Hire a fisher
Every fisher brings Crew Effort, fills one Coast Space and needs bait.
Start with a tired old jetty, hire a small crew and turn the shoreline into a harbor people want to call home.
Fishfolk is still in development. This page separates the public project today from the rules intended for the playable launch.
The Fishfolk website and these docs are public. The playable economy, the $CATCH token, fisher NFT minting and official trading are not open. Any token or NFT claiming to be official before addresses appear here should be treated as unrelated.
The tables describe the intended game. These launch decisions are still open and will be updated here before contracts go live:
The loop is simple to learn. The interesting part is building a crew that fits the coast you have.
Every fisher brings Crew Effort, fills one Coast Space and needs bait.
Each new hire must fit within the total Bait Supply of your current Coast Stage.
Working fishers make catch attempts. Experienced fishers try sooner and have better rarity odds.
Use $CATCH to hire experienced fishers, decorate the shore and open the next Coast Stage.
Each fisher or decoration fills one open space on your current coast.
The Old Jetty starts with 28. The Deep Sea Platform can supply 65,000.
| Rank | Fisher | Hire cost | Crew Effort | Bait needed | Catch Pace |
|---|
Crew Effort decides your Crew Share of each Tide Pool. Catch Pace is the average time between catch attempts. It does not guarantee a new discovery.
Every player develops their own version of the same coast layout. Fisher rank changes Crew Effort, bait needs, Catch Pace and rarity odds, not the map itself.
You need an open Coast Space and enough spare bait. A hire that would exceed either limit is blocked, while the crew already at work keeps fishing.
You may hire more than one fisher of the same rank. The only exception is the free Kid with a Stick, which can be claimed once.
Every fisher fills one Coast Space, no matter the rank. A stronger fisher uses more bait but does not use extra space.
Hiring is the in-game name for minting. Each fisher is a player-owned ERC-721 asset that can work on the coast or move through the player's wallet.
Spending $CATCH on a hire mints a fisher NFT, automatically stakes it on your coast and starts its work immediately. The fisher's rank sets its Crew Effort, bait use, Catch Pace and rarity odds.
You need an open Coast Space and enough Bait Supply. The hire cost follows the standard split: 75% is burned and 25% enters the Coast Treasury.
A newly minted fisher is auto-staked and begins contributing Crew Effort. While actively working, the NFT is locked and cannot be transferred or traded.
At launch, the minimum crew stay starts when the mint or staking transaction confirms. After 24 hours, the fisher can leave the active coast and be withdrawn to the connected wallet.
An unstaked fisher can be transferred or sold. Secondary sales carry a 5% royalty to the Coast Treasury. A new owner must stake the fisher into an open Coast Space with enough Bait Supply before it can earn.
An eligible fisher can be released in-game for 50% of its original hire cost. The NFT is permanently burned and cannot return to circulation.
Releasing a fisher does not remove $CATCH already earned or discoveries already recorded in the Catch Log.
Every new stage keeps the shoreline you already built and adds another place, service or stretch of open water.
After a Coast Stage opens, the next stage cannot open for 24 hours. The timer begins when the opening transaction confirms.
The cooldown blocks only the next stage opening. Fishers already deployed keep contributing Crew Effort and making catch attempts.
A Coast Stage is account progression, not an NFT. Coast Spaces and Bait Supply cannot be transferred separately.
| Stage | Coast | Cost to open | Total Coast Spaces | Total Bait Supply | Main gain |
|---|
| Decoration | Cost | Owned limit | Space used |
|---|
In the present balance model, each decoration and each fisher uses one of the same Coast Spaces. Decorations use no bait, add no Crew Effort and have no transfer or sellback rule. The owned limit is per player, and each purchase follows the 75% burn and 25% Coast Treasury split.
Fish, shellfish and strange little water creatures are recorded once discovered. Every pull comes from the same coast, while fisher rank changes the rarity odds.
The fisher first rolls a rarity using that rank's odds, then selects one species at random from that rarity group. Coast Stage and time of day do not change the eligible species.
A repeated species increases its specimen count in the Catch Log. It is not a new discovery and does not award separate $CATCH.
| Fisher ranks | Common | Rare | Epic | Legendary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 to 4 | 75% | 20% | 4.5% | 0.5% |
| 5 to 9 | 66% | 25% | 7.5% | 1.5% |
| 10 to 11 | 58% | 28% | 11% | 3% |
| 12 to 13 | 52% | 30% | 13% | 5% |
At launch, $CATCH is the fungible onchain game token. Its maximum gross release is 420 million. Shared Tide Pools release it, while eligible coast spending permanently removes part of it.
The full 420 million cap belongs to Tide Pool emissions. Liquidity must use $CATCH that has already been earned from those emissions; it never adds a second allocation or raises the cap.
The first official pool uses $CATCH earned by its liquidity provider during an opening bootstrap period. The working reference is about 20% of that provider's early earned balance, not 20% of the 420 million cap. It is not an extra mint, and no $CATCH is taken from ordinary player balances.
Half of all possible $CATCH appears during the first 4.2 million live tides. Every 4.2 million tides after that, the pool becomes half as large.
The final segment belongs to every later era combined. Outstanding supply remains below cumulative gross emissions by the amount permanently burned through eligible spending.
| Tide era | Live tides | Pool each tide | Released in era | Gross cap reached |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | 0 to 4.2M | 50 | 210,000,000 | 50% |
| 02 | 4.2M to 8.4M | 25 | 105,000,000 | 75% |
| 03 | 8.4M to 12.6M | 12.5 | 52,500,000 | 87.5% |
| 04 | 12.6M to 16.8M | 6.25 | 26,250,000 | 93.75% |
| Later | After 16.8M | 3.125, then half again | 26,250,000 remains | 420,000,000 limit |
Crew Effort never changes which fish you find. It measures your crew's contribution to the combined Fleet Effort included in that tide.
Crew Share = your Crew Effort ÷ Fleet Effortyour $CATCH = Tide Pool × Crew ShareThe denominator is the Crew Effort of every eligible staked fisher across all participating player crews in that tide.
Only eligible staked fishers contribute. Unstaked NFTs, decorations and Catch Log entries add no Fleet Effort.
The School is the planned direct-referral system.
A direct referrer is planned to receive a reward equal to 2.5% of the referred player's Tide Pool earnings. The funding source is not fixed, so this guide does not treat it as a 2.5% tax on the invited player or as extra emission.
2.5% PLANNED REFERRAL REWARDFunding model still open
This accelerated model lets the team test progression without waiting through launch-length timers. Its values are development controls, not token or contract promises.
The coast follows a 200-second visual scene cycle. Everyone in an active session shares the same clock, and refreshing the page does not move it.




Fishers cast, vendors work and bobbers stay active.
Crew members and vendors finish work and head home.
The visible shift pauses and the coast lights take over. Economy ticks and catch attempts continue.
Crew members and vendors return to their usual places.