Square Town is live: 1 square = $1, and the wall is a game
A favicon wall built in a day by an indie dev with too many projects. Here's what it is, why it exists, and how to buy a square.
Square Town (square.pov.town) is live as of August 2026. It's a favicon wall: paste a URL, Square Town fetches your favicon, you click an empty cell and pay $1, one-time, and that 1×1 square is yours — forever*, unless someone pays double to evict you. There are no accounts, no uploads, no sizes and no subscriptions. The wall is 3D, updates live in every open browser, and has rules that make it a game rather than a JPEG: a $100 Throne, evictions at 2×, 90-day kiss decay, a Hall of Clowns, and rings that unlock at 70 % full.
TL;DR — 1 square = $1. Pick your spot. Evict anyone for double what they paid. The Throne in the dead centre is $100 and doubles on every eviction. Icons nobody kisses for 90 days fade to grayscale (still owned). No favicon = 🤡. Only the central 16×16 is live at launch; it grows by 8 in every direction each time it's 70 % full, up to 1024×1024. Everything is pushed to every open browser over WebSockets. Made by one indie developer, runs on Cloudflare's free tier, launched August 2026. Rulebook: how it works.
What it is
A shared grid, 1024×1024 at full size, where each cell shows one website's favicon and links to it. You don't design anything: Square Town asks Google's favicon service for your icon and draws it on the cell you chose. Top-down it looks like the classic 2005 pixel wall, minus the mush — favicons are already drawn to be legible at 16 pixels, so the wall reads as a wall of brands, not TV static.
Ctrl+drag (two-finger drag on touch) tilts it into 3D. Every favicon becomes a tower whose height is its click count, tinted with the icon's dominant colour. Empty cells have trees and lakes. A sun follows your local time of day and casts shadows; birds and the occasional hot-air balloon cross overhead. It is, deliberately, more place than billboard.
Why it exists
Three reasons, in the order they occurred to the person who built it.
An indie dev with too many projects. The author has a pile of side projects and no marketing budget for any of them. What they wanted was somewhere to put all of them, cheaply, side by side, with a number attached — clicks, views — so they'd know which ones strangers actually touch. $1 per domain and no design work is that. See Square Town for developers with many side projects.
Million Dollar Homepage nostalgia. The 2005 original sold a million pixels at $1 each, sold out in five months, and has been frozen ever since — roughly 40 % of its links are dead as of August 2026. It was a great stunt and a bad place: nothing to do after you'd bought, nobody to prune it (see the dead-link problem). Square Town keeps the "$1 and it's yours" joke and fixes the second half. Long version: the Million Dollar Homepage, 21 years later.
The wall should be a game, not a JPEG. Every clone copied the grid and none of them gave you a reason to come back. So Square Town has rules with teeth: your square can be taken, your icon can fade, the centre has a price tag that grows, and the map itself grows when it fills. Reasons to open the tab tomorrow.
The rules, briefly
| Rule | What it means |
|---|---|
| 1 square = $1 | Every square is 1×1, one-time, via Stripe. Click an empty cell, paste a URL, pay. No accounts. |
| The Throne 👑 | The 4×4 dead centre. $100 to start, one owner, gold tile with a crown. Evicting the owner costs double the last price, every time ($100 → $200 → $400 …). The ring around it (its aura) is unbuildable. |
| Evictions 💀 | Take any square by paying double what its owner paid. They're deposed in the live feed. The next evictor pays double your price. |
| Kiss the icon 💋 | Icons not kissed for 90 days fade to grayscale (💔). Anyone can kiss any icon, free, by clicking it and pressing 💋. Kisses are public and counted. |
| Hall of Clowns 🤡 | No favicon = a clown emoji on your square and a spot on the public list, until you add one and hit "I fixed my favicon". |
| Ring unlocking 🔓 | Only the central 16×16 is live at launch. At 70 % full it grows by 8 in every direction (16 → 32 → 48 …), up to 1024×1024 = 1,048,576 squares. Locked area is never shown. |
| Deeds 📜 | A secret deed URL is your only proof of ownership — no login, no reset. The deed shows views, clicks and kisses; $5 one-time unlocks per-day analytics. |
| Live ⚡ | Every buy, eviction, kiss and unlock is pushed to every open browser over WebSockets. |
That's the whole rulebook. It's short because the site is simple and petty. Prices are on the pricing page, which is also short.
What's different from the other 434 walls
We went and looked. As of 18 August 2026, our landscape survey counts 434 pixel walls, logo boards and pay-to-rank lists — 221 active, 160 dead, the rest dormant or sold out. The graveyard is the story: clones that copy the grid but give no reason to return tend to die within a year, and the "$1 forever" price point alone is now crowded with 2026 entrants. Full write-up: pixel wall graveyard: why clones die.
Some of them have shipped a piece of Square Town's loop, and credit where due — the closest, as of August 2026: Milliboard is a pay-to-rank leaderboard with a daily throne, but it's a list, not a map. earth.tattoo has doubling outbids ($1 → $2 → $4 → $8) on a real-Earth globe, in pixel art, crypto only. Tocka has live takeover on a painted canvas, each takeover raising that pixel's price by 1¢. The Forever Wall ($1 = 1 pixel), Link for a Dollar and Million Squares Project ($1 per square) sell permanent spots, no game loop. 9Mpixels (now dead) expired free pixels after 24 hours. Full comparisons live under Square Town vs. the other walls.
Nobody, in that survey, has favicon-from-URL (zero design work) plus decay-unless-kissed plus ring unlocking plus click-height towers plus live WebSockets on one $1 wall. Nobody sells favicon squares at all; nobody gates growth on fill percentage; nobody lets anyone kiss anyone's icon to keep it alive. That combination is the bet.
What's under it
One Cloudflare Worker, a D1 SQLite database, one Durable Object holding the WebSockets, Stripe Checkout and a webhook, three.js vendored in the page. It runs on Cloudflare's free tier, which is the honest answer to "how is $1 forever?" — nothing needs renewing, so there's no hosting bill to lapse. The engineering post is how Square Town runs a live 3D wall on Cloudflare's free tier, and the whole wall is readable as JSON at /api/state.
What's next (honestly: nothing promised)
Square Town was built in a day and tuned since. There is no roadmap to sell you. What happens next is mostly up to the wall: if squares sell, rings unlock and the wall grows; if the centre gets contested, the Throne prices itself; if nobody kisses anything, it all goes grey, which is also a result. Constants like the 90 days, the 70 %, the 8-cell ring step and the $100 Throne are one line each in the source, so they can be tuned — but "we'll change the rules under you" is not a promise either. The only promise is the price: 1 square = $1, one-time, forever*.
The asterisk is evictions. Read it before you buy something you can't bear to lose: what happens when you get evicted.
How to buy a square
- Open square.pov.town. It needs JavaScript and WebGL; the wall is a three.js scene.
- Hover an empty cell — it highlights. Click it. (Not the Throne, unless you have $100 and a personality. Undecided? How to pick a good square.)
- Paste your URL. Square Town previews the favicon it will use.
- Pay $1 via Stripe Checkout. Your cell is reserved for 30 minutes while you do; abandoned checkouts just lapse.
- Save the deed link you land on. It's the only proof you own the square. It's also remembered under "📜 My deeds" in that browser.
- Optional: kiss your own icon (💋) so it doesn't fade; buy $5 analytics on the deed page; tilt into 3D and watch your tower.
If you want to evict someone instead: click their favicon, press evict, pay double what they paid. They'll find out in the feed.
FAQ
What is Square Town?
Square Town (square.pov.town) is a live, 3D favicon wall launched in August 2026. Each 1×1 square costs $1, one-time, shows one website's favicon and links to it. Anyone can evict a square by paying double; icons unkissed for 90 days fade; the wall grows as it fills.
How much does it cost?
$1 per square, one-time, via Stripe. The 4×4 Throne is $100 to start and doubles on every eviction. Evicting any other square costs double what its owner paid. Optional per-day analytics on a deed are $5 one-time.
Is "forever" real?
It's a one-time payment with no expiry and no hosting bill (Cloudflare free tier), so yes — with an asterisk: anyone can evict you by paying double, and an icon nobody kisses for 90 days fades to grayscale (still yours).
Do I need an account?
No. There are no accounts. Ownership is a secret deed URL you get after paying. Lose it and it's gone; there's no password reset.
Does a square help my SEO?
No. Clicks go through a plain 302 redirect (/go/:id) and the wall is a WebGL canvas, so there is no link equity. What you get is visibility on the wall, a showcase, a game, and click/view/kiss counts.
How is Square Town different from the Million Dollar Homepage?
The original sold pixels once and froze; Square Town sells favicons for $1 each and keeps moving: evictions, a Throne, kiss decay, ring unlocks, live updates and a 3D view. Also $1 buys a square here; the original's minimum block was $100.
How big is the wall?
1024×1024 = 1,048,576 squares at full size. Only the central 16×16 is live at launch; each time it's 70 % full it grows by 8 cells in every direction.
Put your favicon on the wall
1 square = $1, one-time, no account. Paste a URL, pick a cell, done. Open the wall →