So what exactly does this mean to you?

There are competing interests that want different outcomes on the value of the diamond:
Producers - those who provide inventory in exchange for an increase in stockpiled wealth - drive the value of the diamond to go low. Their goal is getting the most diamonds for as little produced items as possible.

Consumers - those who use diamonds as a means to an end to acquire a desired good - drive the value to go high. Opposite to producers, their goal is getting as much produced items for a diamond as possible.

Staff: they don’t care of the value be it high or low, but are more interested in keeping the % change bounded within reason to the original value of the diamond (or at least their perceived value of it), so there is a high frequency of stable trades going on.

An active economy means an active community, with players having reasonable access to items to do whatever suits their fancy. If the value of the diamond ever shoots up or plummets, trade frequency will drop and the economy stagnates as more and more consumers don’t see value in spending their diamonds on what they perceive as outrageous prices, save only the very wealthy who could keep up, or producers stop producing because they don’t want to make something that they feel doesn’t fairly compensate them for their time creating the inventory. As a result, the community activity slows and as a corollary, the onus defaults to the staff to step up to reactivate the economy through direct intervention (a consuming task).

The trend on the value of the diamond shows to meet most of everyone’s interests, with the biggest winners being the early shops, as they are able to cash in on the lower value of the diamonds they’ve stockpiled when it was still a relatively high value.

I should add that with the introduction of the lottery system and potentially many other future staff endeavors that stem from it, where diamonds and other desired goods are redistributed among players (or possibly taken out altogether), will have an interesting impact to the economy, because if managed properly, could further stimulate the economy through increased trading from those previously lacking currency to buy desired goods in bulk. I wish I could have the time to continue this study to see what comes of it.

I hoped this was a good read for you, I had fun doing it, and surprisingly it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. Hopefully someone is able to see ways this study can be improved or continued and provide us with another updated reference. But at the very least this can be used as a reference of what a free economy looks like at the startup of a new map.

@JKELLER4000 So what is the M0 supply of diamonds?

That is beyond the scope of my study unfortunately. I am only able to observe through a small peephole, the diamonds as they pass hands. This allows for me to determine accepted prices, perceived values, and the average velocity to which the diamonds move between players (if I had bothered to quantify that in the study). As far as how much altogether is behind the door, I don't know without going into some economic theory, which I have little experience in.

@JKELLER4000 Has the rarity of diamonds mining started producing any M1 diamond supplies?

I know lots of players are not active(some odd 1k+ new players each month but only about 30 active players). but it would be extremely cool if more people were willing to sell on credit!

I would say no M1 alt currencies. Players have been fine acquiring the diamonds through trades, raids, or mining. and it's been increasing as more players mine out the diamonds. I don't see M1 diamonds out there but I also don't see the diamond as an overly rare currency.

@OtherGreenGamer I'll write down every order I take or give for the next month ish. Once you're ready I can send it your way @Valgys (Keep in mind there won't be any names given besides mine)

Thanks, but this concludes my study. Unfortunately I will lose the free time to follow this farther and decompose into graphs and analyses. You can always study your own trades as a subset to the economy though!

@GrinningBobcat @Valgys this could be more accurate if you asked people at trade post what they traded,

You're absolutely right it would be more accurate if I asked the players at the trading post. However, it would become more of a chore to log on only to survey players at the Trade Post, and besides the time spent to do it, how many are willing to talk to me about every trade they make?

@GrinningBobcat @Valgys plus the added boost of coord selling I feel is something that will affect these graphs. The purchase of information in general would

This falls into the services category of diamond trades. This is something more difficult to quantify because it is information being bought. The selling of coordinates is mostly bounded not just by the value in the information relative to the value of the diamond at the time, but more specifically to the demand of the buyer in the transaction. As a result, there would be higher fluctuations in price that I feel would hurt my study more than help when it came trying to understand the trend in value of the diamond.

Both good ideas, but they would require someone smarter than me with more time to do them.