Overview

We are writing to inform our community of an important update to our Automated Behavior and Enforcement Policy.

After careful review and ongoing community feedback, PHA will be withdrawing its regulation on sniping activities conducted within the Web3 marketplace, effective as of the date of this notice.

Why We Are Making This Change

When the sniping regulation was first introduced, our intent was to protect the fairness of player-to-player trading by preventing automated tools from gaining an unfair advantage in the marketplace.

However, through continued observation and community dialogue, we have come to recognize the following:

• The Web3 marketplace operates under fundamentally different principles than a traditional in-game economy. Transactions on a blockchain-based marketplace are transparent, permissionless, and open by design. Attempting to regulate trading speed or method within this environment runs counter to the decentralized ethos that Web3 is built upon.
• Enforcement has proven inconsistent and difficult to apply fairly. Distinguishing between genuine automation and fast manual interaction in a Web3 context is technically challenging, and we acknowledge that some enforcement actions may not have been applied with full accuracy.
• The regulation has caused unintended harm to legitimate users. In some cases, players engaging in fast but legitimate trading activity were penalized, which is an outcome we never intended and cannot continue to allow.

For these reasons, we believe the right course of action is to fully withdraw this regulation and focus our enforcement efforts where they can be applied more objectively and equitably — specifically within traditional in-game content and gameplay systems.

Key Changes

1. Sniping in the Web3 Marketplace Is No Longer a Violation

PHA's enforcement team will no longer monitor, investigate, or take action against sniping activities occurring within the Web3 marketplace. This applies to all players, regardless of the tools or methods used.

With this change, reporting snipes after the new rules are enforced will no longer have any effect — no burn, no sanction — as the PHA team will not take action on such reports.

2. Restoration of Burned NFTs

All NFTs that were confiscated and burned as a result of enforcement actions taken under the previous sniping regulation will be returned to the original sellers via re-minting.

Please note the following regarding the restoration process:

• Eligibility: Only items that were directly burned by the PHA team as a result of the sniping policy are eligible for restoration. Items involved in separate violations or confiscated under other policies are not included.