Square Town vs pixel walls: favicons on a live 3D grid, or pixels?

The Million Dollar Homepage genre is 21 years old. Square Town keeps the grid and throws away the pixels.

A pixel wall sells you a block of N×N pixels on a shared image, usually $1 a pixel with a minimum block, and you upload a picture and a link. Square Town (square.pov.town) sells one 1×1 square for $1 and fills it with your site's favicon, fetched from your URL. Same genre, different unit: pixels need design work and a big block to be legible; a favicon is legible at 1×1, so the price floor drops to a dollar and the wall can be a game instead of a poster.

TL;DR — Pixel walls: you buy area, upload art, and the wall is finished when it sells out (or abandoned when it doesn't). Square Town: you buy one cell, Square Town fetches your favicon, everyone can evict everyone for double, un-kissed icons fade, the wall grows outward as it fills, and it is live and 3D. Pixel walls are cheaper per pixel and let you draw whatever you want. Square Town is cheaper per site and doesn't ask you to draw.

At a glance#

What pixel walls do well#

They are cheap per pixel and flexible. 3MPixel sells pixels at $0.10 with a $10 minimum block on a 2000×1500 canvas and has a resale marketplace. The Forever Wall is a clean $1-a-pixel-forever wall. Project Pixel is $1 a pixel with drag-select and no account. myPixelit is $1 a pixel (min 5) with a Socket.io live canvas and a timelapse. Own the Void sells $1 cells with 32 characters of text on an effectively infinite grid. The Forever Canvas grows outward forever so it never sells out. All prices as of August 2026.

If you have a logo that needs to be a rectangle, or you want to draw a thing, or you want 100×100 pixels of the centre of a canvas because that is what the Million Dollar Homepage did in 2005, a pixel wall gives you that. Square Town cannot: every square is 1×1 and shows a favicon. There are no sizes.

They also have a clearer "sold out" story. The original Million Dollar Homepage sold its million pixels in five months for $1.04M. It is a finished object — good for the seller, worse for the buyer, because a finished object is a static page and roughly 40 % of its links are dead now.

What Square Town does differently#

The unit is the favicon, not the pixel#

A pixel is a colour. It means nothing on its own, which is why every pixel wall has a minimum block: 100 pixels is about the smallest thing a human can read. Square Town's unit is your favicon — an icon designed to be recognisable at 16 px because it lives in a browser tab all day. So one cell is enough. That is why the price is $1 per site instead of $100 per block, and why the wall stays legible zoomed out: it is a grid of icons, not a mosaic of ads.

It also removes the design step. Paste a URL; Square Town fetches the favicon via Google's favicon service; done. Sites with no favicon get a clown emoji and a place in the Hall of Clowns until they add one. There is a recheck button.

The wall is a game#

Classic pixel walls have exactly one mechanic: buy. Square Town adds four (the full rulebook is at How Square Town works — the complete rulebook):

• Evictions. Any square can be taken by paying double what its owner paid. The evicted site is announced in the live feed. The next evictor pays double your price, so a fought-over cell prices itself.
• The Throne. The 4×4 dead centre, one owner, $100 intro price, doubling with each eviction. A ring of cells around it can't be built on.
• Kiss the icon. Icons nobody has kissed for 90 days fade to grayscale. Anyone can kiss any icon, free, and it is public and counted.
• 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. Locked cells are never drawn, so the wall never looks like a mostly-empty million-pixel canvas — which is what most 2026 pixel walls look like at 17, 56 or 310 pixels sold.

Some walls have borrowed pieces of this. Tocka lets you take over any painted pixel by paying 1¢ more, live. The Pixel Orbit gives the exact centre to the highest cumulative payer and re-sorts everyone around them (5×5 from $2.50). earth.tattoo uses a $1/$2/$4/$8 doubling outbid on tiles of a 3D globe, crypto only. Nobody has combined eviction, decay, unlocking and favicons on one wall, which is the honest reason Square Town exists rather than being clone number 435.

Live and 3D#

Every buy, eviction, kiss and unlock is pushed to all open browsers over WebSockets. Top-down, Square Town is a normal 2D wall. Ctrl+drag (two-finger drag on touch) tilts it into a three.js scene where every favicon is a tower whose height is its click count. Decoration, but decoration with data in it: the tallest towers are the most-clicked sites.

What you give up#

No image upload, no sizes, no drawing, no choosing colours. If your favicon is bad, your square is bad — see Favicon design tips: an icon that reads at 16 pixels. And "forever*" has an asterisk: someone can pay $2 and take your spot. On a classic pixel wall the only thing that can take your spot is the wall going offline.

Who should pick which#

• You want a rectangle with your artwork on it, permanently, and don't mind spending $10–$100: a pixel wall. Pick one that is actively maintained and has sold something; The Forever Wall, 3MPixel and Project Pixel are live as of August 2026.
• You want to draw and fight over pixels, not advertise: Tocka.
• You want your site to exist on a wall for $1 with zero design work, and you enjoy the idea that someone might evict you: Square Town.
• You have many sites: Square Town, one square each, in a row. Ten sites for $10 is not a price any pixel wall matches without going down to unreadable blocks. See Square Town for developers with many side projects: $1 per favicon.

Use both?#

You can; both are one-time. But if you're choosing where the second dollar goes, look at what each wall will look like in a year. Pixel walls that don't sell out stay mostly white; the ones that do sell out freeze. Square Town is built to look full at every stage and to keep changing after the sale. The graveyard of clones (The pixel-wall graveyard: why ~120 Million Dollar Homepage clones died) is mostly walls with nothing to come back for.

FAQ#

What is the difference between a pixel wall and a favicon wall?#

A pixel wall sells area (blocks of pixels) that you fill with an uploaded image; a favicon wall sells one cell per site and fills it with the site's favicon fetched from its URL. Square Town is a favicon wall: $1 per 1×1 square, no upload, no sizes.

Why is Square Town $1 per site when pixel walls need a $10–$100 minimum?#

Because a favicon is legible at 1×1 and a pixel isn't. Pixel walls need a 5×5 or 10×10 block for anything to be recognisable; Square Town needs one cell.

Can I upload my own image to Square Town?#

No. Square Town only shows favicons fetched from your URL. If your site has no favicon it gets a clown emoji until you add one.

Are pixel walls permanent?#

Usually yes in policy — first-come, no expiry — but only as long as the site stays online, and many don't. Square Town is also one-time and non-expiring, but any square can be evicted by paying double what its owner paid, and un-kissed icons fade after 90 days.

Which pixel walls are actually active in August 2026?#

From our survey: The Forever Wall ($1/pixel), 3MPixel ($0.10/pixel, $10 min), Project Pixel ($1/pixel), myPixelit ($1/pixel, min 5), Million Squares Project ($1/square), Own the Void ($1/cell, text), Tocka (credits, +1¢ per takeover), The Pixel Orbit (5×5 from $2.50), and the Million Dollar Homepage 3D (€1/pixel, €25 min). See Every pixel wall you can still buy a spot on, ranked (August 2026).

Is Square Town just a Million Dollar Homepage clone?#

It keeps the grid and the "own a spot" idea and drops pixels, image uploads, sizes and the sell-out ending, replacing them with favicons, evictions, decay, ring unlocking, a live feed and a 3D view. Full comparison at Square Town vs The Million Dollar Homepage: $1 square vs $100 block.