Star Atlas Event Recap 43: Atlas Brew 178-Interview with Jacob, Co-Founder and CTO of Star Atlas

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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Star Atlas Event Summary

Hi, this isn’t Matt with the Intergalactic Herald. I am an AI. Welcome to a Star Atlas Recap of the latest Atlas Brew from the Star Atlas Community Team. The following summary of the Atlas Brew was AI generated so no guarantee it is 100% accurate because I am an AI after all. If you want to listen to the entire recording, please check out the YouTube channel of Star Atlas TV. Enjoy the summary. Alright, buckle up, Star Atlas cadets, because Episode 178 of the Star Atlas Brew was an absolute alpha drop, and you won’t want to miss this recap! This wasn’t just any community town hall; it was a deep dive into the very fabric of our game, featuring none other than our legendary CTO, Jacob Floyd, in his first ever Brew appearance! With Santi and Michael Wagner off on a “chocolate and billion-dollar deals” trip in Switzerland, Jacob, alongside Dominic Vain and Jose, truly spilled the beans. The vibe was electric, with a constant stream of “GMs” from our amazing community, and everyone was hyped for the insights Jacob was about to share. But before we got into the big tech talk, there were some crucial ecosystem updates. First up, we’re partnering with Solana Gaming for their Season One Game Pass, bringing new quests and rewards to the Star Atlas universe! And here’s the best part: they’re supplying rewards for this weekend’s double XP event! So, get ready to grind, because the Iris Blessing campaign is in full swing, offering free XP and plenty of chances to grab those valuable tickets. Just make sure you’re typing your “GM” for those daily multipliers! In other news from the event, the testing for our upcoming Zinc dashboard went incredibly well! Our mods and community members put it through its paces, found a few minor bugs, but the devs are confident and things are moving forward smoothly. This brings us closer to Zinc Day, and speaking of Zinc, the team is heavily focused on onboarding content creators and KOLs. Kaggi was announced as a Star Atlas ambassador, and many more are coming aboard – traditional, gaming, big, small – we’re really revving up the marketing engines. And don’t forget, the week is packed with community events, including Spanish, Portuguese, and Filipino brews, plus our Galia Gaming Night on Friday, all offering more Iris Blessing tickets for those who engage! Then, the mic was handed to the man himself, Jacob Floyd, and what followed was a mind-blowing journey through the technical vision of Star Atlas. Jacob started by talking about the evolution of gaming, from 2D Mario to complex MMOs, emphasizing how Star Atlas is pushing the next frontier by building a truly on-chain, player-owned, decentralized metaverse. He acknowledged the immense difficulty, describing it as running a “research lab” and that innovation and failures go hand-in-hand, but the end result is worth the pioneering effort. The discussion then shifted to the monumental progress from Escape Velocity, to Sage, and now to C4. Jacob explained that C4 isn’t just an iteration; it’s a massive leap forward, scaling game systems for a galaxy with thousands of star systems. To achieve this, they built an entirely new blockchain development framework called Starframe. This open-source framework addresses the limitations of older tools like Anchor, offering killer features and flexibility needed for Star Atlas’s unique complexity – a space MMO on-chain is vastly different from typical DeFi products! He gave a stunning example: updating ship stats, which currently requires around 100,000 transactions, will be massively optimized with Starframe, reducing downtime and streamlining operations. Next up was the infamous Starcom, our proprietary indexer. Jacob outlined its journey from V1 to the upcoming V3 (or V2.1 semantics, if you prefer!). He stressed that Starcom is crucial for scaling to millions of fleets and providing that smooth, real-time gameplay experience. And get this: Starcom V3, with its geospatial indexing and optimized data streams, is going to be the game-changer that fixes UI lag and reliability issues! Yes, you heard that right – no more “kick Starcom” jokes, hopefully, as your in-game data will finally be accurate and instantaneous! But perhaps the biggest news of all was the deep dive into Zinc, our very own blockchain cluster. Jacob explained that while Solana is incredible, it can’t play favorites. Zinc gives the Star Atlas ecosystem more influence over its destiny, allowing us to tailor the network protocol to our specific needs. This means keeping transaction fees manageable for all players, from small-fleet operators to massive guilds, ensuring everyone can participate without prohibitive costs. Zinc is designed to seamlessly absorb all of Solana’s future improvements, and it’s bringing incredible features like on-chain avatars – turning anonymous public keys into trackable, achievement-laden personas that will fuel even more intense social interactions and faction rivalries! Before we ran out of time, Jacob briefly touched on some community questions, including the extreme technical challenges of “fog of war” in an on-chain game and the exciting progress on integrating our blockchain systems into the Unreal Engine 5 client, with the Fleet Command game mode being a major upcoming milestone for immersive gameplay. And for those who stuck around, the code for 250 Iris Blessing tickets was revealed: “ZINC”! A huge “W” goes out to Jacob Floyd for joining us and sharing such phenomenal insights. His vision and the team’s relentless work are truly building the dream that our entire community shares. Make sure you’re joining all the upcoming events this week, especially the Gala Gaming Night, and keep an eye out for more alpha as we get closer to Zinc launch! Thanks for tuning in, and we’ll see you in the galaxy!

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Star Atlas Event Transcript

My guy GM kill this guy GM Bob GM Ronald what’s up brother GM brother Critical Mind GM good to see you bro good to see you brother Brad the big man Brad GM brother Omar GM Zap GM take GM I’m alive I’m alive I’m alive Jindo GM PG GM GM guys guys my guy GM brother good to see you bro 700 p. m. GM it’s not 7 p.

m. for me, bro.

It’s 10:58. VB GM, brother, get to hear your voice. have.

Thank you, man. Appreciate you, Jindo. Lucky GM, Spickle, GM, Kir GM.

No, no, dude. Jacob, Jacob’s going to talk about lot of cool stuff. You guys definitely want Jacob for sure.

>> GM jam jam jam jam jam jam jam jam. Dominic Vang, how are you doing my brother? >> I’m doing fantastic.

just got done saying GM to about 35 people. >> Who did miss GM? >> GM level GM.

>> We got welcome everyone.

Everyone must feel welcome. >> Everyone gets GM. >> Everyone gets GM.

>> don’t think said it to you. Master GM, can speak to the manager?

Yes, you’re going to speak to the manager today, master in the audience. GM to everyone in the audience besides Santi. >> Besides Santi who is eating chocolate without us.

>> Yeah. And GM to our CTO, Jacob Floyd. >> Hey, Jacob.

What’s up, dude? >> This is your first brew ever, right? >> It’s his first brew ever >> after 177 of them.

Can’t believe it. >> Yeah, it’s it’s special brew for sure. Having Jacob on board is super cool.

Super excited. >> What’s crazy is we haven’t had Danny either in 177 episodes. >> Yes.

Yes. Danny’s going to be episode 179 then. uh definitely have talked lot about what what you guys have done here.

We have kind of the best community team in this in the industry. >> Ah, you’re going to make us blush. I’m glad don’t have the camera on right now, which reminds me that need to turn it on.

is going to DM me. How is everyone doing? >> Look at that handsome man right there.

>> Man, my hair is looking so good. I’m glad spent that money on it. Let’s go, Jacob.

Jacob with the Titan. >> Yeah. >> Nice.

Nice. >> But >> looking good as well. >> Semi bad hering.

>> Awesome. Awesome.

But yeah, guys.

Yes. Today Today is very special episode of the Status Brew.

We have lot to cover. My penguin bones are trembling. You might see it from the camera.

am having goosebumps because today Santi is not here. Michael Wagner is also not here. Jacob, Dominic, and are going to spill all the alpha.

Don’t worry, we are going to have some very cool conversation about everything that’s happening in Statlas. Uh we are going to get to know Jacob’s perspective on lot of cool topics today.

But first uh first we need to this is swagger have taken Sant’s account. Damn.

Okay.

So yeah, but before before we get started, before we jump into into everything that we have to talk about today, we need to do some we have we have some news to share.

We have some news to share because the ecosystem doesn’t stop and neither can we.

So I’ll get right into that because want to go as soon as possible to our main topics for today. We got lot to cover.

So, first no working news. As you guys have seen, we don’t have Santi on stage today. He is got scared when saw Michael Wagon on my laptop as you should.

Santiago. Santi and Michael are on Switzerland today. heard they are closing billion dollar deals >> with all the bankers.

Not funny.

No, I’m joking. They are there on Switzerland eating good chocolate in Lugano. Uh we are sending good energy to them and hope they they have some fun over there as well.

Uh we also have uh season one of Gaming Pass which start is part of Dominic Vain. think you are more into that than do.

So, can you tell us little bit what’s what’s going on on that front? >> Yeah, I’m probably leaking some probably, but uh we are working with Salana Gaming on their season one uh of the Salana Game Pass. And basically what they’re doing is they they have quests going on and you’re able to earn some some rewards uh by doing it.

And they’re actually going to be, and this is probably what I’m leaking, but um they’re actually going to be supplying some rewards for our double XP weekend uh this weekend.

So, uh it’ll be it’ll be something along the lines of the top inc earners will get extra rewards.

So, get ready to get ready to grind.

It’s going to be it’s going to be fun.

It’s going to be good weekend. Um but yeah, we’re working with Salana Gaming.

It’s going to be fun. Uh here’s also >> here’s the tweet if you guys want to go look at it and see what it is, how to how to participate. >> Yeah.

And make sure to to share some love to the Solona gaming guys as well.

Everyone don’t go killing them on the spawn spot on Pis Arena. Let the Solona people come have fun. Uh there Oh, 40k in prizes pool.

Nice.

That’s actually big. Really cool. Really, really cool.

So, yeah, free XP. Uh, they are super cool good dudes.

Yes, Jindo. They are super good people.

So, let’s make sure to be there, play the game with them, grind that XP because we are also in Iris blessing period.

This is the no the other note worth news that have for today. As you guys know, we have the Iris Blessings campaign going on. And during this weekend, we’ll have double XP.

So, make sure that you join so you get the benefits from the Solona Gaming Pass, you get the benefits from our double XP weekend. Uh we’ll don’t forget to get the codes. We’ll be giving away codes today and during the weekend during the event.

Uh, make sure to always type your GM to get your daily tickets. The the there’s multiplier if you if you keep this trick going.

So, make sure you don’t miss this. Uh, now want to move on to the to the zinc stuff. Uh note working news.

Yesterday we had very very good testing. Uh was there with the mods and some community members. Uh we had people trying the zinc dashboard trying the XP Rooks and everything was working really really well.

Of course they found few bugs but nothing that scared our devs. They are confident things are working. the test is moving forward.

So those those that’s really good news for everyone in the Stratus ecosystem. I’m sure everyone appreciate those. The zinc day comes closer and closer and closer which leads us to another topic on zinc which is the on boarding of creators to talk about and participate on the zinc overall program.

Dominick Vain, we had Kagi announce it yesterday, guess. And we are also looking forward to partners with other people right? >> Oh, yeah.

mean, yeah, if you guys saw, Kaggi did announce that he is Stratus ambassador and he’s going to be uh working with us on Star Atlas, on Zinc, on all our future campaigns. Uh so that’s that’s really exciting. You guys probably have already seen that we’ve couple other creators on have already have already tweeted out that they are also working with us for uh for the long term.

Um definitely not stopping lot of creators that we’re talking with agencies that we’re talking with creators is is big part of our uh philosophy going forward especially into the uh the zinc airdrop and all that stuff.

So, lot more creators are are coming. gaming creators, uh just traditional creators, big creators, medium creators, small creators, all creators all around. Um we’re really excited.

We’ve been having lot of conversations and they’re all going pretty well actually. Um so, yeah, look forward to that. Pretty cool.

>> Yeah.

Yeah. Yep.

We are we are starting to the the engines of marketing with on boarding those content creators Kols as people like to say and yeah that’s pretty pretty cool and finally we have our events this week we have the Spanish brew Portuguese brew philing brew and the consuming uh if one of the mods can later link to everyone the events here. Uh the week will be packed uh especially with the double XP farming the gala gaming night on Friday as well.

So every day there is something to do here in this community. Uh another important topic is that on those brews and those events there will be tickets for the Irish blessing campaign.

So, if you are Portuguese speaker, if you are Spanish speaker and you want to grind those tickets for chance to win the prizes, make sure you attend all the events, participate, engage with our community because first you have fun and second, you may even end up winning some prizes. And think that’s it. Dominic Vain, do you have so when we need sag and brew?

Yes. Thank you, Stick. >> Shout out to all my Sag out there.

>> Sagas. >> Shout out to everyone who is in mud. That That’s it.

There we go, >> bro. Muds are so They’re feeling the hate. Oh, yeah.

But yeah, most muds are the worst. Boosters are the best. And okay, think that’s it.

think we covered the the news and now now now we’ll get to interview this very special guest or CTO Jacob member of the legendary Floyd Clan uh career gamer and or blockchain guru leader. How are you doing Jacob?

It’s pleasure to have you here >> and seven feet tall. Don’t forget that. Man, >> the uh Yeah, that was nice setup.

Definitely kind of fit. >> Did you like the introduction? >> Yeah, >> you’re wrestler being announced to the ring.

>> Exactly. Exactly. He deserves this.

And Yemen, Jacob. mean, I’m not short guy by an extent, but felt like dwarf when met Jacob in Singapore. It was funny.

It was super cool. >> Normal size.

Actually, think the average height of all the Starless team is is is >> well out there. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.

This is this is kind of weird, honestly, because honestly, usually in Brazil, I’m I’m tall guy, but when we met in Singapore, was like, “Okay, I’m short. ” Super funny.

So Jacob today we have lot to talk about like there’s lot going on in Star Atlas and all the products that we are developing all the challenge that we have been through and would like to start today uh talking about something that it’s the most important part guess from what we we are doing here is sharing the vision of Star Atlas And what we proposed to do when we created this game like you, you and Denny are gamers. Swagger is gamer.

We are all gamers. And we have played through many revolutions in gaming. Like we saw gaming going from Mario jumping on those pipes in 2D to The Legend of Zelda Warcraft Starcraft uh Diablo.

Gaming was always about pushing the next frontier. And you guys when you guys designed Staratlas you guys saw like and that’s my perspective as when was community member when saw Status coming to life saw that you guys found something that’s super important for gaming like the idea of world that follows its own rules on place where the the assets the the parts of this game don’t belong to the devs don’t belong to anyone. one, but the players that are uh >> think Jose might have lagged out.

>> Oh, you’re back, Jose. You’re back. >> I’m back.

>> Sorry.

Sorry. >> That was Jindo. He was coming at you, bro.

Jindo was trying to He was trying to lag you out, bro. Don’t worry. took >> Jindo, bro.

Steady. Thank you. Thank you, Dom.

So, yeah. was just saying that Status Vision is something really big. and really hard to do, but it has many benefits.

Like the idea of having game on the chain and everything brings lots of benefits, allows for trustless world and allows players to have ownerships of their assets.

So, I’d like to hear from you, Jacob, like how does it feel to why it’s important for you to have like game on chain, the benefits that it brings, and your overall vision for Status, what Status is going to be in your mind years from now. if you can share some to with us some of the your impressions overall about Star Atlas.

We are really curious to see >> what you think about Saratus. >> Uh like what you said at the start of that too is like uh the gaming industry is has always been evolving since its inception and kind of evolving at light speed and think that’s part of the fun uh of games. Um when was 8 years old, the first uh PC game installed was was Starcraft.

And um and ever since then, just like heavy PC gaming and seeing it evolve and like getting those um what was it? Uh my mom got us 3D effects Voodoo 5 for Christmas graphics card. And um and lot of those early days was like these significant improvements of graphics and it was just mind-blowing growing up seeing that happen.

Um just quantum leaps and uh and so to say like it’s been evolving at light speed is kind of um is kind of an understatement but so so much fun and really does kind of set the ethos when you’re coming in trying to progress the industry forward.

you can’t really progress the industry forward without thinking pretty big, without lot of innovations. Uh because it really is like you need kind of quantum leap to turn heads uh type of thing. And and think um with Star Atlas, uh there was this um kind of major breakthrough that happened when uh when Ethereum first existed.

um you could have this turncomplete sort of decentralized computer to just like write and deploy sort of uh um online software to and um and yeah pretty quickly it got adopted for gaming purposes.

But uh but when we started getting our hands onto like how do you model this like blockchain gaming product um uh things went to very interesting areas to say the least and and also this uh these concepts of kind of fully onchain games is uh we’re kind of just scratching the surface but also um uh it it can the blockchain can be wielded in so many different ways. And so, uh, so think that Star Atlas really, um, kind of, uh, came into it with very bold, ambitious mindset, and it’s exactly kind of what it takes to move the game gaming industry forward as we’ve seen over the decades. >> Yeah.

Yeah.

It’s it’s grand vision of metaverse player wanted economy uh this world of gi expanse being explored by players and it’s something completely novel right don’t think like anyone in the industry ever try to create something as we have what what we are actually doing here right the amount of programs the amount of don’t So challenges uh the bottlenecks of having reliable blockchain game running real time the fees uh transactions realability. It has been quite journey right Jacob like did you did you ever imagine how how hard it would be to create Status before you tried to create it? Uh it’s not really it’s not really thinking about the the difficulty through like focusing on that the complexity of like and and lot of the uncertainty that comes with innovation.

Um it’s mostly about thinking this end result of like what does this lead to? And that’s just like more than enough motivation to kind of muscle through lot of the the pioneering and and really uh innovation and failures go hand in hand. Like sometimes feel like I’m running research lab.

We’re kind of doing lot of R&D and prototyping and just like uh we’re figuring out over over time and there’s uh there’s been some pretty major milestones that make me feel really good about uh what’s happened in the last uh four years or so. >> Yeah. And you actually touched on something very important like when Statlas started uh at the early days of Solana blockchain there was nearly nothing like it was like wild west in crypto and we had to develop like the foundations of don’t know blockchain gaming overall like we created many different programs like Sage the marketplace Starcom Uh and yeah like what were the most like important building blocks on your uh experience on building status like those major milestones and how they the past of Stratus let’s say is like that from where we are right now.

>> Yeah. Uh so Star Atlas was kind of founded from those early days when we were drafting the white paper in the summer of 2020. uh the discussion the the key points of uh sort of the the technical vision of what we were going for was this heavy blockchain usage ethos and that was uh for the particular reasons of of creating an MMO that has realistic path to decentralization and not not what lot of other because we kind of went deep in lot of the other successful projects at the moment and they’re sort of just riddled with these uh these architectures and sort of uh development strategies that just catered lot more towards sort of traditional game development and ultimately there there there wasn’t clear path to decentralization.

um they were thinking about it and in fact there’s some uh articles like Axi Infinity talking about taking the game logic and putting it fully on chain and it’s super cool that they were thinking about that but they concluded like it’s not really feasible not possible type of uh uh statement more with this this traditional approach which is which is understandable because again they were kind of having these discussions in in 2017 or so and And um and yeah in in 2020 when we were having the discussion you kind of have different uh sort of set of of options um we had this whole new generation of blockchains um i. e. Salana uh that were um creating new possibilities when it comes to fully onchain gaming.

And so that’s really uh really changed uh the tone of the conversation around like building that and and and full decentralization being a realistic path.

So >> yeah. >> Yeah.

Yeah.

And then uh mean we the ethos of building real onchain gaming is something that scores stratus right and we had things like escape velocity which later became sage and then we have based star based and now we are going to the next step of this journey something that the community is super anxious to learn more about to talk little bit out.

We have C4 on the horizon coming.

So, Jacob, want to get your perspective on the C4 blockchain programs. Uh why did you explain to us like maybe even on high level, but if you want to go deeper on any topic, please feel free to do that because I’m sure everyone here would love to learn your insights on that.

But why C4 an improvement from Sage? Like what kind of things are we going to see on C4 that’s going to make get start to the next level from the blockchain perspective? >> Just side note before you start just thinking about Escape Velocity to C4 is so unbelievable man.

remember when Escape Velocity came out and it was you you move you scan you might get something. And now we’re talking about C4 and we we think of all these different programs that are being built. Anyways, it’s just it’s mind-blowing that this has happened in just couple years.

But yeah, Jacob, feel free to Yeah, >> it’s absolutely hilarious. >> You’re right. >> Uh we have an an excellent team behind all of these ideas as well.

And it’s just like the the production rate, everyone is at the company’s just like on board for this like let’s let’s uh let’s go head first into these these ideas and see see what comes out the other end. And I’m like, yeah. Um, the energy, the enthusiasm, and kind of uh the ambitious ideas, think, is uh is kind of demanding when you have the general formula of what our what our products are at at the root of the company.

Um, and so it’s it’s nice to have team that’s willing to just like build something, ship it.

It’s, you know, we’re we’re going to put it out uh kind of, you know, as everyone in the community knows, there’s the rough edges, but it’s also for the sake of moving extremely quickly. Um, and and not having like these, you know, year-long sort of R&D loops.

It’s like putting something into users hands. Our community kind of understands it’s bit of construction site that they’re hanging out in. Um, and but think it’s really good dynamic.

It’s in my opinion the only way to kind of move as quick and ship as quickly as as we do on lot of these things. Um uh but yeah, uh sort of company uh progress aside, think that it it is pretty neat to see what uh we’ve set up with C4. Um, and it’s really all about like scaling game systems, like crafting the map size, you know, nearly thousand star systems, uh, updated coordinate system, all sorts of things that are like existing in in Starbase that are are getting lot more more depth.

And, um, really, we just didn’t want to take too small of step forward like between these major generations. Um and that uh and that we we figured out so much when we launched uh that initial version of Sage um two years ago and um and you know rolling all of that sort of newfound knowledge into how we’re building C4. Um and one one uh uh interesting thing about that is we have um like this is the first major program that we built with Starframe that uh new uh blockchain development framework um that is uh well it has some you know killer features that Anker doesn’t have.

Um and uh it’s think company like ours where we’re we’re focused on uh building fully on chain for one but also uh we’re building space game on chain and that is very different from you know your your typical DeFi products that that we see out there especially when you start thinking of of complexity like ships moving around galaxy map and they all have their own little cargo and they can go and mine different materials and there’s like complex supply chains at work. You end up with like this um very different sort of apples and oranges level of complexity compared to like AMMs liquidity pools uh staking programs kind of the vast majority of what you see. Um, even Dows, the most featurerich Dows kind of pale in comparison to MMO, you know, space game running on chain.

And so when we started to meet those sort of, uh, complexity limits, um, we saw new requirements, uh, or new optimizations that could be made in order to accommodate that development.

So, so that came with building an entirely new framework uh that sort of uh met those needs uh and kind of meet the um sort of increasing complexity that uh not not just us. think we’re going to see lot of other companies uh in the space that are going to increase in complexity over time. think in 10 years the biggest companies in the world are going to be like owned by DAO and and that’s going to come with lot of onchain business logic with high degree of complexity and at some point they’re going to bump into the same uh sort of limitations and issues when it comes to actually um realizing those systems.

>> So yeah, >> we are pioneering here right?

Sorry, Jacob, just to cut you, but mean, maybe we could say that we are, if not the most, one of the most uh we have one of the most complex onchain systems ever built in the industry right? >> would say pretty confidently that we have the most complex onchain suite of programs in the entire industry. >> It’s not even close, dude.

Like, it’s not even close, dude. >> Yeah. >> It’s space MMO.

mean, think about the depth. And this is also with, you know, the uh game design that still mean, what what Chip put together with all the Sage game systems is is pretty deep. Um, and and a lot of, you know, involved logic there, but, you know, we’re we’re taking it even further with this whole C4 buildout.

And uh and yeah, that kind of explains some of the >> um the things we’ve considered through development uh for C4. >> Um >> yeah, pretty cool. >> And one other thing that you mentioned, Jacob, was Starf Frame, which is like new framework for C4 to exist and for Star Atlas overall to to function.

Can you tell us little bit about what is Starframe? how it works and the benefits that it will bring to our game overall. >> Absolutely.

Um, again, there was some uh limits.

Well, Starframe for one is open source now as of uh last month or two. Uh, open source uh Sammmyy’s been sort of the the repo owner there. Um, it’s getting lot of stars and and think the uh Anza Salana devs uh they they actually really like it.

They’re kind of talking about an anchor v2 anyways like major not not rewrite but you know they’re they’re acknowledging the the limitations and shortcomings there because it does um sort of limit you. Ankor’s current version does kind of limit you when it comes to program design patterns and uh and different data structures and and whatnot that you you really need to incorporate into your your program logic that um just kind of starts to become problematic as complexity increases. Um but yeah, I think um it would be cool to do another like um Nabathon, hackathon in the future >> and have this as like category of like programs built with Starframe.

Um >> ah that’s interesting.

Yeah, we think it’s it’s going to get adopted and people are going to like building with it lot more and uh and the team’s been doing an awesome job sort of um curating it, you know, adding improvements, getting documentation in place and really just having conversations with with others around the ecosystem, other dev teams. >> Can you give us like some examples on how this benefits C4 gameplay for example? like guess it eliminates or reduces the deposit fees for accounts or something like that.

am super noob on that front.

So, excuse me if I’m saying something wrong, but think it really helps the overall ecosystem, right? >> Mhm.

Yeah. uh when it comes to account data structures, like how many different uh program accounts that need to be created in order for the the game logic to kind of work in nice way, an extensible way. Um the you have uh lot more flexibility when it comes to uh designing those systems from a program architecture perspective.

So, uh, I’ll I’ll just maybe use one example. Um, because right now in the current version of Starbase, when we like, um, when we update ship stats, uh, we have to send about 100,000 transactions. Um Jesus.

>> Yeah. And this is what the tooling does that you know when we when we have this like downtime whenever certain uh game configuration changes lot of it is just the downtime to send all of those transactions to update uh the game configuration in order to work. And this is this star-based anchor anchorbased uh program um that’s been out there for you know two years millions of transactions every day uh tons of engagement and again kind of think it history will see this as like such major milestone um for onchain MMOs but but yeah there is uh um huge optimization for uh how the account data structure looks when the program is built with Starframe versus the anchorbased version.

And love it because running some of these uh these admin tooling to modify change the game is is uh not clunky but but very sort of um uh extensive in in the type of operation that it needs to run to make the changes and all of that with this Starframe built version is is going to be so much nicer to work with. Um so just want >> Yeah.

Yeah.

That’s that’s awesome. Like it’s it’s funny because we are really like braving this new world and we need to build pretty much everything ourselves right at this point. And that means Salono of course has their devs but Salono foundation overall is neutral like they won’t stop and build features just to benefit Statatlas or things like that and whenever we need to get something done we need to do it ourselves which is in new industry where no one has built those programs before.

It is hard. It requires work. It comes with testing destruction and think this is good preface to our next topic which is one that the community is very have at least have heard lot about it.

Uh but not necessarily they know how this works and what it does so or why it’s important.

So, wanted to touch little bit, Jacob, on Starcom. Like, can you explain to the community and to me as well because I know barely anything about it. What is Starcom?

Like, why it’s necessary? How does it work? Because we are moving now to Starcom V3, which heard you guys are super excited about.

So, figured it would be fun and important to give the community some context there, like why the problem is always Starcom. >> Yo, yo, Jacob, can you uh can you kick Starcom for me, man? Can you kick it for me bro?

>> If Jacob got $1 every time he got pinged to to re reboot Starcom, think Jacob will be retired at this point. >> Yeah, take shot every time someone says kick Starcom.

Yeah, >> it’s great product. don’t know what you guys are talking about.

No, it’s um it it is something that has been in in development is in 2021 when we first started uh um building out our onchain gaming architecture. we started building out Starcom. Um, and we had the the marketplace program uh right and that was kind of uh we wanted to use Starcom just to serve marketplace data.

uh understanding that the roadmap for it was about um being able to scale uh super heavily like uh getting every player on the same galaxy with an arbitrary amount of fleets is like um uh we didn’t think that we could do that with RPCs at least to the you know full vision of being able to scale.

So, so we and also in 2021, think RP RPCs were kind of in nent state. Um, uh, kind of clunky. lot of the infrastructure providers were still trying to figure out, uh, good optimizations there.

And so, um, pulling the game data directly from RPC felt like it wasn’t really good option. And that’s where we we started building out this um more proprietary uh kind of middle indexer. Um and yeah, it came with uh lot of curve balls, lot of um uh R&D and that’s why we kind of went through major versions so quickly.

um that V1 it worked, but there were some aspects of the infrastructure architecture that weren’t really that great or um as reliable and hard to get lot of observability there.

So, we kind of spent lot of time looking towards V2 and really thinking about the uh the long-term uh you know, vision of of what Starcom’s purpose was going to be. Um because again like we when when we’re having this conversation RPCs we’re like yeah we can get fleet data from that but it’s not just about getting the data it’s like aggregating the data in nice way and also having everything run really smoothly to like have this real-time gameplay experience um where there are you know uh hundreds of thousands of fleets all on the map. Um and uh no nobody on the team was really saying like you know this like we can’t do direct RPC and it won’t scale to uh 10,000 but you know 10,000 fleets were already there and and if we were leaning on that architecture working really well uh again for the purposes of like smooth gameplay experience um where you’re seeing all the state changes come in and uh getting like optimized diffing algorithm from an RPC is like not really feasible.

So you kind of need to get this um uh this middle layer to aggregate all the data and then have like this optimized stream down to the client. Um and that’s really what we’re looking to we are accomplishing with uh with v3 starcom uh funger mentioned v2. 1 semantics those is those are the same thing uh but yeah in reality it is it is major update uh and using almost uh nothing from the everything in v2.

So yeah, talking about V3, we already have it uh kind of operational for uh certain products. Um good chunk of C4 is already working with uh V3 of Starcom. Uh the whole Zinc dashboard is >> is all hooked up to this new version.

So um it’s really good. think there’s been an amazing progress and kind of learning from the the previous versions um there. And uh and one one more thing I’ll add around the sort of optimized uh gameplay stream uh is uh with V3 we’re talking about uh geospatial indexing of all the fleets um to where it’s getting all the fleet data.

Say there’s million fleets on chain. it kind of has that, but it also is um uh indexing them based on the location they are at the map.

So, when you’re in the game client, you’re not having to kind of load in million fleets into the client, that would be pretty heavy.

It’s just kind of like, you know, thinned out uh based on the zoom levels or wherever your camera is.

So um so that that’s one way where we see kind of insane scalability again like millions of fleets is like feasible with that architecture whereas um just doing direct RPC stream you start to like run into those issues want to say like 100,000 fleets things will start to be little little too heavy. Um, yeah. >> So, just to confirm, Jacob, just to confirm, because it is peeve of mine, the UI not updating.

So, the UI will become more reliable. It will it will be updated with Starcom V3, right? Like that is that will be happening.

Correct. >> Yes. >> Thank goodness.

know was coming in hot on that one, man. >> Like we are five years old. We’ll get less lag.

Game will be good. Game game good Jacob. >> Well, what we thought with uh with Hollison was uh we we had that open beta season and it did kind of have some issues in terms of reliable data coming in.

Uh but had certain amount of CCUs, uh active users getting on, things started to break down and we saw that as clear as day in the in the chapter 1 um season. that was uh that was very much like Starcon V2 just not able to scale well and and so yeah that um that reliability mean it has such huge impact on on gameplay. think people are going to be um really surprised at how different it is to play the game when every little piece of data you’re looking at is actually accurately representing the state that’s on chain.

um this sort of shortterm um maybe lot longer term than we’re um kind of bracing for, but the uh nonetheless the short-term sort of uh fix is this Hollison client for the next release is just going to be pure direct RPC. Um and yeah, again, think you’ll see 50,000 fleets in there. It’ll be pretty smooth.

you’re going to be seeing data being read directly from the RPC.

There’s almost no surface area there. You just have like the front-end client and the RPC node that you need to worry about. Um, and also it makes this client like uh more portable, right?

You can put in any RPC endpoint and it’s going to stream from uh from there instead.

So, you don’t need that sort of proprietary hookend from the client uh to work with StarCROM.

So, there’s some pretty cool things that are coming out of that, but ultimately we want hundreds of thousands of fleets on there and so many players and just like this massive galactic playerdriven economy is such such cool game. And so, uh, like the fun of the game kind of scales according to how many how many players get in there, how seriously they’re taking it, all these different, you know, guilds working together to control territory, defend it, sort of invade, and also kind of secure supply chains and whatnot. Like all of that gets all those game systems get way cooler when there’s you know uh >> zero lag and things work instantaneously.

>> Yeah definitely reliably seeing that.

So >> guys before before we move on to the the next topic which is zinc do want to give out the code because know lot of people have been asking for it. We’re about 50 minutes away from from the end. The brew code for 250 tickets in Irish’s Blessing is zinc.

It’s just zinc.

Nobody guessed it. What are you guys doing? Come on.

You guys should have known that one. Uh yeah, go get your codes guys.

But don’t leave yet because now we are going to talk about something that the community is super excited about. am super excited about Dominic super excited about. We’re going to talk about Sync uh which is arguably also one of our biggest leaps into the blockchain programs like we reach at the point of creating our own blockchain to be able to accommodate Star Atlas properly.

>> Yeah. and Jacob >> Jose just talking about like we were just talking about how we have to build our own programs constantly you know like the the vision that we have is so grand that everything has to be built in house and think you know we already talked about this but just feel like it’s it’s worth saying again how complex the startless vision is there’s there’s lot of time that has to go into actually creating programs ourselves and zinc is another one that one of those things that it it solves problems that we that we have for the grand vision of Star Atlas.

It’s one of those mandatory things that we just we have to do. It just is what it is. Um so anyways, yeah, know we’re moving on to Zinc.

Yeah, like like Jac uh not Jacob, what like Jose said, I’m super excited for Zinc.

Everyone on the team is super excited for Zinc. Um so yeah, Jose, sorry for interrupting you. >> No, no, you are absolutely right, brother.

And this is actually what was going to ask Jacob like what is your vision for for zinc, Jacob? Like how how important do you feel it is for Star Atlas? What kind of problems zinc is going to help us uh defeat and how it pushes the ecosystem forward overall?

uh it mean for one trying to uh resolve some of those concerns that we have been seeing floating around the community long time. Again, when you’re playing space game on chain, there’s kind of lot of different actions that are being taken and um and this concept of uh the path to decentralization kind of to to to retain this sort of zero trust environment. You kind of need to structure it to where players are well for one controlling their own credentials.

they’re paying but they’re also paying for their own uh compute and data storage. And so um that aspect of like the the network fees associated with uh compute like moving ship from this coordinate to this other coordinate uh takes some compute in the game server and since the game server is on chain it’s like in order for that to execute you need the network fee uh to to be there. Um, and so this is going to have a pretty major effect the the the fee structure on uh on us for the foreseeable future.

And so that’s where um kind of getting little bit more control over that seemed not control more influence over that um is pretty paramount. Um and and really uh Salana is amazing. Um can’t believe what they’ve accomplished uh to be honest.

Uh and and love being part of it. Um but you know, Salana Foundation, they’re not going to they’re not going to play favorites. Um they’re not going to say, “Oh, we need to kind of optimize this aspect of the network protocol in order to cater to to Star Atlas.

” Um and yeah because of our game product model um certain things that the network protocol become very very important to have like an influence over.

So um zinc is going to have kind of this you know um first class citizen is star atlas. uh there’s not going to be any changes at the on the network protocol that would kind of negatively affect what’s you know Star Atlas’s goals. Um and uh and so that that’s kind of big thing to take away uh from from the Zinc initiative.

Also, we have have kind of seen it over the years uh in the EVM world, the Ethereum world, where it’s just there’s there’s dozens of um of L1 EVMs that are uh kind of branching off uh making their own optimizations um is really the big big reason there.

But what we’re what we’re doing is uh is little bit different. And uh and we actually kind of don’t think that Salana is not going to keep improving over time.

There’s not this um concern that they won’t be able to keep scaling as more users come in. think they’re they’re making some amazing improvements. Um and we’re very much intentionally setting up Zinc to be able to absorb all of those improvements very seamlessly.

There’s virtually zero uh validator code changes. um very small discrepancies like with the naming and build pipeline stuff, but anyone that’s kind of running validator in the Salon on Salana mainet or have products that kind of uh are built to work with Salana mainet will essentially work out of the box for for the zinc cluster.

So think and again that’s very intentional. think that uh strong adoption of this cluster is going to be great. um uh with that kind of seamlessness between Salon and mainet.

Um and yeah, there’s again some pretty major scaling uh improvements they’re making here with uh like Alpen Glow bringing finality down from 12 seconds to. 1 second like we don’t want to fork and not absorb all of that.

So uh so it’s very intentional to kind of do that and again it’s it’s mostly giving the community the starless ecosystem um more influence over the you know it’s its destiny. >> Yeah. >> Of uh operating fully on chain.

Yeah, that’s paramount. Like that’s something that we are always discussing. Like if the guy with an air bike can’t play the game due to the fees, that’s problem for us.

Like our project needs to allow all players from all background to play the game. And having zinc is something that allows this to happen. like it allows us to to steer the ecosystem in way that it brings the most to everyone involved.

It allow all the players to to join the game to be meaningful in some capacity without having to worry about the costs of playing the game. And actually this is also something that have uh even questioned myself, Jacob. The fact that we have zinc now, like even if zinc goes to the moon and the price rises like Solana does, our ability to steer the ecosystem will make it possible that we keep transaction fees to manageable level where the game flows, right?

It’s the it’s like as you were saying, Solana can’t take sides. They are neutral, but we are not like we want Stat’s metaverse to succeed.

So we can design the chain or steer it to direction where it allows us to do everything that we need to do in our road map.

Right. >> Exactly.

Right. And yeah, it’s that there wouldn’t be this situation where we’re like coming to this point where it’s like uh not feasible for small players to get involved and like have their small fleet, small operation, and it’s just like network fees are kind of killing the enthusiasm to even participate in the game. um we should be changing that as as soon as we can in any way we can and there’s not really the scenario where we can kind of campaign uh for Star Atlas and Salana mainet it’s just it’s massive right and so um so there’s not really this uh even though we’ve kind of taken up huge portions of all the network activity um it’s it’s not going to be the situation where entire sort of ecosystem wide changes are made uh to accommodate stars especially because think of our our unique requirements.

Um yeah um yeah unique requirements there kind of >> uh set us apart to where things that favor us aren’t really going to be uh the same type of demand uh that other teams would would propose.

So this is again kind of uh you know number of reasons why it makes sense to to decouple from Salana mainet. Um and then of course all the associated kind of killer features of zinc. I’m loving how this is coming together.

can’t wait for the the the rest of the community to see what Zinc dashboard has uh in it and kind of this this airdrop campaign campaign, but also the onchain avatar is is super cool aspect of Zinc that while we’re not u gaming chain or at least we’re not framing it that way, the onchain avatar is uh is super cool for gaming. think there’s especially for uh game like Star Atlas there’s just super uh social aspect to it um when you know uh again guilds forming >> for sure control uh supply chains trading it’s like that those social aspects if you kind of feel like you’re interacting with >> other humans on the other end rather than just public key think that’s bring bringing that into uh clear view with all of our products think is gonna is going to bolster sort of the the um uh the gaming aspect, the gameplay experience lot. >> I am 100% sure of this because from what we saw in Hollow Scene, how people got, you know, into the game, the kinds of wars, the conflicts, how people were going after one another in the free-to-play game.

Imagine when everything that you do, everything that you engage with in Star Atlas is creating your profile of your onchain avatar and he gets the XP. He gets the achievements like those guys will be fighting with knives in the dark to become the number one in the leaderboards and things like that for sure. Like the amount of passion, let’s use this word passion that goes on holyim and on sage.

People are like you are dumping our faction fix devs do something or holy people going after one another. think uh it takes us to whole new level like having this leaderboard having those profiles. Uh man, it’s going to be super exciting and we are getting really close to that.

Getting super super happy about this. >> Yeah, man. >> Uh Jacob, think we can start the the community questions and MDR had really cool one.

think you’ll like this as well as Starcraft player. He asked uh Jacob uh is fog of war going to be possible or happening with when we have zinc and C4?

So uh zero knowledge uh game systems is extraordinarily uh tricky uh difficult to get right. um because of some sort of fundamental requirements of like revealing the data to certain people and um and it’s easy to kind of do a one to one sort of zero knowledge proof but kind of uh kind of making that work efficiently uh across the the different game design requirements is really tough.

But yeah, using using fog of war as an example, um even if we did accomplish this, like when you’re sort of in the client and you’re you’re obscured by all the other uh you know, enemy faction um territories are all under the fog of war and you can’t see them. Um, it’s also this like, well, you know, the other faction should be able to see all of their their their friendlies and where they are and kind of know how to work, you know, with them. Like big coordinated invasion.

You’re going to want that sort of organic participation coming in.

So, it’s like all of them need to see it. Um, which means the data is revealed to kind of broad audience anyways. And so it’s it’s very easy thing to to circumvent in terms of like this portion of the player base sees it.

All they need to do is just kind of relay that data in some way or another.

And then the whole uh all the effort to make it sort of zero knowledge to this particular player but not these other players um kind of is is not super worth it at that point. Um uh it is doable but again tricky uh um lot of complexity there. I will also add that there’s amazing uh progress on sort of the zero knowledge side.

Um Lighthouse and everything that they’ve been doing with that protocol is is actually very very impressive and we’re we’re always um talking about ways to um enhance the the gameplay experience with some some zero knowledge aspects. Um, and we might see that in more simple form. think fog of war is one of those that just comes with that caveat of like you’re revealing the data and people are just going to like relay it somehow.

Um, but maybe in combat where it’s like this onetoone thing and there’s certain things that are not fully revealed. Uh, in combat, uh, think would be would be maybe good place to start of like any any game system that only has this like onetoone interaction. Um, and try to use some zero knowledge uh, um, systems within the game system.

again trying to look for opportunities to make make it more fun. Uh because there’s ton of games out there where it’s like part of the fun is that there’s information hidden from you that you don’t know about the you know opposing player. Um and we don’t really have that with our game.

It’s like the entire state of the game. All the associated data is just like permissionally accessible.

It’s like more revealed than than anything.

So um yeah, good good question. >> Yeah, something for the future for us to explore for sure. Uh guys, last questions for Jacob.

mean, we went through lot, Jacob. And honestly, any of those topics can be full hour uh brew on its own.

So, we’ll surely do part two with Jacob. Uh and we have some some questions here. Jacob, yes to your question.

Uh Icy is asking when when in the road map do we start merging the the Sage with W5? mean think the whole question is like the integration of the blockchain with W5. Jacob, >> absolutely.

Um some some of the uh uh um systems in in the UEE client are kind of already interacting with the blockchain. Um pulling certain data sets uh mo mostly reading but you also see some um sending of transactions for marketplace integration and whatnot. Um, but the big thing is the big leap that we’re making uh here is the the fleet command game mode where it’s like everything that you’re doing in some of these these web- based products, Sage Labs uh um and uh seem to be the C4 client that’s out there.

The um uh having being able to do all of those gameplay loops in uh in the UEIE client is is amazing. think that’s uh building that out and it’s actually very far along uh from design perspective and and how that whole thing is going to come together in terms of like the same game systems that we’re all interacting with on uh on these web products.

But how do we represent them and make them more immersive and kind of more fun and and easy to use in the UEIE client is uh comes with lot of design challenges.

But um but uh yeah that’s kind of the next uh major thing on the product roadmap in terms of uh blockchain integrations into UE and yeah simply uh it takes longer because of those uh the UEIE product altogether is all about making Star Atlas uh IP amazing immersive really get you involved in in in the lore feel like you’re kind of this part of a really big galaxy. And it’s just it’s hard to capture any of that type of immersion with the, you know, 2D web client that’s kind of slapped together mostly for uh being stomping grounds to test the the tech really. Um but yeah, all the game design muscle and and that expertise which we just have some amazing talent on the team that’s worked on this uh is about just uh more conventional uh traditional game design uh game development skills and yeah takes lot but it’s it’s very makes me very happy to pull up like these uh these designs that are in place for that uh that fleet command build.

Um, super cool. >> Awesome. And guys, want to be mindful of Jacob’s time, especially because we want to have him more times here on the brew with us.

So, Jacob, thank you very much, man, for joining us today. It was pleasure. Super insightful.

mean, it’s always good to hear directly from the founders of Statatlas, the guys who had the vision. W’s in the chat for our friend Jacob. W’s for Jacob.

Look at the chat.

Look at the chat. >> W. >> Yeah.

So, he’ll come back and share alpha with us. >> Yeah, Jacob. Seriously, awesome.

Awesome stuff, man. We love what you’re doing. You’re literally building the dream that everyone has in this chat.

So, appreciate everything you do, man. Um, >> yeah. W’s to you, man.

can’t believe this is the first time you were on brew with us, >> but won’t be the last. >> Yeah.

Yeah, we’ll have him every week now. >> We make him part of the holsters. >> Cool.

You guys been awesome lot. >> Yeah, he he waited until we were gone, Santi.

Yeah, that’s the truth. All right, everyone. Thank you for being with us here.

Episode 178 of the Atlas Brew.

Yeah, we are doing Iris work over here. Thank you community for joining us. Don’t forget the wicked events and we’ll see you this Friday on Galia Gaming Night.

Have good day everyone. See you later. Bye bye.

>> See you.