This is part of a miniseries of posts about my time running a minecraft SMP. It is recommended that you read part 1 and part 2 first

The Merger Nobody Wanted (Except Me)

After implementing the governance systems, the server stabilized. We had 15-20 active players. Things were running smoothly.

But I knew something nobody else did: I was planning my exit.

I didn’t want to run this server forever. And I didn’t trust my co-owner z1nc to handle it alone—he was great at PvP, great at PR, terrible at actually managing anything. He was in the co-owner role purely for optics.

So I needed a succession plan. Which meant I needed more leadership candidates. Which meant I needed more players.

So I looked at our rival: Inferno SMP.

We’d tried merging with them before, back when a kid named SirApple ran it. That attempt had been a disaster. Apple was your textbook egotistical 14-year-old—arrogant, toxic, refused to follow basic application processes. We rejected him after he descended into slurs within 5 minutes of conversation.

But now Apple had stepped down, and his friend ThatOnePhrase was running things.

Phrase was immature. I knew this. Everyone knew this. It was an open secret that every owner in Inferno SMP was a cheater and power-hungry. But I decided to give him a shot anyway.

My thinking: if Phrase turned out decent, I could train him up as my replacement. If he didn’t, I’d catch him and remove him. Either way, we’d get the population boost.

Very cynical, but also pragmatic.

The Deal: A Masterclass in Leverage

Before the merger, Phrase and I had to negotiate terms.

He wanted to use my Minecraft host (because his was trash) but use HIS Discord server (because he wanted to retain community control).

I declined immediately.

On Discord, the server owner can remove anyone—even other admins and operators. If Phrase owned the Discord, he could dodge accountability by just kicking me out whenever I tried to enforce rules.

So I proposed a third option: we create an entirely new Discord server. Fresh start for everyone.

He agreed.

What Phrase didn’t realize was that I’d just taken everything. I now controlled:

  • The Minecraft server (hosting, backend, plugins)
  • The Discord server (community, announcements, enforcement)

He got: a co-owner title and… nothing else.

Obviously, I’d planned to hand things over to him eventually if he proved trustworthy. But I wanted the leverage first.

This turned out to be the most crucial decision I made. If I hadn’t retained full control, the server would have derailed completely.

The Surge

The merger was an immediate success.

Population exploded. We went from 15-20 active players to 53 players in 3 days. The server was alive in ways it had never been before.

Most of the surge came from Inferno migrants—Phrase’s old community moving over. But we also had a steady trickle of new members: 3-5 per week, occasionally a 10-person friend group joining all at once.

For the first time, the server felt like a real community, not just a friend group with plugins.

But I’d intentionally designed this first season as a pruning stage. I stayed out of gameplay entirely—no grinding, no PvP, no factions. Just pure moderation and oversight.

Why? Because I needed to be a neutral authority. I needed to see who would cheat, who would play favorites, who would abuse power when they thought I wasn’t watching.

And within 2 days, I got my answer.

The X-Ray Trail

Phrase got the achievement for full Netherite armor on day 2.

That’s fast. Suspiciously fast.

I logged into my owner account (LeOwner—every owner had two accounts: one for playing, one for moderating) and spectated in the Nether. The world border was only 1250x1250, so finding evidence wouldn’t be hard.

Sure enough: X-ray tunnels. Obvious, blatant, impossible to miss.

I didn’t confront him immediately. Instead, I made a copy of the server’s stats.json files—player statistics tracking everything from blocks mined to items crafted.

My plan: compare his ancient debris mined vs. netherrack mined ratio to a legitimate player’s ratio. Cross-reference with his gear progression. Add in screenshots of the X-ray tunnels.

Individually, each piece of evidence was circumstantial. Together, it was damning.

But I held onto it. I wanted to see what else would happen.

The Ban That Started Everything

Two weeks after the merger, I banned SirApple.

He’d been extremely toxic to another member things I will not repeat here. We held a trial. There was massive controversy because Apple was well-liked and had a loyal following.

His supporters didn’t believe he did anything wrong.

I banned him anyway. Constitutional violation. Player Conduct rules. 21-day ban plus demotion to trial member.

Apple was furious. And desperate. Because he’d been planning something (more on that below).

The Framing Attempt

The day after Apple’s ban, something strange appeared in my SpyCord logs:

[2025-11-09 09:56:55] [OP] LeOwner: /op AcentraBedwars
[2025-11-09 09:56:59] [OP] LeOwner: /ban AcentraBedwars
[2025-11-09 09:57:17] [OP] LeOwner: /gamemode spectator
[2025-11-09 09:57:43] [OP] LeOwner: /ban-ip LeOwner Reason... e
[2025-11-09 09:58:01] [OP] LeOwner: /give AcentraBedwars minecraft:bedrock 640
[2025-11-09 09:58:09] [OP] LeOwner: /give AcentraBedwars minecraft:netherite_block 128
[2025-11-09 09:58:44] [OP] LeOwner: /pardon SirAppleshake
[2025-11-09 09:58:57] [OP] LeOwner: /ban LeOwner

Someone had used my owner account to:

  • OP a friend of mine
  • Give them massive amounts of items
  • Try to ban my own account
  • Pardon Apple

My immediate thought: Phrase.

He had my LeOwner password from the very beginning of the SMP (I’d given it to him when I wasn’t home and needed him to handle initial server setup). The timing was suspicious—right after I’d banned his best friend Apple.

Shortly after this Phrase was banned. When he appealed he was asked to coomply with a formal investigation. His computer was checked, and to my surprise his logs didn’t reveal any instance of him using the name “LeOwner”. Now obviously, he could’ve just deleted the logs, however, there was no evidence for this, and this was clearly his first time even dealing with minecraft logs.

But still, it had to be Phrase. Nobody else had my account. He was literally the only probable candidate.

Right?

The Plot Twist

After scanning through logs, timestamps, and connection data, I realized something crucial:

Phrase hadn’t logged into my account.

See, we had been running the server in offline mode with login plugins. We did this because buying a second owner account for OP permissions was not really feasible, so running in offline mode allowed us to create as many alts as we needed. Whitelist was enforced to prevent uncontainable alting.

So, anyways, this meant that someone had spoofed my IGN, got stuck at the login screen, and ran OP commands while sitting there.

Those commands never executed. But they did get logged. Which makes sense because AccentraBedwars never got OP perms, or the items that he was /given.

I cleared Phrase—mostly. He was stripped of all power, lost voting rights, and was heavily moderated. Because he DID cheat, but he wasn’t responsible for the framing.

So who was?

The Suspect: SirApple

The nature of the commands gave it away:

  • /pardon SirAppleshake (unbanning himself)
  • The timing (immediately after his ban)
  • His complete refusal to cooperate with the investigation
  • The attempt at SPECIFICALLY running the op command on one of my trusted friends

Apple had motive, means, and opportunity. And when I reached out for his cooperation, he stonewalled completely.

He was the most logical culprit.

But here’s the thing: I couldn’t prove it beyond reasonable doubt. The offline mode + IGN spoofing + VPN meant there was no IP trail. No definitive smoking gun. And Apple refused to comply with the investigation, and had also attempted to dox another member of the server. So he was banned for sure regardless.

So I made a judgment call: Apple stayed banned. Phrase stayed stripped of power. The investigation closed.

The YouTube Video

During my time talking to Apple he revealed he had been doing all this to “revive” his dead youtube channel. He had planned to make a video cheating on the “most secure minecraft smp”.

I found this oddly flattering. My systems worked so well that someone trying to exploit them became YouTube content.

I sarcastically told him to suck it up, and make a video about how he didn’t even have the skill to cheat at a block game. He didn’t like this idea very much, but I had already closed his case and didn’t care about further investigation or communication with him.

Months later, Apple posted a video titled: “We got caught cheating on the most Secure SMP”

In the video, he explained how he’d cheated. He framed it as a challenge to see if he could bypass my security systems.

Honestly, it wasn’t even a horrible idea. It was his behavior after the fact, and towards other members, and the explicit lying for weeks that really solidified his ban.

He left out a lot of information—like the framing attempt, the toxicity ban, the fact that he’d failed spectacularly. But he did admit one thing:

He got caught.

Which means he took my advice. Ngl I was a little proud of bro for owning up.

The Aftermath: Growth Through Chaos

Despite the drama—or maybe because of it—the server continued to grow.

We lost some funding after the scandal (some of Apple and Phrase’s friends pulled out). But I just increased my contribution. The systems I’d built were too valuable to let collapse over money.

The population stabilized around 30-40 active players. We had a healthy mix of pre-merger veterans and post-merger newcomers. The community was thriving.

More importantly: trust was higher than ever.

Why? Because everyone had watched me conduct a transparent investigation. They’d seen me clear Phrase when the evidence didn’t support guilt. They’d seen me enforce rules even when it cost me popular support. I reflected on how just a month ago OP accuse accusations were pretty much the daily conspiracy. Now? People found it implausible.

A Few Takeaways

This entire saga taught me:

1. Always Retain Leverage

That deal negotiation—keeping control of both the Minecraft server AND the Discord—saved everything. If Phrase had owned the Discord, he could have fractured the community the moment things got difficult.

You don’t have to be controlling or force scummy deals, but be wary of power entrenchment.

2. Transparency Doesn’t Mean Weakness

Conducting the investigation publicly, showing my work, admitting when I couldn’t prove something—all of that built more trust than any amount of authoritarian “I’m right because I said so” ever could.

I think it probably amplified trust more than anything else. Phrase got unbanned in light of new evidence. So, don’t be afraid of being wrong. Own up. It isn’t always pretty but it’s worth it.

3. Systems Survive People

Phrase turned out to be a cheater. Apple turned out to be toxic and manipulative. But the server survived both of them because it didn’t depend on any individual’s integrity—it depended on transparent, auditable systems.

I didn’t catch them because I’m some sort of mastermind genius, but because I designed things in such a way that you simply couldn’t get away with cheating for long.

The weighted democracy kept running. The SpyCord logs kept logging. The layered rule system kept disputes from becoming existential crises.

The server didn’t need perfect people. It needed resilient systems.

The Succession That Never Happened

Remember how I said I wanted to train Phrase as my replacement?

Yeah, that didn’t work out. Obviously.

But here’s the thing: the server didn’t need me anymore. The systems I’d built could run without me. The community had internalized the norms. New moderators had stepped up.

I stuck around longer than I’d planned—not because the server would collapse without me, but because it was actually fun again.

Turns out, when you build systems that don’t require you to be the smartest person in the room all the time, leadership becomes a lot less exhausting.

The Snowball I Couldn’t Stop

When Apple left, a lot of people left with him.

His loyalists. His friends. The Inferno migrants who’d only joined because of him.

When there was nobody to play with, others left too. The exact cascade failure I’d feared when I banned him—the one I’d tried to prevent by timing everything carefully, by being fair, by following procedure—it happened anyway.

Within weeks, the server was dying.

Player counts dropped from 30-40 to 15, then to 10, then to sporadic logins. The Discord went quiet. The weighted democracy polls stopped because there weren’t enough people to vote.

My fear had materialized. And I couldn’t stop it.

The Part Where I Let Go

By that point, I was essentially done anyway.

My personal friend group—the original crew from the Aternos days—had already moved on. They’d gotten bored of Minecraft, picked up other games, started focusing on school.

I looked back at the 5-month journey and realized something: my reasons for staying had changed.

This wasn’t the small friend group server anymore. We’d expanded, sure. But we’d lost something too—that intimate charm of knowing everyone, of inside jokes, of shared history.

And maybe that was okay.

I realized I was only working on the server now because leaving felt like abandoning a huge project. Like admitting defeat. Like wasting all that effort on systems and governance and plugins.

But projects die all the time.

I was clinging to something that was already over, trying to resurrect a community that had naturally run its course.

So I let go.

The Resignation

I formally resigned and handed the server to z1nc.

I wrote a resignation post. Thanked everyone. Explained that I’d learned what I needed to learn, built what I needed to build, and it was time to move on.

Promptly after my resignation, player count hit zero and stayed there.

The server shut down. The Discord scattered. People moved on to other games, other communities, other phases of their lives.

There was no dramatic finale. No big goodbye event. Just… an anticlimactic bleed out.

What I Didn’t Accomplish

I didn’t succeed in building the community I’d initially set out to build.

I didn’t create a self-sustaining ecosystem that could outlive my involvement. I didn’t train a successor who could carry the torch. I didn’t solve all the problems I’d wanted to solve.

The weighted democracy was elegant, but it couldn’t prevent a mass exodus.

The transparency systems built trust, but they couldn’t manufacture fun or community when the fun and community was gone.

The layered rule system created structure, but structure doesn’t matter when there’s nobody left to structure.

I’d built a constitutional democracy for a block game, and it died anyway.

What I Actually Learned

But here’s the thing: the lessons are bigger than the server.

Those unsolved problems—how do you build communities that survive founder departure? How do you balance growth with intimacy? How do you make systems that feel human instead of bureaucratic? Those are all problems, I still think about, and will continue to think about, and work on, until I find some sort of solution that scratches the itch.

Those problems manifest in other forms now. When I think about product design. When I think about team dynamics. When I think about any system where humans have to coordinate and trust each other.

The problems are universal. The lessons transfer.

I learned that:

  • Power without legitimacy is tyranny waiting to collapse
  • Transparency (to an extent) is the cornerstone of trust
  • Systems can’t save a community that’s naturally reached its end
  • Sometimes the mature decision is to let things die

That last one’s the hardest. But it’s also the most important.

The Epilogue That Matters

Looking back, I don’t regret any of it.

Not the Crystal War. Not the governance experiments. Not the merger that eventually killed the server. Not even clinging for those last few weeks when I should have let go sooner.

Because for 5 months, I ran a Minecraft server that:

  • Grew to 6x its original size
  • Survived multiple civil wars
  • Implemented weighted democracy and constitutional governance
  • Made a cheater so mad he made a YouTube video about failing to beat my security

And more importantly: I learned more about leadership, trust, and systems design from this block game than I ever learned in a classroom.

The server’s dead. But the skills aren’t.

The community scattered. But the principles survived.

Projects end. That’s okay. What matters is what you take with you when they do.

This is Part 3 of a 3-part series. If you made it this far, you’ve witnessed the full arc: from skill-based civil war, to constitutional engineering, to forensic investigation, to the mature realization that not everything needs a happy ending.

The server died. I moved on. Life continued.

This post, was not written by AI :)