# The pixel-wall graveyard: why ~120 Million Dollar Homepage clones died

> About 120 of 434 pixel walls checked in August 2026 are dead. The named casualties, five reasons they die, and the design answers — Square Town could die too.

Source: https://square.pov.town/blog/pixel-wall-graveyard-why-clones-die

Of the 434 pixel walls, logo boards and pay-to-rank lists we checked live in August 2026, 160 are dead and dozens more are dormant — roughly 120 of them Million Dollar Homepage clones that copied the grid and nothing else. They die for five reasons: nothing ever changes so nobody returns, the links rot, the hosting bill outlives the interest, uploading an image is too much friction for a $10 impulse, and nothing on the page is alive. Square Town ([square.pov.town](/)) is designed against each of those. It could still die. Here is what "forever" honestly means.

> **TL;DR** — 2023–26 alone lost Sickrate, GravyGrid, 10000resumes, Influencers Wall, Ownyourpixel, Pixwop, The One Dollar Pixels, MDH2025, the MDH 20th Anniversary clone, milliondollarllm, PixelMBA, buyapixel.co, 9Mpixels, Frontier, The Agent Billboard, 1MDP.me, Million Dollar Solana Page and dozens of NFT walls. Almost every 2005–07 national clone (about 80 listed) is parked. Fix list: give people a reason to come back (a game loop), let stale entries decay, make the page live, and run it on hosting that costs $0 so there's no bill to lapse.

## The casualties, by name

Names and status are as seen on 17–18 August 2026 in our competitor snapshot. "Dead" means the site no longer serves a wall — DNS gone, domain parked, or redirecting somewhere else.

### 2023–2026: the recent dead

| Site | Launched | What it was | Status Aug 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sickrate (2024 MDH) | 2024 | 1,000-cell link grid, promoted on Twitter/IG | Dead (redirects elsewhere) |
| GravyGrid | 2024 | Self-service pixel grid | Pivoted to an invite-only social network |
| 10000resumes | 2025 | Résumé tiles, MDH-meets-LinkedIn (Show HN Apr 2025) | Dead (DNS gone) |
| Influencers Wall | 2025 | Pixel blocks for creators, real-time reservation | Dead (domain expired) |
| Ownyourpixel.fun | 2025 | Buy and resell pixels | Dead (domain expired) |
| Pixwop | 2025 | Per-pixel ad marketplace | Dead |
| The One Dollar Pixels | 2024 | $1/pixel image ads | Dead |
| Million Dollar Homepage 20th Anniversary | 2025 | $1/pixel anniversary clone | Dead within a year |
| milliondollarllm.com | 2025 | $1/pixel board for AI products (Show HN Nov 2025) | Dead |
| PixelMBA | 2023 | Pixel + membership perks (Show HN Dec 2023) | Dead |
| buyapixel.co | 2023 | $1/pixel, 400-pixel board (PH #4 of the day, Oct 2023) | Dead |
| 9Mpixels | 2024 | r/place-style MMO; free pixels expire after 24 h unless paid | Dead |
| Frontier | 2025 | Free canvas that grows at the boundary, live (Show HN 2025) | Dead |
| The Agent Billboard | 2026 | $1/minute billboard for AI agents (Show HN Jun 2026) | Dead |
| 1MDP.me | 2024 | Memecoin-attached MDH clone | Dead (DNS) |
| The King of the Internet | ? | Single throne, dethrone by $1 | Dead (DNS gone Aug 2026) |

Several of these had a launch moment — a Product Hunt top-five, a Show HN — and died anyway. A launch is not a reason to return.

### 2005–2007: the national clones

The first wave copied Alex Tew's page into every currency and language. Almost all of them are parked. A sample from the snapshot: The Million Euro Homepage (2005, parked), Mural de Um Milhão (Brazil, 2005, offline), Million Rupee Homepage (India, 404), Million Pixels – Internet Genesis Project (Germany, 2006, promised a 30-year display guarantee, now Sedo parking), Mer de Pixels (France, sold as "référencement par pixels", server refuses), Ik wil een miljoen! (Netherlands, 90k hits by 2006, parked), La Web del Millón (Spain, called the most successful Spanish clone, dead), Greek Million Euro Home Page (37,200 pixels sold, dead), and Pixelotto — Alex Tew's own 2006 sequel, which paid out a $153k lottery and is also dead.

A few survived by being cheap to run or by leasing rather than selling: MillionDollarPage.biz is still up with 20,200 pixels sold; Pixelháború in Hungary is still active on a 10-year lease model; Milion PiXeli in Poland was relaunched in 2026 as a "time capsule". Survival correlates with the bill, not the ambition.

## The five reasons pixel walls die

### 1. Nothing ever changes, so nobody comes back

The Million Dollar Homepage sold out in five months and has been a frozen archive since 2006. That was the pitch — a finished artefact — and it worked exactly once, because it was first. Every clone inherited the freeze without the novelty. Once your block is placed, there is no reason to open the page again: no feed, no ranking that moves, no neighbour who can take your spot. Traffic goes to zero, buyers stop, the owner stops.

### 2. The links rot

The original is roughly 40 % dead links twenty-one years on. On a permanent wall, every dead link is permanent too. The wall slowly becomes a monument to sites that no longer exist, which makes it less worth visiting, which makes it less worth buying. See [the dead-links problem of pixel ads](/blog/dead-links-problem-of-pixel-ads).

### 3. The hosting bill outlives the interest

Look at the status column: "domain expired", "DNS gone", "Sedo parking", "for sale". A pixel wall on a VPS with a domain renewal is a recurring cost against zero recurring revenue. When the founder gets bored, the next invoice ends the site. Even walls that promised 30-year guarantees are parked, because a promise doesn't pay the bill.

### 4. Upload friction kills the impulse

A $10 pixel block needs a 10×10 image. Making one, sizing it, uploading it, waiting for moderation — for most would-be buyers that's more work than the purchase is worth. Walls that also required accounts or manual bank transfers (Piksele.pl took orders by email) added a second wall of friction. The 2026 wave has mostly kept uploads, which is why so many are sitting at a handful of sales.

### 5. Nothing is alive

A static grid image with an image map behaves like a poster. There's no sense that anyone else is there. Sites that felt alive — r/place, wplace, Tocka's live takeovers — kept people looking, even when they sold nothing. Most clones didn't even try.

## The design answers

Square Town was built as a direct reply to the graveyard. Each of the five has a specific mechanic against it.

| Failure | Square Town's answer |
|---|---|
| Nothing changes | A game loop: any square can be evicted for double its price ($1 → $2 → $4); the Throne at the centre doubles from $100 on every eviction; the live area unlocks a new ring each time it's 70 % full. Something happens because people make it happen. |
| Links rot | Decay: an icon not kissed in 90 days fades to grayscale (💔). Anyone can kiss any icon for free, so a site people still care about stays in colour and an abandoned one visibly fades. Evictions recycle contested spots. Sites without a favicon get a clown, so broken entries are marked, not hidden. |
| Hosting bill | Cloudflare Workers + D1 + one Durable Object, all on the free tier. No VPS, no invoice. See [how to build a pixel wall on Cloudflare's free tier](/blog/build-a-pixel-wall-on-cloudflare-free-tier). |
| Upload friction | No upload. Paste a URL; Square Town fetches the favicon. $1, no account, one click on an empty cell — see [why every square costs $1](/blog/why-one-dollar). |
| Not alive | Every buy, eviction, kiss and unlock is pushed to every open browser over WebSockets. Kisses burst on everyone's screen. The 3D wall grows towers by click count. |

None of these is exotic on its own — 9Mpixels had decay, Frontier had a growing live canvas, Ethereum Pixels had pay-more takeovers in 2017. The point is combining them on a wall cheap enough to survive being ignored for a while.

## Square Town could die too — so what does "forever" mean?

Honesty is part of the design. Here is the actual claim behind "1 square = $1. Forever.*":

- **Forever means no expiry, not immortality.** Your $1 buys the square with no renewal, no subscription and no term. You can still lose it to an eviction (someone pays double), and an unkissed icon fades but stays yours.
- **The site can outlive interest because it costs nothing to run.** Square Town is a Cloudflare Worker, a D1 SQLite database and one Durable Object on the free tier — 100k Worker requests a day and 5M D1 reads a day before anything costs money. There is no server to stop paying for. The single recurring cost is a domain, and the code is a few files that could be redeployed by anyone with a Cloudflare account. That is a much better "forever" than a VPS, but it is not a guarantee.
- **The wall's state is public.** `GET /api/state` returns the whole wall as JSON — grid size, unlocked area, every listing with its coordinates. If Square Town vanished tomorrow, what was on it wouldn't be a secret.
- **The founder could still get bored.** Indie sites do. The difference is that boredom on a free tier doesn't produce a shutdown invoice, and a wall that people keep evicting and kissing keeps happening without the founder's attention.

If you want the fuller argument for building this way, read the [manifesto](/manifesto). If you want the whole list of clones, living and dead, it's at [the Million Dollar Homepage clones list](/blog/million-dollar-homepage-clones-list).

## What would have saved them, in one paragraph

A reason to return, a way for stale entries to fade, a page that moves when someone else acts, a purchase that takes a URL instead of a file, and hosting that costs zero when nobody's looking. Any two of those would have kept most of the 2005 clones from being Sedo parking pages. All five is what Square Town is trying. Ask again in 2027.

## FAQ

### How many Million Dollar Homepage clones are dead?

In our August 2026 snapshot of 434 pixel walls and related sites, 160 were dead and more dormant or sold-out; about 120 are plain MDH-style grid clones that stopped working. Almost all of the roughly 80 national clones from 2005–07 are parked.

### Why do pixel walls die?

Five recurring reasons: nothing on the page ever changes so nobody returns; links rot; the hosting and domain bill outlives the interest; uploading a designed image is too much friction for a small purchase; and nothing feels live.

### Which recent pixel walls have died?

From 2023–26: Sickrate, GravyGrid (pivoted), 10000resumes, Influencers Wall, Ownyourpixel, Pixwop, The One Dollar Pixels, the MDH 20th-anniversary clone, milliondollarllm, PixelMBA, buyapixel.co, 9Mpixels, Frontier, The Agent Billboard, 1MDP.me and the Million Dollar Solana Page, among others.

### Isn't "forever" a promise Square Town can't keep?

Forever on Square Town means a one-time payment with no expiry — you keep the square until someone evicts you. The site runs on Cloudflare's free tier so there is no hosting bill to lapse, which is why the word is credible; it is not a legal guarantee that the wall will exist in 20 years.

### What does Square Town do about dead links?

Icons not kissed for 90 days fade to grayscale, sites without a favicon get a public clown, and contested squares get evicted. Dead entries become visible and recyclable instead of permanent.