Obsidian

In Minecraft, Obsidian, also known as obby, is a near-indestructible block formed when flowing water meets a lava source block. In Purity Vanilla, it is most known as being the common currency used for trades and the main building block for gold farms. Obsidian gained its status as the unit of exchange after being used by StarBaron in nether highway construction, and thus being used in much of his trades. With its universal acceptance as a currency, Obsidian allowed new and old players alike to reliably trade and forge a stable player economy.

History
Many players on the server assume that Obsidian became the common currency because it is the primary material needed to make overworld gold farms. While this is true, the original use for obsidian was in Dumpster Dogs' highway construction efforts. Before PaCo was founded, StarBaron was the primary builder of the highways, and he preferred to pave the highway roads with obsidian. He obtained the obsidian buy exchanging goods like elytras and godsets for obsidian. This was how obsidian originally became to be traded on a mass scale, and through this system, many new players got the resources they needed to forge their own story on Purity.

For a time, the highways on Purity were paved black with clean obsidian — a non-trapped nether spawn, and low amounts of bed-bombers; however, Baron's system of trading Obsidian had stuck, and ironically, players started to mine the highway's obsidian roads to sell back to him. Other players started to deal in obsidian, and many wealthy players began to mine obsidian in mass quantities. While Baron's system of trading Obsidian was what kick-started the Obsidian trade, around the same time many powerful bases had begun a "gold-farm race" to create an ilmango gold farm as fast as possible. The Obsidian that went into the highways now went into the gold factories, and Obsidian highways would not be seen until early August at the founding of Pathfinder Coalition.

But the Trading Discord was the most responsible for the rise of the Obsidian economy. Players could directly contact other players for what they wanted to trade, and the addition of "Known Scammer" and "Trusted Trader" roles allowed players to reliably deal with other players. Thus, Obsidian was traded on a mass scale because it allowed players a reliable unit of currency that could be traded for almost anything they wanted. In a way, the more Obsidian was used in trades, the more valuable and used it became.

Due to the rising utilisation of end farms in 2019, Obsidian could be obtained easily and en masse via mining machines producing rates of up to 12 shulkers an hour. As a result, Rhonor acting on behalf of the Trading Hub pushed a movement to shift Purity's main currency to something else so that the Obsidian farms wouldn't have total control over the market. His efforts successful after many polls and community discussions, obsidian was deemed as a lesser currency and dropped by most shops and traders.

Currently due to obsidian's loss of value completely it is only used for large structures at spawn and gold farms, ending the age of the de-facto currency.