The Zenko Economy
Zenko runs on two in-game currencies and one on-chain token. Everything you do — hatching, raiding, breeding, dressing up your creatures — flows through this loop: you grind the soft currency, you save the scarce one, and you trade the rest with other players for the token.
GOLD · soft & abundant
GEMS · scarce & premium
$ZOLANA · on-chain token
The old Shard currency is gone game-wide. Everything Shards used to pay for has moved to other currencies — most notably breeding, which now costs $ZOLANA (see the Breeding panel below). If you see Shards mentioned in an old guide, it's out of date: there is no Shard balance, no Shard drop, and no Shard guarantee anymore.
Gold is the everyday soft currency. It is deliberately abundant — the 2026-07-01 economy rework multiplied dungeon Gold ×2.5 so that Gold is the main thing you earn from playing, and the main thing you spend. It is meant to flow: you should always have a Gold sink to chase.
Where Gold comes from
Dungeon & raid grind (primary)
Every dungeon run pays a Gold reward that scales with depth. The reward is a random amount between a floor and ceiling that both climb steeply as you go deeper — the deepest raids pay well over 100× the opening dungeon. The gold curve is 300 × id1.4 (min) to 750 × id1.4 (max), where id is the dungeon number (1–25):
| Dungeon | Region | Run time | Stamina | Gold / run |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 · Sunny Glade | I · Meadow Hollows | 1.0 min | 6 | 300 – 750 |
| #5 · Verdant Deep | I · Meadow Hollows | 2.2 min | 6 | 2,855 – 7,139 |
| #10 · Abyssal Mouth | II · Tidal Caverns | 3.6 min | 8 | 7,536 – 18,839 |
| #15 · Pyre Core | III · Ember Depths | 5.1 min | 10 | 13,294 – 33,234 |
| #20 · Void Antechamber | IV · Shadow Reach | 6.5 min | 14 | 19,887 – 49,717 |
| #25 · Celestial Apex | V · Celestial Spire | 8.0 min | 18 | 27,179 – 67,948 |
See Dungeons & Raids for the full 25-dungeon table and material drops. Note: materials are not depth-gated — every dungeon drops all three base materials (deeper runs just drop a little more). Only Gems' rare binder is depth-weighted.
Idle / AFK income (secondary trickle)
Placed creatures earn a small passive Gold trickle while you're away. This was deliberately cut to a trickle in the economy rework — a placed creature earns roughly 1–14 Gold/hour by rarity & stage (a Common Baby earns 1/hr; a Mythical Elder tops out at 14/hr), multiplied by happiness, variant and level bonuses. Idle income keeps your town feeling alive; it is not a serious faucet. Offline accrual caps at 8 hours.
Gold is abundant on purpose because it has real, recurring sinks. Most sinks are value-scaled: their cost is a fraction of a creature's own base income, so they stay fair for a low-value roster and become a meaningful tax on a high-value one.
| Sink | Formula / cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Feed | 5% of base coins/hr (min 50) | +20 happiness, 10-min cooldown. A gentle recurring tax scaled to roster value. |
 Relic reroll / reforge | Gems, not Gold | Affix rerolls cost Gems (12 / 30). Listed for contrast — this is a Gem sink. |
 Placement slots | 1,500 × 1.7n per extra slot | Only placed creatures earn idle income, so buying capacity grows your faucet — a sink that scales with progression. |
 Evolution | 5,000 / 25,000 / 125,000 × rarity | Base (Common) Gold to evolve Baby→Juvenile→Adult→Elder (Elder is final). Cost scales ×rarity (Common 1 → Mythical 8), and each stage needs a minimum combat level (Lv 10 / 25 / 50). |
Placement-slot cost ladder
A fresh player starts with 6 free placement slots and can buy up to 40. The first expansion is nearly free so a new player can grow their faucet early; each slot then costs ×1.7 more:
| Expansion # | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gold cost | 1,500 | 2,550 | 4,335 | 7,369 | 12,528 | 21,298 | 36,206 | 61,551 | 104,636 | 177,882 |
Breeding is now an on-chain $ZOLANA sink — not a Gold one. The fee is keyed to the offspring's rarity (never the parent tier), so a breed always costs a little less than buying the same creature would. A failed breed no longer refunds Gold — the only consolation is trainer XP (that Gold faucet is gone). There is no Shard guarantee anymore.
| Offspring | $ZOLANA cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Uncommon | 200 | Most same-element and hybrid breeds |
| Rare | 350 | Rare offspring |
| Epic | 600 | Epic offspring |
| Legendary chase (T3×T3) | 1,000 | Flat break-even price for the only pairing that can jackpot a Legendary (or Mythical) |
Success rate and hatch time still scale with the parent tier (the lower of the two parents), from 100% / 30 min at the bottom to 25% / 4 hr at the top. Higher pairings are far riskier — and on a fail you keep only the trainer XP.
Gates & breeding slots
Breeding unlocks at account Level 15. It runs on a regenerating slot system (mirrors Stamina): you start with 3 slots, regenerate +1 every 24 hours, and can instantly refill one slot for 1,000 $ZOLANA. A per-day hard cap scales with your $ZOLANA holdings tier — from 3/day (Hatchling) up to 12/day (Titan).
Parents also share a 25-minute per-creature cooldown and need ≥ 50 happiness and Adult/Elder stage. The offspring species is fixed at breed time; the variant (Normal → Rainbow) is a hidden roll revealed at hatch. Full details on the Breeding & Eggs page.
Gems are the premium currency and are kept deliberately scarce. Because supply is capped, Gem prices in the shops are low — a scarce currency buys a lot per unit. Gems buy cosmetics, premium eggs, storage upgrades, relic rerolls and instant stamina-adjacent flair. You cannot craft your way to unlimited Gems; every source is bounded.
Where Gems come from
The EpochWeekly StipendGacha & Market The Epoch (community Gem fund)
The Epoch is a server-wide event: players collectively donate raid materials + Gold to open an epoch, then mint Gems from the opened pool on a first-come-first-served basis. Inside an open epoch every Gem costs a fixed recipe of 200,000 Gold + 80 Glimmer Dust + 40 Mana Shard + 16 Astral Core, and each claim rebates a random 1–26% of the materials back (Gold never refunds). Your personal claim cap scales with $ZOLANA held: Newcomer 3, Holder (≥10k) 10, Patron (≥50k) 100, Whale (≥100k) unlimited.
Weekly Gem Stipend
A free weekly claim. Everyone at account Level 5+ gets a floor of 4 Gems/week (the anti-bot gate). Holders of ≥ 10,000 $ZOLANA instead earn a bigger, concave, hard-capped bonus that always beats the F2P floor:
| Wallet holds | Weekly Gems | Tier |
|---|---|---|
| < 10,000 $ZOLANA (F2P) | 4 | Free floor · needs Level 5+ |
| 10,000 $ZOLANA | 9 | Holder base |
| 50,000 $ZOLANA | 20 | Scaled (√ holdings) |
| 100,000 $ZOLANA | 28 | Scaled |
| ≥ 250,000 $ZOLANA | 40 | Hard cap (whale guardrail) |
The curve is intentionally sub-linear (square-root, hard-capped at 40) so whales scale up but can never runaway-mint and inflate Gems.
Gacha dupes & the Marketplace
Capsule pulls can be paid in 8 Gems (Standard) or 15 Gems (Deluxe) as the F2P lane, and duplicate cosmetics refund Gold (2,000 Common → 150,000 Mythical) rather than clogging your wardrobe. On the Marketplace you can also sell items for Gems — a fully player-driven Gem source. See Casino & Zothebyz for the gacha odds.
What Gems buy
| Gem sink | Gem cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Cosmetic (hat-class) | 1 → 250 | Common 1 · Uncommon 3 · Rare 8 · Epic 25 · Legendary 80 · Mythical 250 |
| Cosmetic (armor / full-body) | 2 → 450 | Wide curve — commons are pocket change, mythicals are long-term goals |
| Cosmetic (mount / aura) | 3 → 700 | Premium flair price class |
| Premium egg | 15 → 250 | premium 15 · shiny 40 · golden 90 · rainbow 250 |
| Relic reroll / reforge | 12 / 30 | Reroll affix values / re-roll affix keys |
| Color / variant / rename | 8 / 25 / 10 | Repeatable cosmetic customization sinks |
| Storage vault upgrade | 1 / +100 slots | Grow the town vault from 100 up to 10,000 slots |
Dungeon runs cost Stamina (6–18 per run by region). The bar holds 180 and regenerates steadily so it rarely blocks play:
- +1 every 2 minutes passively (30/hr) — a full empty bar refills in about 6 hours.
- +1 every minute while resting in the AFK Zone (double rate) — a full refill in about 3 hours.
- Or buy an instant full refill for 150 $ZOLANA (paid to treasury → burned), no matter how empty. Tap the HUD stamina bar to recharge.
Faster stamina means more dungeon runs, which means more Gold and materials — stamina is the throttle that keeps the grind paced, not a hard wall.
The Marketplace is a non-custodial, USD-denominated, peer-to-peer exchange. Prices are set in USD and converted to $ZOLANA at the live quote, so a listing's dollar value stays stable even as the token price moves. Settlement is atomic and on-chain: the buyer signs one transaction that pays the seller and the treasury fee in a single atomic move, and the server only flips ownership after verifying both legs landed.
How a trade settles
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1 · List | Seller lists an owned, idle, tradeable item. It's locked from being consumed, placed or equipped while listed. |
| 2 · Quote | Buyer requests a quote. The USD price is locked into a $ZOLANA amount for ~120 seconds (the price-lock + concurrency gate). Two payment legs are returned: seller 95%, treasury 5%. |
| 3 · Pay | Buyer signs one transaction paying both legs atomically. Retries are idempotent on the signature, so a confirmed-but-unindexed payment never double-charges. |
| 4 · Settle | Server verifies both legs on-chain (seller amount + treasury fee), then flips item ownership. Expired quotes (past 120s) must be re-quoted. |
The $ZOLANA lane charges a seller fee that drops with your holdings — from 5% down to 2% for the biggest holders (see the holder table below). The buyer always pays 100% of the listed value; only the split between seller and treasury shifts. The Gem lane is fee-free — Gem-priced listings settle instantly in-database with no wallet, no quote, and the seller keeps 100%. Buying unlocks at account Level 5; selling is gated harder as an anti-alt-farm measure — you must be Level 8 and hold at least 10,000 $ZOLANA to list anything.
Your fee tier is based on your sustained $ZOLANA holdings (a rolling window), not a momentary balance, so briefly parking tokens to grab a lower fee doesn't work — and your live tier + rate show in the My Sales tab.
Seller fee by holdings
The more $ZOLANA you sustainably hold, the less of each sale you pay in fees. The buyer's price is unchanged — the discount is entirely the seller's to keep.
| Tier | Holds ($ZOLANA) | Seller fee | You keep |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hatchling | < 100,000 | 5.0% | 95.0% |
| Holder | ≥ 100,000 | 4.5% | 95.5% |
| Baron | ≥ 250,000 | 4.0% | 96.0% |
| Duke | ≥ 500,000 | 3.5% | 96.5% |
| Whale | ≥ 1,000,000 | 3.0% | 97.0% |
| Leviathan | ≥ 2,000,000 | 2.5% | 97.5% |
| Titan | ≥ 4,000,000 | 2.0% | 98.0% |
Tier is your sustained holdings over a rolling window, so a momentary balance spike won't lift it — hold it for real, get the discount for real. The Gem lane stays fully fee-free for everyone.
What's tradeable
Unique items — creatures, relics, cosmetics, eggs — and fungible stacks — Gems and materials. A few guardrails: a creature on a dungeon run or placed on your island can't be listed; equipped relics/cosmetics must be unequipped first; and Soulbound perfect relics can never be sold.
You cannot buy or sell Gold on the Marketplace right now — the Gold lane has been disabled while it's reworked into a pooled/pegged model (unbounded Gold oversupply was collapsing the price). Your Gold is safe; it just isn't tradeable for the moment. When it returns, gold sales stay capped at 100,000,000 Gold per wallet per rolling 7 days (active listings + sold-last-7d) so the token can't become a Gold-inflation valve.
$ZOLANA is the game's on-chain token (a Solana Token-2022 mint with authorities revoked). It's the settlement currency for the Marketplace and gacha, it buys instant stamina, and — most importantly — holding it improves your economy. Holdings are read live from your wallet; you never lock or stake anything.
| Tier | Holds ($ZOLANA) | Weekly Stipend | Epoch claim cap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Newcomer / F2P | < 10,000 | 4 Gems | 3 Gems |
| Holder | ≥ 10,000 | 9 Gems | 10 Gems |
| Patron | ≥ 50,000 | 20 Gems | 100 Gems |
| Whale | ≥ 100,000 | 28 Gems† | Unlimited |
| Whale (soft-cap) | ≥ 250,000 | 40 Gems (max) | Unlimited |
† Stipend follows a square-root curve, hard-capped at 40 Gems/week. Whales also get an uncapped daily Gem-craft allotment (2.5 → 25 Gems/day from 10k → 50k held) and bypass the shared daily craft pool — but Gem throughput stays stamina-gated, so even whales can't mint infinitely. This "capital-first, never runaway" design is what keeps Gems scarce for everyone.
Notice that the game never pays $ZOLANA out for headcount or grinding — stamina refills, breeding fees and marketplace fees all flow into the treasury and burn. Gems (scarce, capped) are the reward currency; Gold (abundant) is the grind. This one-way token design is what protects the economy from the emission death-spiral.