Welcome to our 140th newsletter on Star Atlas! This weekly newsletter, published by Aephia Industries, focuses entirely on the development of this ambitious game. Here, we try to aggregate all the newsworthy tidbits revealed [mainly by the team] throughout the past week.
As quiet as it was two weeks ago, so busy was the last one! The biggest news, undoubtedly, is that the Crew launch is imminent! Other big news was the hackathon announcement, dubbed “Naabathon”. On the Governance side of things, PIP 1 and 2 passed, and PIP 3 and 4 can be voted on. The team also added a brand new PIP-5 that is now open to voting. As expected, it proposes that the DAO beef up the Naabathon rewards. And that was not even everything that happened!
Let’s dive in!
Crew Launch
Last week Thursday, the team published the schedule for their Crew Card release alongside some additional information. For those of you catching up, we also recommend checking out the article that the team released in May, as it contains most of the other important details on Crew Cards.
The team also released a new trailer for the occasion (a longer version of the teaser they released a few weeks ago) and showed off how a crew card could become your avatar in-game on X.
The full roll-out schedule for Crew Cards is as follows:
Snapshot – Thursday, August 8th
On August 8th, the team will take a snapshot of the location where their ships reside on the Solana blockchain.
If your ships are:
- in your wallet
- in Starbased (SAGE)
- in Faction Fleet (SCORE)
- on the Galactic Marketplace (for sale)
you are good! The team is able to detect all that and trace those ships back to you!
If they reside elsewhere, those ships will very likely miss out on the airdrops, meaning you will flush a lot of value down the toilet. Don’t let that happen; make sure to reclaim your ships from wherever they may be before August 8th!
The snapshot will be taken at approximately 3 PM EST / 19:00 UTC / 21:00 CEST.
IMPORTANT: Ships acquired after the snapshot will NOT come with their component bundle or Crew cards. To stay absolutely safe, it may be best to steer clear of the marketplace on August 8th.
Any ship you buy after the snapshot will consist of:
- the ship’s hull
- a base complement of (built-in) Tier 0 components to ensure the ship is flyable (this does not include components such as weaponry!)
As such, you can use it in the UE5 Showroom without issue. However, it will no longer come with a crew, so you will need to bring some additional Crew Cards to be able to use the ship in SAGE.
The component bundle will not be required for anything for a while (at least for the remainder of this year).
Airdrop – Friday, August 9th
For every ship that is in your possession at the time of the snapshot on August 8th, you will receive a number of claimable items in your inventory on August 9th:
- One component bundle (specifically for that ship)
- A number of crew packs equal to the crew slots present on the ship. Note that these packs only contain a single Crew Card each!
Both of these items are SFTs (Semi-fungible Tokens) which means they can be traded on the Galactic Marketplace. You will keep the ship itself as well (also an SFT), which will now represent the bare hull along with the built-in Tier 0 components required to get it to fly.
This means (again) that the ship will be flyable even without the component bundle installed. It also means the component bundle will only contain components of a Tier higher than 0.
Note that this component bundle is a placeholder. You won’t need it anytime soon, and you can’t use it anywhere, either. But don’t trade it away too easily, as it contains all of the fancy components you paid for when you originally acquired the ship (before the snapshot).
Note: As before, the airdrops (a misnomer, really) are not actually airdropped into your wallet. Instead, you will need to claim them through your Inventory on the Play-portal website.
Sale & Opening – Tuesday, August 13th
After getting your Crew Packs dropped, you will have to wait another four days before you can open them. Opening will happen in a new Crew Portal segment of the Play-portal (play.staratlas.com), where you can also view your crew.
This is also the day when additional Crew Packs will go on sale on the Galactic Marketplace! As outlined in the article from mid-May, you can one of three different packs.
When you open Crew packs, you will have three choices to make:
- The number of packs you want to open in one go
- The Faction whose native species you want your non-anomalous crew members to belong to
- Whether or not you want to move them straight into SAGE (Starbased)
The first choice is especially handy, given that you may have a bunch of Crew packs with a single Crew Card (as a result of the airdrops). Opening 200 such packs may soon become boring (not to mention costly in fees). The ability to open all 200 in one go is definitely helpful.
The second choice has led to some confusion. You can select the Faction from which your non-anomalous crew will originate. But this is really about the Faction’s native species. No matter which faction you are playing in or the ships you own, you can use Crew Cards from any species in both SAGE and Star Atlas. As an example, you can put ONI Crew members inside your Pearce (MUD manufacturer) fleet while being an Ustur player (account).
The Faction selection really is about the race to which you want the crew cards/members you are about to receive to belong.
The last choice is by no measure the least important. If you are active in Starbased and you have a lot of crew cards, you definitely do not want to move them in by hand from your wallet. Crew Cards are NFTs, and as such, you will need to select them one by one and sign a transaction for each one individually (most likely)!
Star Atlas – Crew Card artwork – Female Mierese (ONI)
SAGE – Tuesday, August 20th
Between August 13th and August 20th, you have a week to make sure that:
- Your fleets have returned to the CSS
- Your fleets are all disbanded (so, ships only)
- Your crew has been deposited to the CSS
That is if you are playing SAGE Labs: Starbased!
On August 20th, disband all remaining fleets, burn all cargo & R4 still present on such fleets, strip all “virtual” crew members from the game, and update the necessary on-chain programs.
It is, therefore, important you prepare for this event by bringing the new crew members into the game (if not during the opening of packs, then at least afterward).
Trading
As the individual Crew Cards are NFTs (compressed NFTs, but that is not really important to know), the Galactic Marketplace does not support trading them. The current V2 of the marketplace still only allows for SFTs to be traded, which is what 99% of the Star Atlas assets currently are (the 1% is not tradable there either – mostly assets claimed/sold on FTX back in the day).
So, while Crew Packs, Component Bundles, and Ships are all tradable on the Galactic Marketplace, Crew members will have to be temporarily traded on external marketplaces. The team has made a deal with one of these (likely Tensor) to be the official platform for trade until the team manages to launch V3 of their own marketplace, which they hope to accomplish in Q4 of this year.
Star Atlas – Naabathon – Online Hackathon
Naabathon
The team has officially launched their hackathon! They gave it a special name, Naabathon, in honor of the Punaabs who run the Ogrika ship manufacturer (the ship sponsor of the event).
Beyond the Ogrika ships (25k in VWAP value), the team attracted several, as of yet undisclosed, sponsors, adding another 25k in USDC to the prize pot.
The hackathon runs from July 24th until September 7th (a week shorter than we reported last week). There are six different tracks with individual winners and one big overall winner. All winners will receive an Ogrika ship and monetary prizes from the other sponsors.
In addition, there is currently a proposal open for voting that, if it passes, will add the DAO as a sponsor and another 6 million ATLAS to the prize pool (from the DAO’s treasury).
So far, it looks like there will be only prizes for the winner of each track (plus the overall winner) and no prizes for runner-ups.
Tracks
- SAGE – Create an application that interacts with the Star Atlas SAGE program.
- Game – Create a game using Star Atlas tokens, resources, or intellectual property.
- Resources – Create an application that uses any of the Star Atlas ecosystem consumable resources in a meaningful way.
- Data – Create an application that displays meaningful live data for the Star Atlas ecosystem or products.
- DeFi – Create an application that meaningfully uses Star Atlas Tokens, ATLAS, or POLIS.
- Galactic Marketplace – Create an application that interacts with the Star Atlas Galactic Marketplace.
The winner of each Track will receive an Ogrika Tursic ship, and the grand winner will receive an Ogrika Sunpaa instead. The winners will be announced during a physical celebration ceremony at the Star Atlas Impact Summit on September 21st in Singapore.
Participants will have to submit a form to officially submit their project. They will also have to go through a KYC process and answer any questions the jury has. You can form a team as well (there are no size limits), and the good news is that only the team’s captain will have to go through the KYC process.
As a final important note, only projects whose work started on or after July 24th are allowed to be submitted.
Star Atlas – Crew Card artwork – Male Punaab (ONI)
Governance
As expected, PIP-1 and PIP-2 have passed (67.56% and 56.66% in favor, respectively), and now PIP-3: Star Atlas Council and PIP-4: Star Atlas Ecosystem Fund are open for voting! At the time of publication, these PIPs sit at a comfortable 95.81% and 91.82% approval rate, respectively, though only ~18% of the voting weight that was used to vote on the previous 2 PIPS has been accounted for.
There are ~8 days remaining to cast your vote on both of these proposals at the time of publication.
PIP-3
PIP-3 seeks to initiate the process of establishing the first Star Atlas Council. The Star Atlas Council will serve as administrators that guide the governance processes of the Star Atlas DAO and ensure that PIPs adhere to the requirements set forth in PIP-1.
If approved, candidates may begin nominating themselves by filling out a form made available on the Star Atlas Discord. Only self-nominations will be accepted. The form will require information on the nominee, their background, and their qualifications. The form (nomination period) will remain open for two weeks.
PIP-4
PIP-4 seeks to create the Star Atlas Ecosystem Fund, seed it with a budget of 20% of the Star Atlas DAO’s treasury (subject to limitations below), and establish a process by which community members may apply to the Star Atlas DAO for grants from the fund to develop various aspects of Star Atlas.
To apply for a funding grant from the Star Atlas Ecosystem Fund, applicants must go through the PIP drafting process specified in PIP-1.
PIP-5
There is one more PIP open to voting, which was anticipated but not part of the official schedule published upon launching the governance. That is PIP-5: Co-sponsor the Naabathon.
This PIP seeks to allocate 6,000,000 ATLAS from the DAO treasury to co-sponsor the Star Atlas ecosystem hackathon. This ATLAS allocation would increase the prize pool for winners by awarding each category winner 750,000 ATLAS and the overall winner 1,5 million ATLAS.
At the time of writing, this proposal sits at a 93.23% approval rate, and voting is open for another 11 days.
Oogy – Star Atlas Club Clash
Oogy Collaboration
Star Atlas is collaborating with another Web3 gaming project called Oogy. Oogy is organizing a Star Atlas Club Clash in their own game Oogy Blast, where players can win:
- $5,000 worth of Star Atlas Crew Packs
- Limited Edition Star Atlas Gun (Oogy)
- Gems to use in Oogy Blast
Oogy organized a 30-minute X.com Spaces on Monday, July 29th, where they dive deeper into this collaboration.
Sneak Peek
The team has not shared any images lately, but instead, last week, they shared this cool video that shows the transformation from Concept Art to an in-game 3D environment. Note that this is a heavy work in progress; the world contains placeholder trees and lacks all textures (let alone cool effects such as the waterfall).