In this episode, hear an AI summary of the latest Star Atlas community event. Full video recordings can be found on the YouTube channel of Star Atlas TV at https://www.youtube.com/@staratlastv.
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Podcast Transcript
Welcome to the “Star Atlas Town Hall Pt. 2,” which follows the first town hall that featured the UFI release. Many are enjoying the UFI release, with its progression mechanics and earning opportunities. Players like Swag and Nevo have been actively engaging, with Swag reaching level 19 on his Marie, and Nevo being the first to obtain the silver crew pack by maxing out four species. The team is commended for a great release.
The town hall announced that Iris Quest, a community-driven UFI tournament, is scheduled for August 24th, with the Star Atlas team competing to achieve first place after a second-place finish last time. Registration links for teams are available for those interested in participating. Another significant community discussion revolves around the 600k mega PIP (Proposal Improvement Proposal) for Star Atlas IP expansion, which has generated thousands of comments and is quite controversial. While this particular PIP is currently non-actionable due to the DAO’s framework limitations, the ongoing debate offers insights into community expectations for future initiatives. The Star Atlas DAO has actively funded two meetups already in Italy and Valencia, with two more planned for Utrecht and Cologne during Gamescom, highlighting the community’s real-life engagement.
A major focus of the town hall was Hollow Sim, which is launching its new season on August 20th. Hollow Sim initially served as an onboarding mechanism for Star Atlas Sage but has grown into a product with immense potential for innovation, unconstrained by the economic complexities of other game loops. The previous season established crucial frameworks like quest systems, automation, in-game AI, chat, and crafting. The new season will introduce new mechanics and polish existing ones, following a roadmap divided into “chapters” (big patches with new core mechanics) and “seasons” (huge updates with new content).
In terms of monetization and partnerships, Hollow Sim is expanding its reach beyond Solana and Web3 users to a wider Web2 audience. Soulflare Wallet is sponsoring the first season, providing 50 SOL and an additional $5,000 in stablecoins, supplemented by $9,000 worth of game assets from Star Atlas. This partnership aims to attract Solana-native users through a banner in the Soulflare wallet extension, with the expectation that Hollow Sim players will then engage with other Star Atlas products like Sage or the Unreal Engine arena shooter modes. Soulflare will also be the recommended wallet for claiming end-of-season rewards, facilitating the onboarding of new users to Solana.
Star Atlas is experimenting with traditional payment methods for Hollow Sim, including a Stripe integration for a battle pass. This battle pass offers cosmetic rewards, a daily login bonus, and ensures a login streak doesn’t expire. While it provides a boost for casual players, passionate players can still achieve the same gameplay experience without it. This is the first time traditional payments are introduced, moving away from a purely crypto-centric approach, and aims to establish a new revenue stream for the studio. The potential revenue is compared to successful mobile games like Star Trek Fleet Command, with the goal that such funding can fuel the long-term vision of Star Atlas as a decentralized cyber nation. To mitigate alt account advantages, the new season is half as long, and crew acquisition is shifting from passive daily logins to active quest progression and storyline completion.
Significant gameplay updates for Hollow Sim include a redesigned route manager with a “cargo manifest” system. This greatly reduces logistical complexity by allowing miners to remain at base while transport ships auto-supply them with resources and backhaul mined materials. This improvement is expected to significantly increase resource production and reduce player micromanagement time, allowing more focus on combat or scanning. A basic territory control system is also being introduced, where starbases can actively defend themselves and be captured by opposing factions. Captured starbases result in locked fleets and resources, effectively acting as “prisoners of war”. Starbase defenses will scale with upgrades, making them more formidable. For enhanced immersion, all lore text will feature in-game character voices. The new season will feature a complete map wipe, meaning everyone starts from zero with no previous upgrades or ships. New extra small and small ships are being added, and while there’s no high-risk zone, docking ships at capturable starbases represents the closest thing to perma-death. Improvements to the combat log will also make it easier to identify and address issues.
The most significant announcement was the introduction of Zinc (z.inc), a new independent Layer 1 (L1) blockchain operating as a fully owned subsidiary of Automata. Developed over years, Zinc is fully compatible and composable with the Solana ecosystem (SVM). Its most unique feature is a unique onchain digital identity called ZProfile, which is gamified, allowing users to earn XP and progress, fostering an emotional connection to the network. The ZProfile integrates zero-knowledge proofs to protect user data and includes an optional KYC process for future-proofing against potential regulatory changes, providing a convenient “web3 single sign-on” experience where KYC only needs to be completed once for various applications.
Zinc aims to solve critical issues experienced on Solana, such as network stability and high priority fees, by creating a dedicated network for Star Atlas. It is anticipated to reduce user transaction fees by over 99%. Automata’s internal tools and infrastructure, like FKit and Starframe, will be made available to other teams building on Zinc. While starting as a highly permissioned network prioritizing Star Atlas, Zinc’s long-term vision is to become a broad, generalist consumer blockchain, with an initial focus on recruiting other Web3 gaming projects. A seamless two-way bridge between Solana and Zinc has been built. All Star Atlas game logic currently on-chain, such as C4, will eventually migrate to Zinc, though the marketplace and DAO governance will remain on Solana.
Star Atlas provides significant synergistic value to Zinc by bootstrapping the network with its existing user base and substantial transaction volume (2-6 million transactions per day from current game systems), effectively solving the “cold start problem” for a new blockchain. Hollow Sim has already been running on Zinc’s architecture in the background. Zinc will implement a premium subscription service offering XP multipliers, premium onchain names, and game asset rewards. Automata will also operate as a validator, earning network inflation subsidies and transaction fees. The ZProfile can serve as a marketing and distribution platform, allowing other projects to target specific user profiles (e.g., by level or KYC completion) for asset drops and user acquisition campaigns.
Zinc will launch with its own separate network consensus token, with two-thirds of the supply allocated to ecosystem growth (airdrops, grants, partnerships). The Star Atlas DAO will receive 5% of the token allocation and operate as a validator, gaining a new revenue stream that could potentially subsidize user transaction fees. The decision for a new token allows for ecosystem growth and user acquisition campaigns that would otherwise dilute existing Atlas and Polus holders. An initial airdrop campaign for Zinc tokens will kick off in September and run for approximately three months, leading up to the network genesis event in December. Participants will earn XP towards their Zinc profile and the airdrop by engaging with various Star Atlas products, including playing Sage, Hollow Sim, Unreal Engine modes, staking Atlas and Polus to the DAO, and trading on the marketplace. Subscribing to premium tiers will double XP earned. This initiative aims to drive user engagement and growth for Star Atlas, benefiting existing users by providing them with tokens that will cover significant portions of their network transaction fees, potentially increasing their profit margins by 10-30%. While initially largely centralized, the network aims to achieve full decentralization within 18-24 months.
Finally, Star Atlas unveiled its revamped landing page at staratlas.com, designed for practicality and user onboarding. The site immediately showcases Star Atlas’s visuals and provides a clear call to action: enter an email to receive a key and the “Star Atlas Guide to Everything,” a comprehensive 150-page PDF detailing lore, characters, and ships. This new page signifies a major shift towards aggressive marketing efforts, including partnerships with content creators and email marketing, to expand Star Atlas’s reach beyond its core community.
