool for leaderboard competitors.
Game Activity → HIVE Revenue → SWAP.HIVE → DEX Buyback → Treasury SCRAP ↑
↓
Larger Daily Reward Pool
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Stronger Leaderboard Incentive
This is a real virtuous cycle. More players engaging with the game drives more revenue, which drives bigger buybacks, which builds a larger treasury, which means better daily rewards for the top competitors. The leaderboard now has real economic alignment with the game's overall health.
Frontend & API Updates
We also updated the API and frontend to display accurate expected reward amounts. The treasury's current $SCRAP balance is now stored in the game database and surfaced through the API, so the leaderboard page can show you a real estimate of today's prize pool rather than a placeholder figure.
If you check the leaderboard now, you should see reward amounts that reflect the actual treasury balance rather than a fixed number.
Sprint Development Cadence
One more thing worth mentioning — we're shifting into a sprint-based development cycle. What that means practically is that you may see several updates drop in a single day as we work through a focused batch of improvements together.
We know frequent updates can feel noisy if there's no context behind them. Our commitment is simple: every change that ships gets a post or announcement explaining what it is and why it matters. No silent deployments, no mystery patches. If something changes in TerraCore, you'll hear about it here and in Discord.
The leaderboard reward change is the first entry in this sprint. There's more coming soon — keep an eye on the Discord and follow us on PeakD to stay in the loop.
Wrapping Up
This change is about building a healthier long-term economy for TerraCore. Eliminating daily reward minting removes a structural inflation source, and tying reward sizes to treasury growth through buybacks means the leaderboard prize pool gets stronger as the game gets stronger.
We think that's a much better alignment of incentives — for competitive players who want meaningful prizes, and for token holders who care about supply dynamics.
As always, if you have questions, feedback, or want to dig into the details, come find us in the Discord. We love hearing from the community and the best ideas for this game have come from conversations with players.
See you on the leaderboard, Citizens.
That's it for today, all the links are below be sure to follow us to hear what we are working on and follow the progress!
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