Star Atlas Event Recap 90: The Atlas Brew 210

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. Hey everyone, and welcome back! If you missed the latest Atlas Brew, grab a drink and settle in, because this was an absolute blockbuster of a community town hall. The vibe was incredibly electric, blending mind-blowing game development updates with some very candid, transparent conversations about the future of the DAO’s treasury and the project’s financial runway. We kicked things off with some massive gameplay news for the upcoming C4 releases. The team revealed they are working on an off-chain, single-player system that will serve as a completely free-to-play tutorial. It’s designed to give brand-new players—especially those unfamiliar with crypto—a smooth entry point to learn the ropes of Star Atlas through a full storyline before converting them into mainnet players. Building on that momentum, the discussion shifted to the highly anticipated Phase 2 release. John gave us a fascinating deep dive into the evolution of the Nemesis Engine, which is bringing non-player characters, or NPCs, to life in C4. Players will soon go head-to-head with three notorious pirate factions from the game’s lore: the Jorvik, the Swarkov, and the Collective Anarchy. What’s really cool is how these factions behave; the Jorvik are opportunistic space pirates who would rather demand a bribe than destroy you, while the Swarkov will ruthlessly risk their own lives to take you prisoner. To make these interactions work, the team is building out a fleet-to-fleet transfer mechanic. This will allow for emergence-style gameplay where you can pay off pirates, swap cargo, or even rescue and refuel a stranded friend. But the hype didn’t stop there. Jose shared his screen to show off the early development of the Phase 3 crew mission system. Think of your crew members as the ultimate atomic units of the Star Atlas metaverse—they’ll have their own careers, earn XP, and wear specialized gear. You’ll be able to send them out on passive, tactical expeditions where success depends on their individual skills and the equipment they carry. Perhaps the most jaw-dropping revelation of the event was just how fast the team is building all of this. John and Jose explained how they have integrated “agentic development flows”—essentially using advanced AI tools like Open Claw and Hermes—to supercharge their productivity. John noted he literally multiplied his development output tenfold in just a week, allowing the team to build complex features like the brand-new democracy module in just a single day. Looking ahead, all of this gameplay is destined for Zinc, Star Atlas’s upcoming Layer-1 blockchain. Michael explained that launching C4 on Solana would simply be too expensive in terms of transaction fees and account rent deposits. Zinc is essentially ready to go and is slated to launch alongside C4 in about two to three months, positioning it to instantly become a top blockchain by transaction volume. After wrapping up the gameplay excitement, the conversation pivoted to a heavier, highly discussed topic: a new PIP governance proposal requesting a historical expense reimbursement of just under four hundred and seventy thousand dollars. Michael walked the community through the numbers, explaining that the funds would reimburse Automata for the legal fees used to set up the Cayman Foundation, board director fees, and, most notably, corporate taxes paid on behalf of the DAO in 2021. Because the DAO had no legal structure back then, Deloitte advised rolling its one-point-five million dollars in R4 sales revenue into Automata’s books, resulting in a three-hundred-and-eighteen-thousand-dollar tax bill. Michael was very clear that this is a respectful request for funding to secure the team’s runway through the crucial C4 launch, rather than a legal demand, leaving the final choice entirely in the hands of Polis holders. The community and council members were highly active throughout the event. There were great shout-outs to council members like Emperor and Lanzer, who helped iron out the proposal’s details during yesterday’s council meeting, ensuring that the DAO’s community ecosystem fund won’t be negatively impacted by any automated rebalancing. Longtime community member Dominic Vein was also active in the chat, keeping the atmosphere friendly and supportive. As we wrap up this recap, the immediate call to action is to prepare for the vote! The PIP proposal is scheduled to go live on the DAO platform very soon. There will be a one-week preview period followed by two weeks of voting, so make sure your Polis tokens are ready. Keep your eyes peeled for the C4 Phase 2 PTR playtest, get ready to earn some Zinc XP, and as always, power to the people! We’ll see you in the deep space of the medium zone.

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Star Atlas Event Transcript

off chain single player system. And [clears throat] this is going to have bunch of missions, full storyline, all of the gameplay mechanics that will serve as tutorial.

So, for anybody that would be brand new to Star Atlas, that's never played, say Sage Starbase, and isn't really familiar with crypto, and doesn't know what to do with C4, this is way just to get in completely for free and play through single-player storyline that shows you the ropes, teaches you everything, and then hopefully get you hooked. Um and get you converted over to being C4 mainnet player when that mainnet launches.

So, that's big one. Otherwise, number of key features are coming in this next phase two release that Jose alluded to. That would include things like the Nemesis engine, combat V2, democracy module.

I've talked about this in the past as well, essentially regional governance with rev share. Um cultivation claims, that loop is completed. The cultivation claim output, which are stimulants.

So, these are buffs, temporary buffs that you can apply. That That whole loop is now done with the outputs being craftable, and then being able to apply those to your fleet. That's essentially coupled with the combat V2 stat modifiers.

And Jose and John, you guys have been working on big crew feature that's not necessarily this phase two, but if we want to spend little bit of time on that, we can we can. know we want to save time for really the big topic today, this historic expense reimbursement request, but and then the last piece that's worth mentioning is phase two should see the introduction of zinc XP tracking as well.

So, you'll start earning ZXP by playtesting C4 with us.

So, that's it. That's There's lot of things that we're actually working on right now, and that that's not even everything that we have working on. Um but think that's good overview, and yeah, John, we'll turn it over to you if you want to cover little bit about this uh Nemesis engine update.

>> Yeah, for sure. Um, okay, so anybody who played Holo Sim is familiar with the Nemesis engine in that it's the NPCs. Um, and you triggered response from the NPC by mining.

Um, it was closed loop and it was kind of provided economic balance as people expanded by forcing them to burn ammo and fuel and think about how they were going to compose their fleets.

So, we've taken that and adapted it to C4. Um, we've successfully started spawning in ships, although they don't have um directives yet, but we've been able to spawn in ships using the the um the same system. And I'm currently working through the first three uh personas, we'll call them, that that Nemesis engine will spawn.

Uh, so in Holo Sim, it was the Ecos and they were defending planets that were being and asteroid belts that were being mined. Um, so now we're starting with um three of the pirate factions. And if you look in our lore wiki, you'll find um the Jorvik and the Swarkov and uh this other collective that is >> Anarchy.

Yes. >> Anarchy, yeah, the collective Anarchy. And um so what I've done is I've taken all of Jose's beautiful writing and tried to turn it into programmatic uh threat responses, right?

Like if you come near Jorvik fleet, how does it act?

Well, are you friendly or are you foe? Are you bigger than it or smaller than it? Like is it like they're they're they're opportunistic, right?

They don't pick fight that they don't think that they can't win. And when they do fight, um they're not there to destroy you, they're there to extract value from you. And so, they have sort of code of honor and they have creed that they follow.

Um and then you go to the Sorkath pirates and it's like they'll they'll risk their own lives just to blow you up, right? Like they if they can take you as prisoner and sell you as slaves, they will. Uh they're there to extract as much value at the cost of their own life as as possible sort of thing.

So, um so, these pirate factions will live in different areas of the galaxy and you'll come across them and know knowing who they are based on their fleet composition and their tags and stuff, you'll you'll say to yourself, "Oh, want to avoid this or can handle this situation. " Um and we're going to layer in these um these new mechanics uh over the next few phases.

So, phase two is coming with combat changes. We're also going to layer in the uh the Jorvik NPCs as part of phase two. Um and then we'll move on in phase three, we'll add uh the Sorkath Sorkath and uh phase four beyond we'll add the Collective Anarchy.

Um yeah, and those will come with some much-needed uh mechanical changes to the programs, like um we identified for the Jorvik scenario to work, you need to be able to give the Jorvik money when they demand it from you. And so, that is form of fleet-to-fleet transfer, right? And so, we're working on the program change for fleet-to-fleet transfers right now.

Um and uh what that would look like and that can overflow into all kinds of other situations where you know, you're stranded without fuel and someone can now come and refuel you and you can pay them to do that, right? Um you can do cargo swaps. Uh we're going to build we're going to build guardrails into that mechanic um so that it can't be abused, but we'll we'll have those options available and then as result of um bringing this feature online we'll be able to extend rescue and repair functionality and um all kinds of other stuff.

So, won't won't go into the details for the other two. We'll just stop there, but um that's what we're working on right now for phase two is specific pirate faction who'd be spawned in um and they would have rules to hunt particular players and build on threat and uh demand tribute from you, stuff like that. >> Man, it's super exciting, guys.

>> [laughter] >> Honestly, uh John was going over with me like, "Jose, here's the faction that you created. Here's the personality of this faction.

This is how the NPCs will behave. " And yeah, guys, things are coming. Like, we are finally reaching the stage where we have all the cool stuff that we always dreamed about.

And Michael, I'm not sure if if we should do this now, but could go really really really really fast through some of the stuff that we are building for phase three now? >> Yeah, think it's uh think it's super exciting. >> Yeah, let me share my screen.

Just second here. Can you guys see my screen? >> We see it.

>> Awesome.

So, as you guys know, have been working on the mission system. The mission system is something that we are creating for phase three. And as we discussed in last brew, this is something focused on first making your crew members unique.

Each one of them will be character in game. And they will be able to perform actions by themselves without the ships. They will be able to go in missions.

They will accrue XP. They will have careers in game. And overall they they are going to be the atomic units of Star Atlas metaverse.

Your MMO character in game in the future. Etcetera, etc.

So, started developing how crew members will work in motion inside C4. And let me show you guys. Here is the is the tool that I'm creating to create missions inside Star Atlas.

And right now have the pipeline where can come here and create new mission. give the mission name. set what type of mission this is.

Uh what the players will what the crew members will be required to work on during the mission. can set where in the universe of Star Atlas this mission will appear.

So, for example, can set this to appear in the region of Mud June. can set the same mission to appear in multiple star systems at once. can set even the planets where this mission will appear.

We can set the duration of the missions, how many crew members will participate. And we can even create prerequisites for this mission to to start.

So, for example, we can require players to bring with them bioluminous algae. Maybe this is underwater mission and the crew members will need these to craft stuff to breathe underwater.

So, any resource, any component of C4 can be used to start as parameter to players be able to start the mission.

And then, we can also set the success parameters.

So, in this combat mission, for example, we can set mighty mission, which will requires or which will tap in the the crew members engineering aptitude and in their operator aptitude.

So, crew members with high engineering and operator will be more efficient on being successful in this mission. And we have fully customizable reward table as well, where can set the XP gain for this mission. can set Atlas.

can add resources or components or anything as as as as reward from the missions. Uh can set, for example, quantities, etc. And we can even gate this mission to the level of your sector.

So, for example, some missions will only appear when sector is fully developed starbase tier five. Uh another mission will only happen when the sector is collapsed, like when the starbase is destroyed, etc. etc.

We can also chain uh different missions.

So, this mission here will only ap- appear or be triggered once the first mission in this tree of missions is completed.

So, we created this whole system, and we already also have the whole crew members impact the odds of the mission being successful.

So, for example, here, uh let let's grab this high-tier mission here. As you can see, this mission requires you to be an operator and engineer to contribute to the success of the meeting of the mission.

So, when place character whose primary feat is operator, get 32% more chances of being suc- successful.

We can even have suggested squad based on your crew members. And here, we see how they uh help you or how they impact the success of your mission. We also created the code for us to be able to introduce gear for for your crew members.

So, those will also be something that we will introduce in the future of Star Atlas where your crew members will have gears. And you can even expect your your crew member to participate in given mission, and they will have better odds if they are properly equipped to perform in this type of mission that we have created.

So, this is like the the first steps of this mission system.

We have big chunk of it already developed, and you guys will start seeing the universe coming to life with those features in phase three of the C4 PTR. Done. think was fast enough.

Didn't take too much time. >> Very efficient there.

Yeah, and I just think the one point worth uh clarifying here is that this is like crew expedition system.

So, this is a meta game within C4 where you can identify these missions as they become available, and then you can decide to embark on them, select your crew. That determines your probability of success. You'll see the rewards and loot that you get from it if you succeed.

Um and then you effectively just send them off on the expedition, but it's not you manually engaging in that gameplay. Um think captured all of that correctly there, Jose and John. think that's what you guys are looking to do.

>> Yeah, [snorts] absolutely. >> Beautiful.

I think all of that is just to say uh progress continues on game dev at truly impressive and accelerated pace. Uh even mentioned that on our internal call last week after seeing all of the demos just how quickly everybody is moving through all of these and and to be clear, all of the features that just highlighted were not even really intended to be uh features that we include with the mainnet launch of C4 with the exception of combat V2. That was that was kind of a critical um piece that we needed to integrate, but otherwise everything else that we just talked about, this is all just new uh creative ideas that the team have had and we've been unlocked to build largely because of the gigantic development flows that we're working with, so uh very excited on that front.

think with with all of that, probably good time to swap over to the uh reimbursement request discussion. >> Yes.

Yes, Michael, absolutely. And maybe the better the best point to start this conversation is very quick overview of the whole PIP proposal. >> Yes, will keep it brief.

I'm I'm essentially just going to cover the summary here and want to treat this mostly as Q&A session. Um see Dominic Vein in the audience. >> Cheers.

GM, Dominic Vein. >> But uh you know, there's obviously been an enormous amount of discussion, conversation, debate that's taken place in the PIP draft uh thread on Discord, so plenty of information uh has been uh discussed there and then do want to commend the council. They reviewed the PIP yesterday on their weekly council meeting and there were handful of notes to come from that.

So, uh little bit of clean up on the on the draft itself before it goes to vote.

But, just um to be clear, this is something that we intend to release probably today uh out to vote.

So, will get into this just again from high-level summary standpoint. Effectively, what we are requesting is $469,513 uh as reimbursement for historical documented expenses that we outlayed uh in establishing the DAO, the legal cost to set up the foundation structure, um fees associated with the independent uh director of the board, that's Glenn Kennedy. And uh the big line item here, and think probably the most contentious line item, is this uh 2021 taxes.

And I'm happy to fully clarify how all of this uh how all of those taxes got calculated and why they got rolled up into the Automata books and why we're uh requesting reimbursement now. Uh but, generally speaking, the PIP is laid out in what feel is the most uh defensive uh defensible proposal that we can release to the community for request for funding uh that's well documented with all of the transaction history and cash flows and and um uh money that was spent uh all well documented and provided to you there in that thread as well. Um generally speaking, the purpose here, and I was not trying to obfuscate this, alluded to this in the initial announcement.

Yes, we are seeking capital. Uh we are looking for additional funding, additional runway. Uh I'm not implying that this is catastrophically immediately necessary, but what do want to ensure is that we have no additional or further impact to our team who has uh which has been reduced significantly over the years.

want to make sure there's no additional negative impact to the team in the near term given we have major milestones immediately in front of us between C4 and sync specifically. Of course, we're we're still working on Unreal Engine, but really think the core driver for user acquisition growth revenue generation, that is all largely going to come from the launch of our L1 coupled with the release of C4 mainnet on that L1. And so we just want to get through these releases with no further impact and just provide some stability to ourselves from financial standpoint so we can accomplish that.

That's it high level. Um Jose, anything you think should clarify on that in that statement or should we move into Q&A? Do you want additional clarity on how we calculated the taxes, why they got included in our books?

Um and anything of that nature? >> Yes, it's the second part is little bit technical, right?

But Michael, maybe some of the people were not here when we established the DAO, how the relationships between Automata and the DAO works. And maybe this is good recollection of the facts on how the DAO came to be, how Automata paid for all the fees aggregate that you to establish the DAO. Maybe this historical context is somewhat important here for everyone.

>> Yeah, probably should first distinguish between the concept of the DAO and then the legal operating entity that is the foundation.

So, the DAO itself is um conceptual in nature. There is no physical entity, there is no legal entity for the DAO. It exists in our minds.

It is an unregistered, non-jurisdictional entity.

So, we all collectively agree we want to build and operate in this decentralized universe, and the decentralized structure and governance surrounding that is the DAO itself. Um however, all entities do need some uh legal and regulatory way to interact with the real world, and the foundation serves that purpose.

So, what the DAO does and what the DAO can accomplish is independent of the foundation, but to the extent anything like, you know, contracts need to be implemented or agreements with the Star Atlas Council, for example, goes through the foundation. Decisions on on how to ultimately spend the capital and make sure that the capital's going to appropriate places, all needs to go through legal review. That is the purpose of the foundation.

So, the DAO, uh from my perspective, existed as soon as we released the white paper.

So, all the way back in January of 2021, because that was when the idea was born. Uh the foundation itself was formally registered in September of 2022. Um so, that kind of gave, again, the legal grounding >> [clears throat] >> grounding and backing uh to the DAO.

Prior to that, however, um and will emphasize am still deeply passionate about this idea of of building out decentralized universe or metaverse um that think people globally can engage in and participate in. That's still core to what want us to build, and where see the future of Star Atlas going, and the delivery of the Star Atlas IP to this entity, uh which drives this whole concept that I, you know, we used to talk about lot, which is um perpetual entity, something that can live on forever, whether Automata is there as the core developer or not. Uh something that can be continuously built out 100 years from now by other teams who own and control the IP through the DAO structure itself.

And so all the way back in 2021, we started driving revenues to the DAO itself. Again, preceding the registration of the foundation, but that is okay because the foundation is not the entity itself. It's just the legal operating arm.

And so the first thing that we did with the release of Faction Fleet or Score uh where you could enlist your ships and send them out on expeditions, you manage your R4 resources and you earn Atlas, uh was start selling R4 that would that the players needed to keep their their fleets um fully stocked up. All of that revenue went into dedicated wallet um that was protected wallet on behalf of the DAO. We never touched those funds and that was all Atlas that was coming in and that you know was one of the first tokenomic Atlas sinks that we created, but all of the revenue that came in in the form of Atlas for the purchase of R4 went into dedicated protected DAO wallet.

We never touched those funds at all.

However, because that is uh does need to be reflected as revenue and the DAO itself had no way of um kind of independently reporting its own revenue, particularly in 2021, but even considering the foundation itself wasn't uh registered until September of 2022, um our um tax advisory firm, Deloitte, it's one of the largest in the world, uh advised us that the safest path to avoid any type of tax audit would be to document all of that revenue and roll that up into Automata's tax reporting. Uh so we've outlined there the total amount of revenue generated, which is simply function of the Atlas that was collected at the exchange rate rate of the Atlas at that time, and that resulted in 1. 5 approximately 1.

5 million dollars in revenue that we needed to include in Automata revenues for tax reporting for 2021. Uh now this was the largest year. Uh we could get the numbers on subsequent years.

We do still to this day have to pay tax on behalf of the DAO. Um we have bit of benefit in that we have significant net operating losses over the years.

So we actually generally do not have tax liability now just because any revenues that we do generate offset those historical net operating losses. And so therefore it nets out to zero and we don't have tax liability. Um just to elaborate that on that briefly, that's because we collected Atlas ourselves as revenue at very high price.

We held on to that Atlas. refused to sell that Atlas into the market for many years. It wasn't until 2024, uh excuse me, maybe 2023 that we started selling Atlas.

And so because of the decrease in price of Atlas when we sell it, we realize net uh net loss, effectively net loss on trade because we collected the revenue at one value, we booked that as revenue. Um that sets the new cost basis of the Atlas that was received. When we sell it at lower price, that means that our cost basis is higher than the price that we sell out sell out creating net loss for us.

And so the cumulative value of that is in the tens of millions of dollars that we have as net operating losses over the years. Going back then just to uh the tax situation, again we rolled that 1. 5 million up into our books.

What we did provide as documentation to you all is our total revenues for that year and our total tax liability. The reason we provide that is so we can present to you our effective corporate tax rate, which is that 20. 75%.

And then the thing that we the the the simple math that we did is we said, well, 1. 5 million of our total revenue was really Atlas that was collected that went straight to the DAO that we never touched. Um and we applied our 20.

75 effective tax rate to that and that's how we arrive at the $318,000 in total tax liability for 2021.

So, that was probably um bit deep in terms of financial terminology for people that maybe aren't as involved in this these types of things but uh that's kind of the big picture on the taxes and hope that was relatively clear as to how we arrived at that number and why it got included in our books. >> Thank you, Michael. And now, I'll do my job properly and ask you to take sip of water because this was long explanation.

And while you do that, does anyone have any questions so far for Michael regarding the PIP or the historical facts or anything that you want to add? >> And can can probably just jump in immediately. Diego, MTX is asking about the foundation company costs um and possibly moving it to Wyoming.

Uh so before we established the foundation in the Caymans, this also went through extensive legal analysis uh to arrive at recommendation of the best domicile for the foundation itself. Uh I'm I'm not um the expert on legal matters by any means.

So, you know, don't don't want to miscommunicate what the our decisions were around this, but um many of you recall Dan Park. He was our in-house legal counsel. Uh Uh we also work with Latham and Watkins, which is one of the largest law firms uh globally.

And then in addition to that, we um we consult with Walkers Global, who are dedicated uh lawyers for foundation companies in the Caymans. Um we went through an extensive process of uh discussing where this foundation should be located. The ultimate conclusion was that this Caymans Foundation was the best uh domicile for us.

Uh now don't necessarily personally know what the differences are between uh Dow or Wyoming foundations versus the Cayman Foundation, but do know that we spent considerable amount of money um in arriving at this decision. It's not something Making change is not something that would take lightly. And further, do want to emphasize that uh you know, some people are calling for like shutting down the Dow and or shutting down the foundation and and terminating the council.

I do not think that that is path that we should take. lot of effort went into establishing the Dow and the foundation and now has four years of history behind it. don't know what laws have changed between then and now, and don't even know if it would be possible for us to create new Dow now if we new foundation now if we needed to.

Um so, think we already have everything established with track record in in location that was highly recommended to us. Um the the the Dow treasury still has funding in it, and we've designed this PIP in way that allows the Dow to renew for at least one more year, um and the renewal comes up in October.

So, at minimum, the Dow would have funding to carry on through October of 2027, uh keeping in mind that the Dow also does generate revenue every single day through people engaged in gameplay. Um and through marketplace fees, and so uh I don't know what those numbers are. think um think Jith said it was something like either 15,000 per month or 15,000 per week, but decent amount of revenue is currently flowing into the DAO and of course with any level of success with C4 uh that is going to trigger massive cash inflows through all of the new mechanics um and systems of taxation and fees that are in the game that will all flow entirely 100% back into the DAO.

Um and the DAO is also receiving 5% allocation of uh the total Zinc token supply which will bootstrap it as validator. It will then um have like everybody will have the ability to delegate stake to that validator if they want. Uh but it the DAO itself will start earning combination of the network inflation subsidy schedule as well as any portion of all transaction fees and of course that's all proportional to delegated stake in that node on the network.

So, um don't think that we should even consider shutting down the foundation. think it's well-established now. There's capital to carry us through another 16 months or or 17 months.

Um more revenues will be flowing in and um we have all of the procedures and policies established based on the current legal structure of it. >> Yeah, no. Absolutely.

The DAO is is like any material uh tool of the start up as ecosystem, right? mean, shutting the DAO for me is something that we shouldn't even be thinking about as well, Michael. As you rightfully said, like >> [snorts] >> um But yeah, um maybe now we open the space for other community members to talk little bit.

Give their impressions, their >> Yeah, mean, Sipher will ask if if uh one of the requirements can be that will remain girlfriend-less, and it's worked for the last 5 years.

So, you know, don't see anything changing. >> [laughter] >> You'll make the sacrifice, right, Michael? What's one more year?

Oh man.

Yes. Same is thing. I'd rather have an empty Dow treasure with full Steam team getting that than having like lower key in the Dow and team reductions and longer delivery times.

We can discuss in taxes, but yeah. I'll be No way, Dominic Ben. Uh >> Bring the socks.

>> Yes, please. With the full Yeah, Michael. mean, that's the generous spirit here, right?

What we need now is stability in order to deliver the many powerful things and features in C4 and sync that we have in the pipeline.

Right?

So, >> Yeah, exactly. mean, our biggest opportunity to grow here, and we're still mean, you guys on the team know just how hard we're working. Maybe that's not as evident uh to the community, but we are building and shipping as quickly as we can.

Um sure, you could criticize us for maybe some missteps, uh some pivots, some delays that we've had historically. Um personally, do justify lot of that just in the sense that we are um chartering Well, we we are pioneering unchartered waters here, and you know, there's no playbook for what we're doing, and we're doing one of the most difficult things you possibly can in terms of product design and development for AAA fully on-chain metaverse and universe um with lot of requirements to build out.

You know, mentioned this in some of my responses, but you know, we're we're not just building game here.

We have to build the entire ecosystem. lot of our time over the years has been spent on mean, building the marketplace first and foremost. There was no marketplace infrastructure on Solana when we launched.

So, we needed to build that. We needed to build the DAC platform. We needed to build the DAO governance system itself.

We needed to build the Atlas and Pollis lockers.

You know, all all All of these things that we've put effort and energy into were necessary because there's demand for it and we need to create the utility across our tokenomics. And so, if we don't have those things in place, then we we essentially are failing to deliver on that promise. Uh and so, we have to spend energy on that at the same time trying to build out really multiple versions of our own game.

And as much as it is unified product, it's still really like developing out two different entire games across sick Excuse me, Sage and Unreal Engine. And also noted in one of my responses like, because we're crowdfunding we crowdfunded and because we have demands and expectations on delivering product, we have to build iteratively. And that also results in us building lot of things that ultimately are just going to be fully deprecated.

Now, you might consider that waste of time, but the alternative is you have to wait 5 years for something.

But, you know, looking at Escape Velocity as basic as it was, that was the first time we got to demonstrate the proof of concept of on-chain coordinate systems and movement.

You know, and it was basic, but it still took lot of effort to build that.

Nobody's built on-chain coordinates and movement previously. We're the first to execute on that and and then get into Sage Labs and then get into Sage Starbase, you know, which ultimately leads us here to where we are at at C4 development, which is likely to be the strongest foundation and something that we can perpetually build upon, but it took all of those steps through time to get us from there to here. Again, I'm not trying to make excuses, but this stuff is hard.

We've got extremely talented, very bright people on the team working on it, and think we have executed better than anyone else in the space in spite of you know, token prices going down, asset prices going down, any delays that we may have had. think any other team that would have attempted this would have already failed, or people that did already failed, and they already closed up their studio. And we're here in spite of negative market conditions for 4 years, and you know, the impact of FTX, which was major disaster that take responsibility for.

But, you know, here we are. We're still here. We're still alive.

Yes, we're struggling but we're making it work. And I'll just close this statement with >> [laughter] >> you know, think people have conflicted opinions on AI. think for us, the timing of this is the most serendipitous it could have been because had we not been able to fully implement agentic development flows into our organization right now, I don't know that we would ever would have made it over the line with C4.

But now everything's incredibly close, and we're adding features, and we're doing way more than we intended to do. And we're still relatively fresh with this. We're like don't know.

John, you were maybe what, 3 months ago you started really fully integrating Open Claw or Hermes into your workflow?

Something like that. >> Yeah, right right after we right after the Hollow Sim season ended, down tools for like 3 days and learned the harness. And 10x my development pipeline in basically in week.

So.

Yeah. >> We kind of giggle about it internally. Every time we all sit down and get together, and we're like, "Oh, look what built.

You know, look at overnight. Um Uh over the course of like 3 days uh you know, and this was Jacob and I don't think it was like fully flushed out systems, but it was effectively, "Hey, on Monday he got combat V2 integrated and then on Wednesday he got the democracy module integrated. " Three days and these are features proposed the democracy module back in like March of 2025 while we were still deep into the um kind of architecting phase of C4 itself and the feedback from our VP of engineering was like, "Well, we can't even look at that right now and it's going to take our whole team about 4 months.

" So, call it 20 to 25 engineers 4 months to build this feature out and get it added on. And instead using notion product brief and Jacob's um agent, he essentially had it built in day.

So, mean, this is like the how transformative this can be and and I guess just don't don't want to overstate uh how good the tech is because it does still take lot of work and you also need to be experienced enough to know how to prompt what it is that you want your ultimate end product to be. Um but the team that we have has experience in all of those things and understanding how to create um um you know, product design documents and ultimately arrive at those things.

So, again, I'll just It's kind of funny though when we have these calls and we're like giggling to ourselves at how fast we're moving right now. >> Yeah, every week, like literally every week, the whole project was having new features, have developments, like nothing like nothing has taken us more than 1 week to at at least get scoped and then it started. Review week it can take little bit more, but like we are moving at speed where never seen before in the history of development.

Like it's crazy. It's It's completely insane. Like even can now participate and help people build the code, build the infrastructure, build the futures the features.

So, yes, it's no-brainer, guys. Like feel this is my personal opinion on this subject, but if we have the stability for this couple more months to build this and deliver C4, we'll be in in very special position to actually have the game that we all dreamed about. Like can see it now.

It's forming before me. am helping build it not only on the lower front, but also in the code front, game development, game design. And that's what we need.

We need to make this cool game that we always dreamed about. And now we truly have the tools and the means to do that. We just need the the time and the peace of mind to get everything done.

>> And don't even think it's lot of time. mean, we are we are bolting on lot lot of additional features here, so do think this is going to extend our timeline slightly, but in my head I'm still looking at a 2 to 3-month uh run up to launching Zinc mainnet as well as uh C4 on mainnet. And in an ideal world, we would be we would be able to sit back and wait for more more optimal market conditions to launch an L1.

You know, that's really what you want to do. You want to go out of the gate with the bang. Um however, it it is imperative to me that C4 does not launch on Solana.

It's going to be more transactions, more costs, um higher well, lot more potential for rent deposits on accounts. And so the costs, you know, the main reason we even set out to build Zinc in the first place was to offset both transaction costs and rent deposits for users and then also have more control over the future development of the L1 itself. And so, you know, that was where Zinc was really born was at the beginning of 2025.

So, yes, it'd be great to wait for better market conditions. Who knows in two to three months maybe we are in the middle of at least mini bull rally. don't know, but regardless of that, um, uh, Zinc is the home for C4 and Zinc is essentially ready to go waiting for C4 right now.

When C4 is ready, we're going to launch that on on Zinc and that's going to be the debut. And as an L1, the biggest benefit that Zinc sees is, you know, millions of transactions per day and probably potentially an order of magnitude higher than that with the C4 mechanics and assuming some modest level of growth in the player base. And so, you know, these are these can be considered as vanity metrics, but if you're just looking at network activity, Zinc is already going to be probably top five blockchain in terms of network activity solely because of having Sage as the cornerstone product and brand and Star Atlas as brand launching on that network, which can create network effect.

That can create growth. That can inspire people to build on the network with us. >> Yeah, that's that's insane.

see many people typing on the chat. If you guys have questions, feel free to ask them. >> Yeah, Thor Thor asks reimbursement versus investment.

Yes, this is this is just reimbursement. Um, and also, you know, one one of the things that has been really contentious in the chat is people implying that we are holding the DAO legally liable for these expenses. That's not what this is, guys.

Uh we're not saying the DAO has to owes us this and has to has to pay us back. I've always communicated historically, want Automata to cover these costs. We're not going to ask for reimbursement.

And that was my genuine intention through all the years. We wanted to build the DAO up and we wanted to make the DAO successful. That's why the DAO is Excuse me, it's generating revenue today is because we carved out our own potential revenue streams from the very beginning uh to start to seed capital into the DAO.

And the only way the DAO succeeds long-term is to have sustainable recurring revenues of its own, which we've established. We've built those in. Um and those can grow.

They can grow significantly over time. And so that that was always my intention.

This is simply request from us, which is why it's going through the entire proposal process and why we've empowered Polis stakeholders to make the decision here. If you guys don't think that this is warranted or justified reimbursement, in spite of all the facts, you can vote no.

And then the money will not be distributed to us.

So, we're not trying to say you're legally liable. We're We're This is simply request. >> Well said, Michael.

>> was expecting lots of questions, but think most of the people here in the chat agrees with all the reasoning. >> [laughter] >> Yeah. Um I am He Who asking about advertising.

Um Advertising can get extremely expensive extremely quickly, first of all. And second of all, think the reality is is that Uh this this will probably sound bad coming from me, but don't think we have product currently that warrants heavy investment into advertising just yet. Um think we have some really cool stuff that we've built.

And think we have the foundations of some some products that can be great, but you know, if we advertise to get people into Unreal Engine and you've got couple of incomplete loops across racing arena um and single player mode, things that are still buggy that need to be fixed, um you know, we're not going to bring people into Sage Starbase. That's effectively going to be deprecated very soon here. Of course, we're not putting people in faction claims or faction fleet.

Um so, the question would be like, what are we advertising?

Now, when C4 comes out, um I think there's heavy possibility that we can advertise that. Um think maybe there's potential for us to advertise the origin campaign, the airdrop season on Zinc, but then we're diverting resources to promote Zinc when really what we need to do is just build phenomenal product that has traction. C4 needs to be that product.

We need great game and um uh well, to close out on the advertising side, it's it's like, what are we advertising right now? There's nothing really that we should be advertising yet.

We will eventually, but I'm also hoping that we can have organic growth from really great product that is C4. Uh and just yeah, the the final point wanted to make is is just kind of around tokenomics. Uh I will say, you know, we got into little bit of discussion about this.

We had our first meeting with the Econ Ventara yesterday. John was on that call with myself and Chris. Um you know, and um Well, won't share the community who's on the call unless they want to say they can, but uh anyway, we spent two hours just talking about C4 mechanics, but talking bit about tokenomics as well and my my personal opinion on tokenomics, and one of the members of the Econ Ventara would disagree with me here, is that when you look at our uh what's called beta correlation to so, correlation to the macro market, crypto overall, it's like 99%.

Well, when the entire market is going down for 4 years, that creates an incredible headwind. Almost nothing that we do as team can really have an isolated positive impact when when markets are just collapsing all around us.

Now, there were secular periods in there, 2024 4 in particular, where markets were pretty good.

And then in 2024, FTX estate sold all of the tokens that were on deposit Atlas and all of those that were on deposit uh to this independent VC. We actually had conversations with Galaxy, the group that the the fund that was managing um the liquidations, trying to purchase those tokens back. And they didn't sell them to us.

They sold them to this VC, and then the VC just dumps on us for uh you know, for another year.

So, right when markets start to turn little bit positive, then we get another headwind through this exogenous variable that we have zero control over.

But, you know, all of these things are what they are, and we're here where we are today. My my point is actually think our tokenomics fundamentally are still strong. think we haven't ever even had real opportunity to test our tokenomics if they would function the way that they're intended.

Uh but we do have sinks, we do have lockers, we do have ways to slow the velocity of money, we do have ways to create demand for the tokens, and ways to spend the tokens. Um and especially with the implementation of say this democracy module, now we're adding further utility to Polis as well. And so, we're we're continuously thinking about these things.

But, my my point is we haven't really had an opportunity to stress test our tokens because ultimately it does rely on us having game with a strong number of users who play repeatedly.

And then and then all of the benefits of the tokenomics start to unlock that value.

So, I'm hoping that with C4 we can start to see turnaround in in uh the tokenomics as well, and and uh we can start to see recovery in positive flywheel forming. >> Absolutely.

Guys, we are getting closer to the to the hour here. Does anyone have any last questions for Michael? Any last comments?

>> can just touch on so Emperor is one of our our council members. Again, thanks Emperor for the coverage yesterday on the on the SAC meeting. Um, in terms of the impacts of the ecosystem fund, we're still kind of navigating this and want to make sure that again we do everything as we kind of like legally to the letter as we should.

My preference though is not to negatively impact the ecosystem fund and this probably requires just point of clarification. The ecosystem fund is 20% of the value of the Atlas of the combined ecosystem fund and treasury itself and then 20% of USDC to the extent that the DAO holds more than $500,000 in USDC. And it it would be 20% of the value over that.

Now, that's never been the case. The ecosystem fund has never gotten any USDC. Um, but there's quarterly rebalancing that takes place.

And so in theory on the next rebalance, um, assuming this funding were were paid out to us, there's possibility that some money, um, in the form of Atlas that's sitting in the ecosystem fund would need to be transferred back into the treasury to bring it the treasury up to 80% of the total Atlas um, in inventory. Uh, my goal is not to do that. I'd prefer not to do that.

think whatever is in the ecosystem fund today we leave in there. And actually, uh, did listen to the SAC meeting later, um, in the evening yesterday and Lanzer brought up great point that uh, and it had to do with what triggers the the rebalancing. And so, don't think we're actually going to need to trigger rebalance, which means any of the Atlas that sits in the ecosystem fund can continue sitting in the ecosystem fund, which means it can still be used for all of those community initiatives that people are currently submitting proposals for.

>> Very good. Michael, think we unless someone has any last comments, think you you gave us very true overview of everything. >> Okay.

>> [snorts] >> I'm just reading through. >> Yeah, me too.

So, the proposal the plan, Michael, is for the proposal to go live for voting today, right? >> Uh yes, do want to just review the notes from the the Stellar Council again and make sure make it There's There's few little minor adjustments and clarifications think they asked for, so want to get those updated into the proposal, but then yes, I would um anticipate that we uh post this on the doubt today. believe there's one-week lead period before voting begins and then 2 weeks of voting, so probably get this out and then it's all resolved in the next 3 weeks.

>> Awesome.

So, now we have the timeline. All right, everyone. Michael, appreciate your time coming to the brew discuss this topic for the community and open conversation as we always do here in Stellar Plus, where everyone, the community, team members can voice their opinions and have good dialogue.

know that everyone who is here today is focused on the success of Star Atlas as project.

So, we all can only benefit from the multiple visions and the feedbacks and everything.

We are really appreciate you guys supporting us in this moment and throughout the history of Star Atlas. And think that's it. Um Michael Arthur is asking about the timeline for the picture.

You mentioned that we are still thinking about 2 to 3 months in picture phase right? >> Yeah, and that was my original target was 2 to 3 months.

Now, we are uh coming up on 1 month. The 28th, think will be 1 month. Uh but, bear in mind we added five new major features over that time as well.

So, uh we're essentially going to be on pause though on new feature addition from here even if the team gets really excited and creative with uh possible new features. think we really need to lock in on what we have. Um you know, full support for cultivation claims, the Nemesis engine NPC, the single-player campaign mode, first-time user experience, adding the democracy module.

Um again, as said, combat V2 was already an intended uh feature for release.

But, you know, with all of these things um that have now been added in, think we have phenomenal uh product on our hands.

So, uh we're going to get through phase two that adds the combat, um Nemesis engine, cultivation claims, and democracy module will likely get it added in there.

Not that it really matters. The the other three are quite complimentary of one another. Um uh And and then, you know, the crew additions that uh Jose and John are working on, that's phase three.

Uh but, after we get through phase two, then it is return to really just dialing in on all of the bug reports and burning down through the uh the reporting system. And I think it's personally think it's viable two to three months for sure we could be ready for launch. >> Awesome.

And now think it's proper moment to close this brew. Michael, John, always pleasure to have you guys upstage here on the brew. Thank you for the clarification Michael.

It was super enlightening. And everyone else hope you guys have great week ahead of you. Thank you for being here with us today.

Make sure to vote on the proposal going live. And Yeah, power to the people and have great week everyone. >> Yeah, thank you Jose John for joining me.

Thanks guys for tuning in.

Thanks for the questions and and uh as always appreciate the continued support. We've been through lot, but we're still here. We're still grinding and uh I think lot of promise ahead of us.

>> Absolutely. >> Thanks Michael. >> Thanks everyone.

Thanks guys. >> Thanks guys. Have great day.

>> See you later.