Modern Minecraft Monetary Theory
“It’s not real until Vault believes it.” – MoNoKeynes, Channel 1 Economist
Modern Minecraft Monetary Theory (abbreviated as MMMMT, often mispronounced as mmm-tuh-muh-tuh or simply groaned at by devs) is the leading economic framework that governs how fictional Minecraft money is printed, tracked, and emotionally worshipped across servers. While it draws spiritual parallels to real-world MMT, the Minecraft variant is far more chaotic and powered by an unholy triumvirate:
- Vault
- Some random economy plugin that hasn’t been updated since Notch left,
- And LuckPerms—our bureaucratic Overlord.
Background
Back in the olden days of Bukkit, before the Fall of EssentialsX and the rise of the Plugin Necromancers, server admins faced a terrifying question:
> “How the hell do I connect my economy plugin with this jobs plugin without rewriting 8 config files and sacrificing a pig?”
Enter: Vault. A plugin so minimal, it doesn’t *do* anything... except *enable everything else* to pretend to work together.
What is Vault?
Vault is a platform-agnostic API layer that acts as the translator between:
- Economy Plugins (e.g., iConomy, xConomy, TNE, Gringotts, BezosCoins),
- Permission Systems (e.g., GroupManager [R.I.P.], LuckPerms [praise be]),
- Chat Formatting (because why not make it handle that too?).
It doesn’t handle balances or transactions itself. Instead, it says:
“Yo EconomyPlugin, I got this nerd who wants to buy a flying pig rank. You handle the math, I’ll just nod approvingly.”
It works across almost any server implementation—Spigot, Paper, Purpur, or some cursed branch from a GitHub repo last touched in 2016.
Why Vault Never Needs Updates
This is the heart of Modern Minecraft Monetary Theory.
Much like the U.S. Federal Reserve, Vault:
- Operates on faith.
- Doesn't care what actual plugin you use.
- Will interface with your spaghetti economy as long as your plugin exposes the correct hooks.
Even if you're using:
- The Ol’ Ancient iConomy (last updated before Enchanting existed),
- The xConomy fork from a Chinese Baidu pastebin
- TNE with enough GUI buttons to require an air traffic controller...
Vault will stoically continue its duty.
“Vault doesn't break. You break. Vault just watches.” — Aline, Channel 1 Server Plugin Philosopher
Vault is so agnostic, it doesn’t even care if you're using real numbers. There are rumors of servers running with economy plugins where players are paid in JSON arrays, and Vault just shrugs and passes them along.
Economic Theories Derived from Vault
- Print First, Ask Later – If your plugin says the player has $1,000, Vault assumes that's true. Whether it exists or was spawned during a lag spike is irrelevant.
- Transactional Quantum Accounting – Sometimes a plugin crashes during
/pay, but Vault still shows the money moved. The block is gone. The money is gone. Vault says it’s fine. - Deflation by Plugin Abandonment – When your economy plugin dies and no one maintains it, congrats! Hyper-deflation has wiped out all bank balances. Vault continues forwarding transactions to the void.
Cultural Impact
The term Modern Minecraft Monetary Theory has become a meme in many Minecraft circles, especially those that:
- Use ShopGUI+, Jobs Reborn, ChestShops (QuickShop-Hikari), and AuctionHouse all at once.
- Are unsure where their money is actually stored (SQLite? MySQL? Braincells?).
- Have witnessed Vault functioning perfectly fine for 11 years straight with zero major updates.
Related Plugins
- Vault (Plugin)
- LuckPerms
- iConomy (Historical)
- TNE: The New Economy
- EssentialsX
- Gringotts (Emerald-Backed Currency)
