Weekly Star Atlas Newsletter #237

Welcome to our 237th newsletter on Star Atlas! This weekly newsletter, published by Aephia Industries, focuses entirely on the development of this ambitious game. Here, we attempt to aggregate all the newsworthy tidbits revealed, primarily by the team, throughout the past week.

This week’s update centers on the future of SAGE C4. Beyond further details on the upcoming Phase 2 rollout, Michael shared that the planned off-chain version of C4 is evolving into a full single-player campaign, one that may ultimately replace Holosim as Star Atlas’ primary onboarding experience. We also got new details on z.ink validator licenses, the latest quarterly Economic Report, and an update on the ongoing DAO reimbursement vote.

Let’s dive in!

SAGE C4

During Atlas Brew 211, Michael (CEO) shared that the off-chain version of SAGE C4 that Danny (CPO) is working on will become a true single-player campaign for C4, capable of teaching the full game without any asset risk. He even floated the possibility of selling this variant of the game for $4.99. The fate of Holosim was also called into question, with Michael making the case that the new single-player campaign essentially solves the primary use case for Holosim: providing people free access to try the game. If it’s up to Michael, this new game will replace Holosim as the main onboarding funnel. This new campaign game is part of Phase 3 of the PTR test/rollout.

On the topic of Phase 2, Michael said the reset and rollout will occur no more than a week after the final zXP mechanic is added, which is the last part of the Phase 2 reset/release the team is currently fine-tuning. The idea is to reward players with roughly 1-1.5 million zXP per test phase, similar to what was awarded during a single Holosim chapter. Michael shared that it’s unclear if the Democracy module will launch at the same moment, or slightly later. All other Phase 2 features should go live at the same time, including the Nemesis NPC Engine, Combat V2, the full Cultivational Claims game-loop, and zXP earnings.

José (Lore & Community) shed more light on the team’s current plans for Crew Missions in Phase Three. These missions are not being designed as passive loot timers. They are meant to change the condition of sectors, helping pacify newly conquered territory, improve Claim Stake yields, unlock positive events or wandering merchants, and eventually build faction reputation. Failure can push things the other way, including more pirate pressure and even risk around claim stakes.

Z.ink Validators

At the tail end of the Brew, in the closing minutes, Michael briefly shared that validators on day one will be permissionless, meaning everyone is able to operate one. However, the team is also offering two paid validator license tiers at $100,000 and $250,000. These will come with access to pre-Genesis token exposure at a $50 million FDV, plus effectively 2x or 3x delegated stake for a 2-year period.

This means you could choose to acquire $100,000 or $250,000 worth of z.ink at a price valuation of 50 cents per token ($50 million FDV, with a total supply of 100 million tokens). This allocation will be locked on your validator for 2 years. The team will double or triple the locked amount, based on the license you acquired, with their own tokens. After two years, the team will unlock your tokens and take back their temporary bonus stake.

This effectively means that you will get double or triple the (inflation) rewards during that first 2-year period (during which inflation is at the highest).

Michael also said the team may skip a general Genesis token sale entirely. If that holds, these validator licenses may become the main path into the token before launch.

Economic Report – Q2 2026

The team published the latest quarterly Economic Report this past week, for the second quarter of 2026. The main takeaways are continued macro headwinds, a small rise in per-capita emissions, ongoing trade and autarky concerns, and a view of C4 as the product most likely to change the trajectory from here.

For your convenience, we are publishing the executive summary down below:

This quarter’s report is built on a new, leaner data pipeline, stood up after our prior data streams were shut off on March 5th, 2026. As a result the report carries fewer figures than usual, and SAGE: Starbased metrics have been intentionally set aside — we have chosen not to rebuild that pipeline and are instead concentrating our resources on bringing legacy data back online and ingesting data for C4, Starbased’s successor. Asset trade and ownership datasets likewise remain unrebuilt, though both are a priority for upcoming reports.

The macroeconomic backdrop remains challenging. ATLAS continued its decline against the US Dollar this quarter, a trend that tracks the broader crypto market and that we have historically linked to player participation (roughly a one-percent loss in players for every one-percent decline in ATLAS/USD). Whether ATLAS’s ~5% annual inflation contributes to the price decline remains an open question we cannot cleanly isolate without a natural experiment. On the emissions side, combined daily ATLAS emissions ran around 11.8 million — above our long-standing 8.5 million target — with FICs contributing ~4.3 million daily, an estimated ~7.5 million from Loyalty Points (not directly measured this quarter), and a negligible ~33,000 from SCORE. Per-capita emissions ticked up slightly, likely a survivorship effect as higher-earning whales prove stickier than smaller players.

Market dynamics tell a familiar story: the Star Atlas economy in itself remains stable while it fluctuates wildly from an outside view. Measured in ATLAS, in-game prices have held relatively steady — especially for functional assets — but in USDC terms prices are down sharply (often more than 50%), driven almost entirely by ATLAS’s devaluation rather than any internal price instability. Weekly volume has run around 20,000 USDC since April, concentrated in ships and structures; resource trade is shrinking, a concerning sign of growing player self-sufficiency (autarky) in what should be a trade-driven economy. Trade remains overwhelmingly secondary and USDC denominated, while OTC activity has fallen to roughly 5% of volume from a historic peak near 36%.

The lockers remain a substantial and lucrative pillar of the ecosystem: a large share of both POLIS and ATLAS supply sits staked, with the wide gap between median and mean stakes underscoring the outsized role of whales. Looking ahead, the report’s center of gravity is C4 — the newly released public test realm for the fully financialized next iteration of SAGE, introducing Combat, Council Rank, Crafting Habs, and Claim Stakes. C4 brings real-money sinks (notably ship destruction in combat), a recycled-versus-curve ATLAS sourcing model governed by a tunable parameter we aim to drive toward zero over time, and a faction-based Loyalty Points reward system whose pool design deliberately creates competitive friction between dominant and trailing factions. We expect C4 to inject significant trade into the economy and anticipate a richer, more data-complete report next quarter.

Perhaps most interesting to most will be the last chapter of the report, as it looks ahead to the economy in SAGE C4.

DAO Updates

The reimbursement vote continued to gain support last week! PIP-33 is now about a week in, and the current numbers suggest it is moving toward passage unless a lot of late-voting power piles into the opposition.

Michael also clarified that the initial Abstain vote (~60 million PVP) was not his but was, in fact, the team wallet.

PIP-33: ATMTA Historic Expense Reimbursement

This proposal seeks reimbursement of $469,513.53 USD from the Star Atlas DAO Treasury for verified historic expenditures paid by ATMTA on behalf of the Star Atlas DAO covering 2021 tax obligations and payments to two professional services providers.

Structure:

Requested funding: $469,513.53
Structure: 1-off PIP
Author: Michael Wagner, on behalf of ATMTA, Inc.
Voting Opened: Friday, June 26
Voting Closes: Friday, July 10 (end-of-day UTC)

Early results (~9 days in, ~252M PVP committed):

For: 65.1%
Against: 9.2%
Abstain: 25.7%

Reminder: Voting ends this Friday!

News Bits

To wrap up the news, here are a few small bits worth mentioning:

Not really news, but worth mentioning: UE5 multiplayer servers are still inactive. The team continues to pursue a solution to this.
This Friday, the 9th Iris’ Blessing raffle will take place. The prices available are:
- 10x Fimbul ECOS Unibomba
- 10x VZUS solos
- 5x Fimbul Lowbie
- 1x Opal Rayfam
- 1x Calico Medtech
- 1x Fimbul BYOS Ranger
- 7x Crew Gold 5
- 10x Crew Gold 1
- 10x Crew Silver 5
- 10x Crew Silver 1
- 5x Crew Plat 5
- 10x Crew Plat 1

Sneak Peeks

Last week brought another steady trickle of new design work to ArtStation. Most of it came from Vertpaint Studios, which posted a full batch of GAN weapon concepts, including kinetic and energy variants for pistols, rifles, a shotgun, a gatling, and a new shockwave pistol.

But that is not all! After weeks of MUD outfits, the Sperasoft team has started sharing options made for ONI and Ustur as well this past week: