In this episode, we recap the latest news of Star Atlas from the past week.
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Podcast Transcript
[00:00:00] Hi, this is Matt with Intergalactic Herald. Welcome to my Star Atlas week in review podcasts. This is podcast number 85. Any articles or videos mentioned can be found on my website at Intergalactic Herald, just look for News Recap 134. So just a quick summary of things I’ll be going over the bulk of the content this past week in Star Atlas related to the council nominations and voting for candidates to be on the DAO council.
[00:00:28] Are you sure? Yeah, Dow, Dow Council. So that was pretty much it, but I will go over kind of my kind of thoughts on the state of Star Atlas from the past week and just a little update on my journey related to Star Atlas, but before I get into that, just a couple of quick things about a couple of Star Atlas projects.
[00:00:42] I’m working on one is my merch store at intergalacticgear. com. It’s officially open for business, still only selling mugs. I do have a second project or product that I’m trying to get launched, but Something always seems to happen on the evenings or the weekends when I have my well, non business, non family time.
[00:01:01] So anyways, but if you’re interested in starting out with SMUG, please do check out intergalacticgear. com. Also, I do have a merch survey there, so I’d love to get any feedback on other merch items you’d be interested in checking out. And then I’m also slowly, I guess until enough people say that they’re interested kind of creating a alternative community.
[00:01:20] If you’re not a member of the guild or you don’t want to hang out on the Star Atlas discord, I am trying to create a community for Star Atlas gamers that don’t fit those kind of two things. It’ll be based on a platform that allows for more asynchronous communication. So you can subscribe to Chat, or actually I shouldn’t say chats, but threads.
[00:01:36] You’ll get email alerts. The entire community you’re based upon. Threads, not chats. So it’s easy to come in and out and kind of catch up on the things that may or may not be your interest. If that sounds like something you might be interested in, please check out intergalacticcoalition. com and there is an interest survey there.
[00:01:54] Okay, so go ahead and get into the content. As I kind of mentioned the past week, the only major things or at least the things I remembered to write down was the Atlas Brew, where they did have a debate from the remaining 12 candidates for the Star Atlas DAO council. So again, if you’re listening for the first time DAO, so a Distributed Autonomous Organization.
[00:02:18] This Ultimately will be I guess, much more impactful within the Star Atlas Metaverse, gaming community, whatever, and the idea that they would actually own the IP and intellectual rights, the DAO that is. So, to become a member of the DAO, you have to buy Polis, which is the Star Atlas Governance Token, and then you need to stake it in the locker.
[00:02:38] And that gives you what’s called PVP, Polis Voting Power, and then you can then vote on PIPs, which are, don’t remember, something whatever, Something, something, I don’t know. Anyways, I don’t remember what it stands for, sorry. But anyways, they’re the things you get a vote on that tells the DAO what to do.
[00:02:57] So, so one of the aspects that was recently passed as a PIP Polis Information Policy? No, I don’t know what PIP stands for. Man, we make all these acronyms and we don’t even know. Anyway, it’s stuff that gets written up and then voted on, up or down, yay or nay by the members of the DAO. So, one of the things that was voted in was to create a council for the DAO to help with organizing PIPs, Well, actually, that’s one of my things, and it’ll come up later, but I don’t want to take away my own thunder, but again, I’m not really sure what the Council does, and again, there is a, a, a proposal that was passed that says what the Council does, but that was a while ago, and then recently, a lot of, in the candidates presentations and things like that, I kind of got confused, because I’m Anyways, we’re not like electing representatives or, I mean, I’m in the United States so I can only talk to our form of government with presidents and senators and representatives and judges and things like that.
[00:04:00] So anyway, but I’m getting ahead of myself. So the Atlas Brew though was a debate from the remaining twelve candidates. So the community team asked questions of the And they had a very rigid, but I think in the end fair structure, which is each candidate got a question and then other candidates could rebut that their answer.
[00:04:22] And then they get a chance to rebut the rebuttal. So I have to admit I was kind of before it started, I was like, I just don’t know how this is going to work. Too many people talking and stuff, but I’ll, I’ll give the community team a lot of credit. It was a, it was a very well run. And, good system to let everybody talk.
[00:04:38] So a few people got cut off after a minute, but again, if the limit’s 60 seconds of talking and your mic goes dead, so be it. So they asked answered a lot of questions, or I’m serious, excuse me, they asked a lot of questions and there was a great feedback. The questions that were asked were things like should council members be paid?
[00:04:54] Should council members be doxxed? Which means known. Uh, should. Candidates have large PVP, can they make their own PIPs? What’s the role? What’s the power of the council? What’s the role of council? How to get removed from the council? How should the treasurer be used? And should the council comment on the content of the proposals?
[00:05:13] So I think those were excellent questions. If you want to hear the answers again, I would say go listen to the Atlas Brew. Star Atlas TV was great to record that and post it on their YouTube channel. So I’m not going to try to summarize all that, but Partly because, unbeknownst to me, because, again, I wasn’t paying attention, I was listening on delay my Friday night, and by the time I got done listening to that, it went into the Stardust Discord, the voting was over, and five members were selected.
[00:05:37] So kind of, again, I don’t have time to, you know, publish breaking news. It’s just not the style of content I’m interested in producing. So in some senses, this is all ancient history. But again, if you’re kind of curious, I still think it was great to hear some questions, to hear what different people, and of course now you can go back and be more maybe interested in the, People were talking that were actually voted on to the council.
[00:06:00] So I did not write down who won. But you can find that on the Star Atlas discord and go from there. So that was pretty much it. It was quite on the content creator front to team announcements. I, again, just, I didn’t write down anything, but nothing’s, nothing’s coming to mind there. So I’ll just move on.
[00:06:17] That was the content that I found. So just a couple of thoughts on me, for me on the kind of state of start us, and obviously most of this has been thoughts about the council and the election. And if you listen to me for the last few episodes, I will be the first minute. I haven’t been following closely.
[00:06:33] But kind of maybe go into that in depth why I wasn’t one. Just to me anyways, the Dao accounts are tangential to the game. I mean, again, I want to play a game. So I’m fine with whatever the game developer wants to do. If they want to ultimately give up the IP and let it be owned by the Dao, I mean, that’s their privilege.
[00:06:50] And initial Star Atlas, kind of what it’s about, you know, space exploration, politics, combat, and things like that. So obviously there’s going to be politics involved. And in this case, it’s not just politics. inside the game, like I think, what was it talked about? There’ll be taxing districts or each faction could have its own voting on what they want to do and things like that.
[00:07:12] So there’s nothing wrong with that. The, the DAO is both like perhaps in the game, but Also, outside the game, because again, nothing about this council had anything to do with game development or things like that. So, this has no impact on any of that. But, as I kind of alluded to in the beginning, because I wasn’t following that closely, I wasn’t into the, the following, what is it?
[00:07:34] The governance channel in the, in the StarHouse Discord. I, I’m not really clear what the DAO is doing right now. I mean, other than, I don’t know. The community voted on a few things and passed them, which I think was just setting up so they could write proposals. And one of them was to have a council with some role in something.
[00:07:54] And then it was mentioned in one of the answers about using the Dow Treasury that there was some fund allocated to do something. And And I guess, again, I’ll be the first, I just, I wasn’t following this and, and given that it’s what, two, three, I can’t even count the number of years now been kind of following this Star Atlas thing, it, it, and I don’t mean to sound like this is a downside because we were all warned this is going to take years to develop a game, but everything is going so long and so much patience needed that it’s really hard to stay to engage when nothing happens next week or the next month.
[00:08:36] You know, you, and again, I’ve said this before, you know, break points and things like that are great. We hear a lot of things and then immediately it gets quiet, but a lot of the things that are released are, wow, cool. And then nothing crew cards. Perfect. Recent example. I mean, I guess they’re still being traded on tensor, but That’s it.
[00:08:53] I mean, there’s no, nothing new. They’ve already been introduced into Sage and, but we always could do it. So it didn’t really change anything there. The DAX release back at the beginning of the year, again, other than data analysis. I anyways, so I, what I really guess I’m trying to say is cause I wasn’t following cause I have a bad expectation.
[00:09:15] There’s nothing to follow. So, but we’ll, we’ll see what What really comes of this? Cause I was under the impression that the council was just to help to refine the proposals to make them like more standardized easier to understand. But again, some of the questions like, how do you remove somebody from the council?
[00:09:34] What’s their role? I mean, these are kind of fundamental questions and I get that the original proposal that created the council and set up the election structure. doesn’t speak to these, but then how can a council, I mean, if we’re supposed to be able to vote on things, does the council say, hey, I want to make a rule that says you can be removed for X, Y, and Z, do they have to put a proposal out?
[00:09:59] But then they’re asking, can the council make proposals? And I’m like, you know, again, I don’t know. Again, all I can use is U. S. history and the Constitution that was written by a whole bunch of guys hundreds of years ago had most of this stuff laid out. Now again, there were things that were missing, so that’s what they’re, the Bill of Rights and amendments to the Constitution and all that.
[00:10:24] So again, maybe this is going to follow that where there’ll be another proposal and that’ll clarify the roles of the council. But again, it’s all great, but it has nothing to do with the game. And again, I’m still not sure. What the DAO is doing next. So but having said all of that Well, anyways, I’ll get into the election, and then I’ll wrap it up.
[00:10:42] So related specifically to this council election because it was the first time, obviously it was messy, but that’s not a negative. It just was hard to follow. I admit the voting thing where you could change your votes up until the last second again, there’s nothing wrong with it. I’m just used to You vote once and count it, and that’s it.
[00:11:01] And none of this like ongoing monitoring of who’s winning. But, but again, that’s fine. It’s just a different structure. Nothing wrong there. But definitely the debate though it was good, again, I wasn’t really sure the purpose. Because, again, I don’t really know what the council is going to do.
[00:11:16] And so, so yeah. One thought I had in all of this, and I know a few people said that, Oh, six months terms for council members is too short. I’m like, well, but we don’t even know what they’re doing. So I think that kind of feels good that, that this is sort of a quicker turnover than obviously like four years for us president or six years for a Senator or lifetime for a U S Supreme court justice.
[00:11:38] So six months, cool. Now, again, they can change that down the road. If it turns out you can’t get anything accomplished in six months. I’m totally for that. But yeah, let’s This was the first one. This shouldn’t be elections for life or anything like that. The debate itself, again, I said the, the format and the structure I, I was very pleasantly surprised by because I think it was great.
[00:11:57] It was cool to hear everybody talk and, and people did talk. Cameras were turned off, but that’s fine. Yeah. Yeah, it’s the internet. And, and I, I really thought there were lots of great thoughts. So, I think that was a great forum. Again, I wasn’t following the Discord governance channel where there was lots of things in there.
[00:12:15] But yeah, in live, verbal communication was great. I do wish, but I don’t know how you could have changed this, that, that the one minute format was understandable, but it would have been nice to occasionally hear a little more I think the U. S. presidential debates were like, Two minutes, five minutes.
[00:12:31] I don’t know. Anyways, but if there were 12 people, the time limit alone would be there. So, you know, maybe, but, but again, that’s nothing to do with the council. That was more just a debate format, but again, it was still nice to hear everybody. But in the end, and I’ve mentioned this the last couple of podcasts is the, the voting to me anyways, is just not representative of the many, but a few do the amount of polis voting power.
[00:12:55] So, I know that’s how the structure of the voting was set up, but I don’t know. I just, I still just have a hard time with representation based on basically the amount of polls you’re willing to purchase. And you can get more voting power by purchasing more. So it, I don’t, I’m not a, whatever, political scientist or whatever, but yeah, I guess if you don’t have a lot of polis and you don’t want to lock it And the longer you lock it, the more polis voting power you get.
[00:13:25] Yeah, really, well, I’ll be blunt. It’s, it’s a, it’s a total turnoff. There’s just no, I have no interest in it when I can only get a little, well, I don’t even know if I want to lock my polis. Again, there’s, I think it’s, it’s co mixing the idea of money, commitment to the project, i. e. your time lockup, which again, once you’ve locked it, you’re, you’re stuck.
[00:13:50] And being part of the community and having a voice in it. So I don’t know. I just, it just doesn’t, I don’t know. It just doesn’t fit right with how I think about things. Do I have a better system? No. Because I’m really not governance has never been something I’ve thought of. I mean, kind of born in the United States and one vote one person you know, again, there’s a whole bunch about disenfranchisement and voter ID and all that stuff that again.
[00:14:15] The Founding Fathers, writer Ron, set up one Well, yeah, again, I guess we better not go there because there was a lot in the Constitution about who could vote. And again, I’m a guy, not a woman slaves. Anyways the ideal, let’s put it that way, the, the, the thing we wish now had been crystal clear is one person, citizen of the United States with one vote.
[00:14:37] And that’s definitely not what the current structure of the Star Atlas Dow is. But again, I’m. I’m not a scholar in any of this thing, so I don’t, I don’t really know. I was like, well, what about one wallet? But again, I guess you could one wallet equals one vote, but you can create as many wallets you want because there’s no limitation there.
[00:14:57] And maybe, I don’t know. Again, it’s just not something I thought of. And at the end of the day, if you listen to me for a long time I just want to play a video game. I don’t have a problem with these other aspects of the game. But, again, it’s, it’s it adds such a heavy thing that I just want to play a game.
[00:15:15] So to wrap that up it will be interesting with the next steps of the council. I do totally wish them the best. Groups group decision making by committee is a hard thing. I was in some groups when I was in grad school and it wasn’t my favorite part of the courses. I mean, it’s good to learn and compromise and all that other stuff.
[00:15:35] But sometimes you just want to get things done and take action and and there, but I don’t, I do wish them the best. I think it has a potential once again, going back to what I said, What is the DAO supposed to be doing? What does the council do? But at the end of the day, I just, I still just want a game to play.
[00:15:51] So, moving on, talking about playing games so just to kind of keep my ongoing weekly what I’ve been doing, yeah, I’m still just playing the Faction Fleet and my Claim, Claim Stakes, so so far so good, still enjoying that. But I have actually been thinking, I was trying to remember, I think it was I’m going to go out and say it was Metaverse Explorer was mentioning he was crafting one of the ships inside a sage.
[00:16:11] And I remember they had said something about maybe wanting to add more ships as they’re kind of changing up the economy and the golden tickets and things like that. So, I have to admit that, that kind of shift, I guess it’s not crafting, but it’s redemption. You get a whole bunch of resources. Actually, Seems like a great goal, and I actually was toying with it about a month ago, but I was like, well, we’re not sure if the ships are there.
[00:16:32] I’m not gonna spend all this time to get all these resources and then find out that supply is gone. So, assuming that supply of redeemable ships, or they expand it, which if they expand it kind of makes me think, oh, they’ll be there longer. That might be something. Again, I guess you could still make the calculation how much resources and transaction fees will it take to, to input to do that.
[00:16:56] But again I think the current ship, or I think there’s two ships, one’s a Max Hogg and I forget, I think it’s Mamba. I don’t know, some other one, but I think it’s a medium ship and I’m like, mediums are kind of big. So that is kind of, kind of intriguing. So but in the current time. Don’t have time.
[00:17:14] Like I kind of mentioned the thing, I still haven’t got any more products in my merch store. So you know yeah, anyway, so just, it, I’m just speculating, but it sure seems like now with this talk of changing up the Sage economy, adding the golden tickets back, which had a four or has a four month timeframe acknowledgement the, the RFRs potentially along with the local markets, which could change a lot of things.
[00:17:41] Those seems like a very interesting and exciting developments. If you’re, again, you’re into the browser. Spreadsheet type of game, which again, right. Teach his own, but it is a game and I’ve done a little bit already on it. So it’s not especially, Oh, except if you have the automation tool. So salon is the exists, the sly assistant.
[00:18:02] Actually this is a quick aside. We still week later, haven’t really got anything about any of the. the hackathon winners. Anyway anyways, so the idea of maybe craftsmanship does good do good. Also I was realizing the RFRs even though I didn’t work or wasn’t really interested in them on the first go around, but again, I blame not knowing how to do the automation tool.
[00:18:24] Those actually I realized are starting to become more interesting because they have a fixed return. So unlike the golden tickets where you do all this thing, you get a ticket, you put it in a raffle and then you don’t get anything. I’d rather, well, like I did the last time, I’d rather just buy the golden ticket, put a few into the raffle and not lose.
[00:18:39] I don’t know why that makes me feel better. I guess because I didn’t invest a lot. So I guess I’m starting to become more intrigued where the result of your input, time and resources, is fixed and almost guaranteed in the sense of RFRs should be guaranteed, assuming they’re set up just like the way before, which is the team or the DAO or somebody gives you Atlas for an RFR and that number was static.
[00:19:07] So basically, Cool. And again the ships are going to stick around. Then, I don’t know, those two gameplay loops are way more intriguing to me because they’re not variable, where the LP was variable and, again, like I said, the golden tickets is just pure chance, not even variable. Yeah, anyway, so oh, and I, I realized if I’m not mistaken, if you were mining resources and crafting, crafting is where the LP is earned, so indirectly you’d have another opportunity to get something for your efforts.
[00:19:38] So again, moving off of this single economic outcome was Golden Tickets, then it was RFRs, then it was LP, to again, combine them all, bring them back and combine them all, along with Ship Redemption, which I guess has always been there. Makes it kind of cool. So again, until it hasn’t been released, but I’m liking that kind of thing.
[00:19:59] So anyways that’s pretty much it on mine. Yeah. So, and then just to wrap up again always interested if anybody wants to be a guest I’d love to have anybody on the podcast again, audio only format, so you don’t have to worry about well, you just have to be able to talk, you don’t have to have a video or give me your name, other than for back and forth scheduling time some, some way we can pick a time.
[00:20:18] But anyways, I’d love to chat with anybody in the community. We can do a week in review. If you’re a start list builder, a content creator, love to interview you. You can talk about your project. I mean, just happy to learn more about what’s things are. And then of course, if any team members are listening or, you know, access to any team members, I’d love to do more of the kind of beginners type of information from the start list team.
[00:20:40] You know, we did the great interview with Jose about lore and stuff like that. And that was really insightful. So I kind of would love to do more of those, whether it’s game design or economy or, you know, any aspect, if any team member wanted to come on and chat definitely open that up.
[00:20:53] And then again, if you’re interested in buying any Stardust merch, or just getting Getting on my newsletter for future announcements, please go to intergalacticgear. com do have some mugs also have my merch survey. And again, if you’d be interested in being kind of a founding member of another star, I was kind of community, community but again more about threaded discussions, email alerts for things you don’t have to worry about trying to scroll back to the chat or not member of a guild.
[00:21:17] So you don’t have access to the guild chats. Please go to intergalacticcoalition. com. Do have an interest survey there. I’d love to get a group of kind of well, Gamers, Star Atlas gamers, not members of guilds, don’t want to be a member of guild, and just don’t enjoy Discord. So, and again, Discord as a communication method, not necessarily the Star Atlas Discord in particular.
[00:21:40] But yeah, I just Communication is just fly by and I don’t even know what people are saying. So but this one would hopefully be way, way more organized as you can follow topics that you’re interested in. Please go to intergalacticalition. com and fill out that interest survey. Thanks again for listening to the podcast.
[00:21:54] Uh, we’ll see what the week ahead brings. So have a great week ahead. This is Matt with the Intergalactic Herald.