Kotbo 5 min read
Set up a Discord server economy: currency, role shop and member marketplace
Discord has no built-in currency, so a server economy always runs on a bot. Kotbo sets up a full one: a currency with your name on it, daily rewards, a role shop paid in coins and a marketplace where members resell their items. Everything is configured from the dashboard
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Why add a virtual currency to your Discord server
An economy puts a value on activity: members earn coins for being around and spend them on something that matters on the server. With nothing to buy, coins are worthless. With nothing to spend them on, they pile up and nobody looks at them anymore. The whole job is that balance
- A reason to drop by every day, with the daily reward and its streak
- A concrete reward for active members: a color role, access to a channel, a rare item
- Something to talk about: the richest members leaderboard, auctions, the dice game lost at the last second
Economy commands to earn and spend coins
Members earn currency through commands, and by talking too: when the leveling module is on, chatting and spending time in voice earns a few coins, with a delay between two rewards so spam doesn’t pay. Options are typed in French
/daily- Today’s reward, drawn between a minimum and a maximum you set. Coming back without a break builds a streak that raises the reward
/work- A salary every hour, plus a bit of game XP. It grows with the player’s level
/coins membre:<member>- A member’s balance, or yours with no option
/give-coins membre:<member> montant:<amount>- Give coins to another member, within the per-transfer cap and the delay between transfers you set
/richest- The ten richest members of the server
/economy-info- A summary of the server economy: the currency, how to earn it, the shop
Build a Discord role shop
The shop opens with /boutique on Discord, and on the Shop page of the server’s website. Each offer can require a role or a minimum level, cap purchases per member, have a stock, be gifted to someone else or go through staff approval. Promo codes, as a percentage or a fixed amount, apply to the whole shop or to a few offers
Role
Given forever or for a number of days. Buying a timed role again extends the current period
Subscription
A role paid every period. If the balance runs short, the member gets grace days, then the role is removed
Items and XP
Game items delivered to the inventory, or XP added to the member’s level
Service
Something the staff delivers by hand, like a custom emoji or a private channel. The order always waits for approval, and a refusal refunds the member
How to set up the economy step by step
Plan half an hour for a first version that holds up, shop included
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Turn on the module
In the dashboard, turn on Economy & RPG. The Economy page groups the settings, items, shop, black market and players
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Name your currency
In the Configuration tab, give your currency a name and an emoji, plus an image if you like. By default it is called KotboCoins
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Set the rewards
Set the minimum, maximum and delay of /daily. Start low: making rewards more generous always goes down better than taking coins back
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Stock the shop
Add two or three offers that mean something on your server, a color role or access to a channel, before thinking about items
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Announce it
Post a message pointing to /economy-info and /boutique, so members know what to do with their coins
Gambling games, without turning the server into a casino
Kotbo has four games played with coins: /dice, /roulette, /rps and /guess, listed by /games. They are what inflates or drains balances fastest. Set them up before opening them, and if your server has minors, think hard about keeping them at all
- Each game opens or closes on its own, and a closed game is refused to everyone, administrators included
- A maximum bet, which applies to /dice, /roulette and /rps
- A number of games per day and per member, all games combined
A member marketplace to keep items moving
With the Member market module, /market opens the auction house: members list items from their inventory at a fixed price or as an auction, for one hour up to seven days. Items come from the shop, drops and the role-playing game, which members start with /rpg and /tower
- The suggested listing price starts from the average sale price of the same item over the last 30 days
- An outbid bidder gets their bid back
- A 0 to 50 % tax taken from the seller on each sale: those coins leave the economy, which slows inflation
Keep your economy healthy
A working economy takes coins out as steadily as it puts them in
- Recurring spending: subscriptions, timed roles, marketplace tax
- Caps on bets and on transfers between members
- /remove-coins and /remove-item, for administrators only, to fix abuse
- A reset of players, items or the whole economy from the dashboard, when you need a clean start