Pancen was a town builder and property developer who founded Oak Hills, one of Liberty Minecraft's most commercially active settlements. His work demonstrated how a single determined player could transform neglected land into a thriving community through careful planning, aesthetic standards, and market-driven development. Oak Hills became a case study in the kind of organic urban growth that the server's free-market framework was designed to enable.

Founding Oak Hills

Oak Hills began as an unpromising stretch of land southwest of Spawn. The area had no residents, no name, and no connection to the Netherway -- the server's fast-travel nether highway network. No other player had considered it worth the effort. Pancen saw potential where others saw nothing.

His approach was methodical. He began by dividing the land into claims and subclaims, creating a framework for future development. Then, for weeks, nothing happened. Even Pancen himself appeared to waver in his commitment. But when he returned, the town seemed to materialize all at once, as though some internal resistance had broken and everything flowed into place.

Before the name "Oak Hills" had even appeared in print, Pancen had already sold every property he offered on the market. The buyer was TheMotherBrayne, a newcomer who had accumulated a substantial fortune and decided to purchase them all in a single sweep.

The Origin of Realized Value

What happened next became one of the server's most philosophically significant economic moments. After selling all his properties to TheMotherBrayne, Pancen realized that the claims were worth more to him than he had originally thought. The act of selling them had paradoxically revealed their value to him. In response, he offered to buy them back at a higher price -- effectively paying TheMotherBrayne for the service of helping him understand what his own work was worth.

NullCase seized on this as a profound illustration of how markets function:

Liberty Minecraft's Pancen has independently discovered an origin for realized value. As an ambitious interpretation, it seems like markets are a means of eliminating doubt -- about oneself and the value of their work.

The episode illustrated something that textbooks describe in abstract terms but that Pancen experienced firsthand: the price discovery function of markets is not merely about finding what buyers will pay, but about helping sellers understand what they possess. In a world without subsidies, regulations, or price controls, these realizations could emerge naturally from voluntary exchange.

Heritage Site

Before Oak Hills took its final form, Pancen undertook an earlier project in the same general area. In February 2020, he discovered a ruined town approximately 500 meters southwest of Spawn -- a settlement originally established in 2018 during the New World launch, where players like Rubez and freakdown had once lived. Only freakdown remained as an original landowner.

Pancen declared it a heritage site and began restoring the area as a welcoming point for new players. He offered small, affordable plots at just $5,000 -- roughly half a diamond, an amount most players could earn in their first hour on the server. The project reflected Pancen's instinct for identifying neglected spaces and reimagining their purpose.

Town Hall and Governance

Pancen governed Oak Hills through a system of contractual agreements displayed on lecterns in the town hall. Subclaims were available for just $1 to new players, granting management privileges that remained revocable by Pancen as the claim owner. This arrangement -- using the server's GriefPrevention subclaim mechanics as a form of contract -- was one of the ways players in Liberty Minecraft created enforceable agreements without any centralized legal system.

The terms came with expectations. Active players were encouraged to build in designs that matched the town's aesthetic character. If a player went inactive for a month or built something that clashed with the town's style, Pancen could revoke their management permissions. NullCase acknowledged this was labor-intensive work for Pancen but saw it as a natural expression of property rights:

It sounds like a lot of hard work for Pancen figuring how long someone's been gone, indicating what's suitable or not. Hard work indeed! The goal is to build a town that he's certain is beautiful and prosperous.

This model of private community governance -- where a single landowner sets aesthetic and behavioral standards through voluntary contracts -- was precisely the kind of "subcity" competition that the server's design philosophy encouraged.

A Real Estate Boom

By mid-2020, Oak Hills had become the most commercially dynamic settlement on the server. Pancen secured a direct connection to the Netherway, making it one of the easiest places to visit off the main Strip. Rumors circulated about a south road connecting Oak Hills to New Stockholm, which would have linked one of the fastest-growing towns to one of the wealthiest.

The numbers were striking. By August 2020, at least eight different people owned more than fifty properties in Oak Hills. At least sixteen claims were listed for sale at any given time. Some parcels had been bought, resold, and relisted at higher prices three times in under two months. Players like Tender002 were purchasing multiple claims at once and flipping them at a profit. The settlement had developed a genuine speculative property market.

I don't know what's going on in Oak Hills. Today at least eight different people own more than 50 properties.

Waterfront properties with azure-colored buildings appeared along a boardwalk lit for protection against hostile mobs. Drassenov contributed designs as part of a build challenge that Pancen organized to maintain the town's visual quality. Oak Hills had become a destination -- well-suited for tourists, rich in shops, and architecturally coherent thanks to Pancen's insistence on design standards.

Legacy

Pancen's Oak Hills represented the server's most successful experiment in private urban planning. Where other towns grew organically around a few early settlers, Oak Hills was deliberately designed, marketed, and managed by a single visionary landowner. The economic activity it generated in its final months -- multiple rounds of property speculation, build challenges, heritage preservation -- demonstrated that Liberty Minecraft's free-market framework could produce not just functional communities but genuinely dynamic ones. Pancen proved that in a world with sound money and secure property rights, a determined builder could create real value from overlooked land.

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