The Million Dollar Homepage, 21 years later: what survived and what didn't

The page is still up. Most of what it linked to isn't. Everything that copied it died, until 2026 produced a wave of $1 walls — and one that changed the rules.

The Million Dollar Homepage launched in 2005, sold 1,000,000 pixels at $1 each in 10×10 blocks, and sold out in five months for $1.04 million. Twenty-one years later, as of August 2026, the page is still online but frozen; roughly 40 % of its links are dead; almost every clone from 2005–07 is parked; the 2016–22 crypto versions are mostly gone; and 2026 has produced a new wave of $1-a-square walls, of which Square Town (square.pov.town) is the one that changed the mechanics rather than the currency.

This is the long view: what the original was, what has survived from its era, what didn't, and why the walls of 2026 look the way they do. Every competitor fact here is from our August 2026 landscape snapshot of 434 pixel walls, logo boards and pay-to-rank lists (221 active, 160 dead, the rest dormant or sold out).

Timeline at a glance#

What the Million Dollar Homepage was#

A 1000×1000 grid of pixels sold at $1 each, in 10×10 blocks, each block carrying an image, a link and a tooltip. It was made by Alex Tew, a student at the time (general knowledge; the rest of these figures are from our snapshot). It sold out in five months for $1.04 million, with the final 1,000 pixels auctioned for $38,100. Then it stopped. That was the design: a finite thing that fills up and becomes a record.

Two properties of that design explain everything that followed. First, the wall was a sell-out: value came from scarcity and the story of filling it, so once full there was no reason to return. Second, the link was the product: buyers paid for a permanent outbound link on a page millions were looking at, and the images were mostly ads. Both properties look different from 2026.

What survived#

The page. milliondollarhomepage.com is still served, as a frozen archive. That alone is unusual for a 2005 web project, and it's why the site is still the mental model for the whole genre — see our glossary entry and Square Town vs the Million Dollar Homepage.

A few old-timers still taking money. PixelAds on whatsmyip.org — which dates from 2001, four years before the famous one — still sells $1 pixels in $100 blocks, "forever", with about 633 blocks sold as of August 2026. MillionDollarPage.biz, a PHP re-implementation from around 2005, is up with about 20,200 pixels sold. Hungary's Pixelháború (2005) is still online with a 10-year lease model. Poland's Milion PiXeli (2006) relaunched in 2026 as a "time capsule" at 1 zł per pixel. Trickles, but real: there has always been a small, steady demand for a permanent cheap spot on a public page.

The idea. "Buy a spot on a shared page, link out" turns out to be durable in a way none of the individual sites were. It has been rebuilt on Ethereum, Bitcoin Lightning, Solana, Telegram, real-world maps, 3D globes, virtual skyscrapers, calendars and browser tabs. The genre never died; the sites did.

What didn't survive#

Tew's own sequel. Pixelotto (2006) sold pixels at $2 and entered clickers into a $1 million lottery, paying out $153,000. It's dead. It was the first attempt to add a "reason to come back" to the grid, and it chose a lottery.

The 2005–07 clones. Our snapshot lists roughly 80 national and currency clones from those years — Million Euro, Million Kronor, Million Rupee, Million Yen, Million Zloty, Million Real, Million Ringgit, Million Shekel and on — and almost every one is parked or gone. Some sold meaningful volume at the time (The Million Kronor Homepage 155,400 pixels; ChinaPixAd 142,600; China's 1baiwan.com ¥414,700 by January 2008); none built anything that outlived the novelty. The full list is in the big list of clones.

Most of the crypto era. The Thousand Ether Homepage (2017) actually sold out and survives NFT-wrapped; PixelMap (2016) sold out and trades on secondary. Nearly everything else on-chain from 2017–22 — Ethereum Pixels, The Million Ether Homepage, Million Token Website, CryptoPixels, BSCPixels, Solpixels, XtotheX, Polypixels, BitPixels, Cell Land — is dead or dormant, with remnants on OpenSea. Wallet-gated buying sold to speculators, not to site owners, and speculators leave.

Most of the recent clones too. The graveyard pattern in our snapshot is blunt: clones that copy the grid but give no reason to return die within about a year. From 2023–26 alone: Sickrate, GravyGrid, 10000resumes, Influencers Wall, Ownyourpixel, Pixwop, The One Dollar Pixels, the Million Dollar Homepage 20th Anniversary clone, milliondollarllm, PixelMBA, buyapixel.co, 9Mpixels, Frontier, The Agent Billboard, 1MDP.me, the Million Dollar Solana Homepage — and dozens of NFT walls. Why is examined in why pixel-wall clones die.

The dead-links problem#

Roughly 40 % of the links on the original are dead as of August 2026. That isn't a failure of the site; it's what happens to any list of URLs over two decades. But it exposes the flaw in "permanent": a permanent ad for a business that no longer exists is a permanent broken link, and a wall of them is a graveyard. Every "forever" clone since has inherited the same problem, and the older survivors tend to show it.

The 2026 walls have mostly ignored this. Square Town's answer is decay: an icon nobody has kissed for 90 days fades to grayscale until someone — anyone, free — kisses it, and because the icon is fetched from the live site rather than uploaded, a dead site tends to show a dead favicon. It doesn't remove dead links, but it makes them visible. More on that in the dead-links problem of pixel ads.

The 2026 wave of $1 walls#

Something changed in 2025–26: the $1 price point came back, without minimum blocks, paid by card. As of August 2026 our snapshot counts a cluster of active $1-a-unit walls launched in the last two years:

• The Forever Wall — $1 = 1 pixel, forever; upload an image.
• Million Squares Project — $1 per square on a 1000×1000 grid via Stripe; 17 of 1,000,000 sold; tied to a memecoin.
• Link for a Dollar (2025) — $1 per square, permanent, category browse; 5 of 1,000,000 claimed.
• Own the Void — $1 per cell on a trillion-cell infinite grid; text plus link.
• Project Pixel — $1 per pixel, no account, live leaderboard; ~310 sold.
• myPixelit — $1 per pixel, real-time canvas; 56 of 1,000,000 sold.
• Word Monument — $1 per letter on a million-cell text wall.
• DollarInternet — $1 per 120-character slot, rotating billboard.

Note the sales figures. The "$1 forever" price point is now crowded, and most of these walls are close to empty. Copying the original's price and permanence isn't enough in 2026 any more than copying its grid was in 2006. What our snapshot's read-across concludes is that the price is table stakes and the game loop is the differentiator.

What Square Town changes#

Square Town (square.pov.town) launched in August 2026 with the same $1 unit and a different set of rules. Where the original sold pixels you had to design an image for, Square Town sells one 1×1 square per website and fetches the favicon from the URL — no upload, no account. Where the original was a sell-out that then froze, Square Town is a game that keeps moving:

• Evictions: anyone can take any square by paying double what its owner paid; the evicted site is announced in the live feed, and the next evictor pays double again.
• The Throne: the 4×4 centre is one gold tile with a crown, intro price $100, doubling every eviction ($100 → $200 → $400 → …). The ring of cells around it can't be built on. This borrows from a lineage the original never had — King of the Ether Throne (2016, +33 % per claim), Milliboard's pay-to-rank, The Pixel Orbit's pay-to-hold-centre.
• Decay: 90 days without a kiss and the icon fades; anyone can kiss any icon free. Nobody else in our snapshot has "anyone can keep anyone's icon alive".
• Ring unlocking: only the central 16×16 is live at launch; each time the live area is 70 % full it grows by 8 cells in every direction, up to 1024×1024 = 1,048,576 squares. The locked area is never shown, so the wall never looks empty — the failure mode of nearly every wall in the list above.
• Live and 3D: every buy, eviction, kiss and unlock is pushed over WebSockets to everyone watching; tilt the wall and each favicon is a tower whose height is its click count.
• "Forever" that can be believed: it runs on Cloudflare's free tier, so there's no hosting bill to lapse — the usual way clones die.

None of that is a claim to the original's traffic or its million dollars. Square Town is young, small, and can't promise visitor numbers; a $1 square is presence among other makers, and it can be taken from you for $2. What it does show, twenty-one years on, is that the interesting part of the Million Dollar Homepage was never the pixels. It was that a million strangers agreed a spot on one shared page was worth having — and a wall that stays worth looking at is the part everyone forgot to build. See why favicons beat pixels and the pricing page for the rules in full.

FAQ#

Is the Million Dollar Homepage still online in 2026?#

Yes, as a frozen archive. It sold out in 2006 and nothing on it has been for sale since. Roughly 40 % of its links were dead as of August 2026.

How much did the Million Dollar Homepage make?#

$1.04 million: 1,000,000 pixels at $1 each in 10×10 blocks, sold out in five months, with the last 1,000 pixels auctioned for $38,100.

What happened to the clones?#

Almost all of the roughly 80 national clones from 2005–07 are parked or dead. The 2017–22 crypto and NFT versions are overwhelmingly dead, with a couple of sold-out exceptions (The Thousand Ether Homepage, PixelMap). Recent clones without a reason to return have tended to die within about a year.

Which old pixel sites are still selling in 2026?#

PixelAds on whatsmyip.org (since 2001, ~633 blocks sold), MillionDollarPage.biz (~20,200 pixels sold), Hungary's Pixelháború and Poland's relaunched Milion PiXeli, all as of August 2026.

What is the "2026 wave" of $1 walls?#

A cluster of walls selling one unit for $1 by card with no minimum block: The Forever Wall, Million Squares Project, Link for a Dollar, Own the Void, Project Pixel, myPixelit, Word Monument, DollarInternet — and Square Town, which adds evictions, a Throne, decay and ring unlocking to the same price.

Why do pixel walls end up full of dead links?#

Because "permanent" ads outlive the businesses that bought them, and nothing removes them. Square Town's decay rule (icons fade after 90 days without a kiss) and live favicon fetching make dead sites visible rather than hiding them.