Three logos, one economy
Pixagram, the social network for pixel art, runs on three units: PIXA, Pixa Power (PXP) and Pixa Supra (PXS). Two of them are one token in two forms: PIXA is liquid, and Pixa Power is PIXA staked. The third, PXS, is a separate unit that promises no price and settles only by converting into PIXA.
The layout comes from Steem and Hive, whose code the Pixa chain is built on. Pixa kept the shape and rewrote the rules that decide who gets paid. Holding earns nothing, PXS pays no interest, and its price feed refers to a Big Mac rather than a dollar.
| Unit | What it is | What it does | How you get it |
|---|---|---|---|
| PIXA (alias PXA) | The liquid token, 3 decimals | Transfers, staking, converting to PXS, paying the account creation fee | Powering down, converting PXS, transfers, and rewards while PXS printing is off |
| Pixa Power (PXP) | PIXA staked, held on chain as VESTS | Vote weight on posts, Resource Credits, witness and proposal votes | Powering up; author, curation and witness rewards; delegation (borrowed, not owned) |
| Pixa Supra (PXS) | A second unit that promises no price, 3 decimals | Half of each author reward, the fund's payments, the proposal fee, conversion into PIXA | Author rewards, converting PIXA, transfers |
PIXA: the token that moves
PIXA is the liquid token: what you send, stake and pay fees in, and what every PXS converts into. Its amounts have 3 decimals. PXA is an alias for PIXA, the ticker used in market pairs and by the price-feed software.
Block 0, on 2026-09-04 at 12:00 UTC, created 100,000,000 PIXA, all of it staked. There was no liquid PIXA, no airdrop and no mining. Three accounts received the starting balances (Genesis and Distribution):
| Account | Received at genesis | What it is for | What it can do |
|---|---|---|---|
pixa.rex | 75,000,000 Pixa Power, 75% of PIXA | Operator allocation, held for Pixa Rex S.A. | Transfer stake and update its own keys; never vote |
pixa.team | 25,000,000 Pixa Power, 25% of PIXA | Team and contributors | The same |
pixa.omnibus | 245,098.039 PXS | Treasury of the Decentralized Pixa Fund (DPF) | Pay proposals that stakeholders vote for; it has no keys |
The two allocation accounts hand out stake only as Pixa Power, and each transfer needs three signatures. Stake they send counts in governance only after 30 days. Pixa Rex S.A. has committed to distribute all of pixa.rex within 9 to 11 years of the token generation event (TGE); the protocol enforces the form, not that schedule.
New PIXA is issued in every block. The yearly rate was 9.75% on 2026-10-08. It drops 0.01 percentage points every 250,000 blocks, about 0.42 points a year, until it reaches 0.95% around 2047.
Of each block's issuance, 70% goes to authors and curators, 15% to witnesses and 15% to the DPF (Supply, Inflation and Yield). Nothing goes to holders: an account that holds 1% of all PIXA and does nothing for a year ends it with about 0.9%.
Some PIXA is destroyed as well. Account creation fees are burned, and converting PIXA into PXS burns the PIXA it uses. In the chain's first month, issuance added about 0.91 million PIXA and conversions into PXS removed about 0.26 million.
Pixa Power: stake that carries weight
Pixa Power is PIXA you have staked, and it is the weight behind everything an account does on chain. Powering up converts PIXA at about 1:1 and takes effect at once. Powering down returns it in 13 weekly instalments, the first 7 days after you start (Pixa Power).
What it gives an account:
Votes on posts. Voting power equals your effective Pixa Power. Votes decide which posts are paid, and early votes for work others vote for later earn curation rewards. Since hardfork 30 on 2026-10-07, a full-strength vote counts from 2.5 Pixa Power (Voting and Curation).
Resource Credits. About 1,000,000 credits per Pixa Power, recharging 20% a day. Posting, voting and transfers spend credits instead of fees (Resource Credits).
Governance. Votes for witnesses and on DPF proposals, weighted by your own Pixa Power. New stake waits 30 days before it counts here, so no one can buy stake and swing a vote the same day.
Delegation lends Pixa Power without giving it away. The borrower gets voting power and Resource Credits; you keep ownership and governance weight. Recalled stake comes back after 5 days, and the app uses delegation to give new accounts their first credits.
Pixa Power earns nothing by itself. Hive pays 15% of issuance to stake; Pixa pays none, which is why one VESTS has stayed worth about one PIXA since genesis. Stake is paid only for curating: curators share 40% of each post's payout.
Pixa Supra (PXS): a unit that promises no price
PXS promises no price. Nothing defends it, no one has to buy it back, it pays no interest and no reserve stands behind it. A PXS balance is not a claim on any person, company or fund (PXS at a Glance).
In one phrase, PXS is a Big Mac referenced supracoin. Each witness publishes how many PIXA one Big Mac costs, and the chain keeps the median of the last 3.5 days. That reference is a direction, never a destination.
A reference that already moves with fiat prices
A Big Mac is priced in fiat money, so the reference already carries the rise in fiat prices. In The Economist's data, a US Big Mac cost 2.24 USD in April 2000 and 6.22 USD in July 2026, about 2.8 times as much, or about 4% a year. Its US price never fell from one edition of the index to the next, and it rose in 23 of the 26 years.
The chain picks this up through the feed. On 2026-09-07 the witnesses' software moved to the July 2026 edition, which raised the US price from 6.12 to 6.22 USD. The median rose from 51.000 to 51.833 PIXA per PXS, both computed with the placeholder price for PIXA described below.
From then on, each PXS converted into about 1.6% more PIXA. PXS orients toward what money buys, not toward a currency's face value. That is an orientation, not a promise: under stress, a PXS settles for less.
A currency-agnostic feed
The feed is currency agnostic. The chain stores one number per witness, PIXA per Big Mac, and no currency appears in it. A witness can price the Big Mac where it operates, in its own currency; the agnostic feed's own example declares 8.50 CHF.
The agnostic feed reads PIXA's market price under its ticker, PXA. When the two currencies differ, it converts between them with the European Central Bank's reference rates, so the currency cancels out of the result. The chain's median then becomes a median across places as well as across witnesses (Oracle and Price Feed).
On 2026-10-08 every witness still ran the earlier program, bigmac-feed, which uses the US price and the placeholder for PIXA.
How PXS settles
Conversion is the only settlement the protocol offers. A convert request burns the PXS after 3.5 days and pays newly created PIXA at the median then in force, less any haircut. In the other direction, collateralized_convert locks twice the value in PIXA and pays the PXS at once, less a 5% fee.
PXS comes from the PXS half of author rewards, from the fund's share of issuance and from conversions. The DPF pays its proposals in PXS, and creating a proposal costs 10 PXS, plus 1 PXS for each day beyond 60. Interest on PXS is fixed at zero by consensus, in savings too.
Adjust, never defend
No PIXA is set aside for PXS holders: a conversion pays PIXA created for the purpose. PXS is borne on the Atlas, all PIXA and Pixa Power, and the chain watches one ratio: the value of all PIXA against the PXS outside the treasury. The chain never buys or sells either unit.
The PXS design notes aim to keep that collateral ratio at 3× or more, the lower edge of a corridor that runs to about 10×. The chain enforces Hive's thresholds instead, unchanged in the current code (config.hpp). Both steps are automatic:
| Collateral ratio R | Debt ratio | What the chain does |
|---|---|---|
| 4× or less | 20% or more | Stops printing PXS: the authors' PXS half is paid in PIXA, and new PIXA → PXS conversions are refused |
| below 7/3, about 2.33× | above 30% | Applies the haircut: each PXS converts into proportionally less PIXA |
The debt ratio is the value of the PXS outside the treasury as a share of that PXS plus all PIXA (Haircut, Corridor and Settlement).
R = P ÷ (S × m)
haircut factor = min(1, 3R ÷ 7)
P is all PIXA, S is the PXS outside the treasury and m is the median feed in PIXA per PXS. Below R = 7/3 the factor falls in a straight line toward zero: 0.86 at R = 2, 0.43 at R = 1. The haircut protects PIXA holders from dilution; it does not protect PXS holders.
Where it stands
On 2026-10-08 the collateral ratio was about 1,145×: printing on, no haircut. That distance rests on an assumption. PIXA did not trade on any market, so every witness divided a US Big Mac, 6.22 USD, by an agreed placeholder of 0.12 USD per PIXA: 51.833 PIXA per PXS.
The treasury also held 99.32% of all PXS, and treasury PXS counts in neither ratio. If all of it were paid out and held, the collateral ratio would be about 7.8× at the same median.
The design notes also count on 21 witnesses. The chain elects up to 21, with 1 required; 8 were scheduled on 2026-10-08.
Risk is moved, not removed. PXS holders carry the feed's errors, the haircut and the need to find a buyer for the PIXA they receive. PIXA holders carry the dilution, and everyone relies on the witnesses publishing honest feeds.
How value moves between the three
New units enter through issuance, and every change of form runs through PIXA.
Rewards create Pixa Power and PXS directly, but there is no direct route between the two: Pixa Power must be powered down to PIXA before it can become PXS (Posting and Rewards). Conversions out of PXS are priced at the end of their 3.5 days, not the start, so no one can act on news the median has not absorbed yet.
Why three units instead of one
Splitting the jobs keeps each rule simple. Liquidity, commitment and a purchasing-power reference each get their own unit, so no unit has to do another's work. Five choices follow from that split (Design Principles):
Contribution earns; holding dilutes. New units go to authors, curators, witnesses and the fund. Pixa removed both of Hive's rewards for passive holding: interest on the second unit and the share of issuance paid to stake.
Weight is slow on purpose. Stake takes 13 weeks to leave and 30 days to gain a voice in governance. A borrower of delegated stake gets votes on posts, never a say in witness or proposal votes.
Participation without fees. Pixa Power renews Resource Credits every day, so posting, voting and transfers cost no fee. Three operations keep one: opening an account, creating a proposal and converting PIXA to PXS.
A reference without a promise. PXS promises no price, so the chain has nothing to defend. Authors still take part of their pay in a unit that refers to purchasing power. Under stress it settles for less rather than defending a number.
Separate powers. The allocation accounts cannot vote, the fund has no keys, and protocol changes need the elected witnesses. No single party can issue, spend and rule.
The PXS design notes describe the model as four parts under one rule: Pixa never defends; Pixa adjusts (The Four Components).
| Part | Role | On the Pixa chain |
|---|---|---|
| Oracle | senses | The witnesses' feeds of PIXA per Big Mac, and their medians |
| Atlas | bears | All PIXA and Pixa Power, valued at the median feed |
| Macro | regulates | Conversions, the print stop and the haircut |
| Supra | is observed | PXS balances, settled only by conversion into new PIXA |
The design has costs, and the documentation lists them (Risks and Open Problems). On 2026-10-08, 72.29% of stake still sat in the two allocation accounts, and seven accounts voted for witnesses.
Every PXS ratio rests on the placeholder until PIXA trades, and a first market price may differ from it by any factor. If the network does not grow, issuance dilutes holders without drawing new participants.
What comes next
Two changes ahead will shape how the three units behave. As pixa.rex is distributed over the coming years, stake spreads from two accounts to many, and governance with it. Once PIXA trades on a market, witnesses can run the agnostic feed and read PIXA's market price instead of the placeholder.
Buying and selling artworks on chain is planned for 2027, with its fees still undecided (Roadmap). Every figure in this post, with its source in the chain's code, is in the Pixagram information repository.
Try the app at pixagram.com, build on pixa.org, and bring questions to the community Telegram.
Nothing in this post is financial, investment or legal advice. PIXA, Pixa Power and PXS carry risk, and PXS promises no price.
Sources
From the Pixagram information repository, last updated 2026-10-08 (commit 1cb1123):
Elsewhere:
Chain code: config.hpp at v1.30.1, the print stop and haircut thresholds
Feed software: bigmac-feed-agnostic
Big Mac prices: The Economist, Big Mac index source data, file
source-data/big-mac-source-data-v2.csv, United States rows from 2000-04-01 to 2026-07-01