Weekly Star Atlas Newsletter #87

Welcome to our 87th newsletter on Star Atlas! This weekly newsletter is published by Aephia Industries and focuses entirely on Star Atlas. Here we try to aggregate all the newsworthy tidbits that were dropped by the team throughout the past week.

Last week saw the much-anticipated launch of the Governance Application and the very first Polis Improvement Proposal, PIP-1! On the other end of the spectrum, we witnessed the team sunsetting Escape Velocity, and Michael sharing a good deal of information on its successor: REC. Most of this information was released by Michael during an impromptu AMA this past Friday on the Star Atlas Discord server. This was the second time in a row, so you may want to keep an eye out this Friday!

Let’s dive in!

Escape Velocity Sunset

Last week was the last week you could participate in the Scavenger Hunt within Escape Velocity (EV). EV launched on April 26th and has been going on for nearly 2.5 months. This is apparently longer than the team originally anticipated, largely due to it being more successful (with regard to player engagement) than they anticipated.

At the moment, you are still able to add new ships and move around on the map. There is, however, no loot of any kind around, waiting to be found. And, of course, it is possible to return your ships and get the 1000 ATLAS back (per ship) that you staked for it.

Loot distribution

The very last EV Loot distribution will take place somewhere this week. In addition to the loot gathered by players/testers themselves, this will also see a bonus loot drop to everyone, consisting of the lower-tier loot confiscated from the bots two weeks ago. Lower tier, in this case, means the Copper, Bronze, and Silver tiers.

Remaining Loot

The grand prize of Escape Velocity, the Fimbul BYOS Tankship, has not been found. Several other ships and Claim Stakes were not discovered either.

Michael (CEO) shared that the Tankship will for sure make an appearance in the next SAGE release: Resource Extraction & Crafting (REC). He was not yet sure if the same would go for the other loot they had earmarked for Escape Velocity.

SAGE: Resource Extraction & Crafting

With EV winding down, all eyes are looking forward to the next installment of SAGE, Resource Extraction & Crafting (REC), which will be the first version of the actual game that we will be playing going forward. EV was really just a test, which used a variant of the Movement program that future SAGE iterations will adopt. In addition, the map was way more zoomed out than the map in REC and beyond.

In REC, your movement will be slower, and the map will be more zoomed in. It will likely take around 24 hours to get from one side of the map to the other, instead of doing so within the hour. Most importantly, REC will feel more like a game, and the graphical fidelity will be increased. Sectors will be less empty as well.

The past two Fridays, Michael spent some time with the community, setting up an impromptu AMA on the Star Atlas Discord server. During those two sessions (recording of June 30th + recording of July 7th), he shared a lot of information on REC.

We collected that information, combined it with information we already had, and compiled a guide on REC. This is a quite extensive article that is well worth a read to get a better understanding of what to expect.

Star Atlas DAO

After a false start a week ago, last week finally saw the launch of the new Governance application, and with it, the very first Polis Improvement Proposal (PIP-1).

PIP-1 lays the groundwork for the future operation of the DAO. When it becomes successful, certain actions can be taken (e.g., Council Elections) that will flesh out the DAO’s body. As we are not there yet, this first PIP will work differently from future PIPs. The team has highlighted 4 steps on the roadmap to a fully functioning DAO.

These 4 steps are:

• Declaration – PIP-1 is published and can be read/reviewed by everyone in the community that has at least 1 PVP
• Deliberation – PIP-1 will be discussed, comments can be provided by community members, and there will be debate sessions hosted to go more in-depth. The goal is to reach a large enough consensus among Citizens (members with Polis Voting Power) that it looks like the PIP-1 would pass when voted upon. This is where we are at present!
• Decision – PIP-1 will be officially put to a vote. If successful, it will be ratified, and as a part of it, the Star Atlas Foundation will also be officially ratified.
• Democratic Convergence – The Council (a required instrument for future Proposals – according to PIP-1 in its current form) will be elected, after which Citizens can work to create proposals of their own.

Dominic (Community Manager) recorded a nice DAO introduction video that is worth a watch:

Note: At this point in time, the governance application is unable to handle any real interest, meaning you will oftentimes get stuck with information not being loaded, indefinitely. The team is working on optimizing the performance.

PIP-1

PIP-1 is a foundational proposal, meaning it defines the system and structure of the governance system itself. It defines the Constitution, the phases every future proposal has to go through, the rights and privileges of various parties (Citizens, Governors, and the Star Atlas Foundation), and more.

PIP-1 consists of three core parts, or “Articles”:

1. The “Blockchain Supremacy Clause”. This defines the Star Atlas DAO as a set of programs that operate autonomously on the decentralized, permissionless blockchain of Solana.
2. The Star Atlas Constitution. This defines the governance framework, its parameters, and processes, based on three guiding principles:
   – ensuring high quality and safety
   – being community-owned and community-built
   – striving for a resilient, sustainable ecosystem
3. The ratification of the Star Atlas Foundation (SAF) operations. The SAF is a real-world agent protecting and conducting legal and business actions on behalf of the Star Atlas DAO.

Future Phases

Every Proposal goes through a process to get from an idea to an implemented result. Article 2 of PIP-1 proposes 7 phases that all future proposals should go through. Being, perhaps, the real meat of the proposal, we’ve summarized these for you here:

• Phase 0: Public Interest – A Citizen (someone with Polis Voting Power) proposes a new idea for a potential PIP on the governance platform’s official forum. Other Citizens may indicate interest in the idea. An idea that gathers sufficient public interest may advance to the next phase.
• Phase 1: Ideation – Ideas that have gathered sufficient public interest will be open for discussion in greater detail. The discussion generally will take place for at least 2 weeks. If it gets sufficient community support (identified by the Council), it will be assigned to a Council member to assist with the drafting process.
• Phase 2: Drafting – The original author will prepare a Draft PIP with input from the community and assistance from the assigned Council member. This PIP has to conform to a certain, predefined structure.
• Phase 3: Review – The Draft PIP is submitted for review by the full Council. They can then provide feedback on any issues they encounter. The Draft PIP is revised based on feedback from the Council and the community. The Council has permission to block a PIP from making it to the next phase.
• Phase 4: Council Approval – The Draft PIP becomes a Live PIP. The Council may provide some formal feedback on the PIP to improve the voting process.
• Phase 5: Activation – The PIP is advanced to on-chain voting by a Governor that owns a certain required amount of PVP. There will be a 48-hour delay between this action and the PIP becoming available for voting.
• Phase 6: Voting – Voters have permission to vote for or against the PIP, with votes weighted by PVP. The PIP is considered successful if both quorum (minimum participation) and threshold (minimum successful vote) PVP minimums are met by votes for the PIP. Voting lasts for two weeks. Both the quorum and threshold minimums are set by the DAO. There will be a 48-hour delay between a PIP becoming successful and its execution (next phase).
• Phase 7: Execution – After the 48-hour execution delay, the Foundation Wallet shall execute the PIP. Implementation must be carried out as specified in the PIP.

Goodbye, Fuzzy Lemur; Welcome, Hello Moon!

Last week the team announced they are entering into a strategic partnership with well-known Solana infrastructure provider, Hello Moon! Perhaps best known for providing fast blockchain access through their RPC nodes, they also provide a suite of additional services on top. In their announcement, the team specifically describes Hello Moon as “an industry-leading blockchain indexer”. XCode (Project Manager – Portal Team) later confirmed that the team is indeed stepping back from their in-house product, Fuzzy Lemur, to instead use such indexing services from Hello Moon going forward (in addition to their RPC nodes).

Search up everything we ever said about project Fuzzy Lemur and insert Hello Moon

XCode

Besides -hopefully- more stable and powerful RPC nodes, this move should free up some hands to work on other, more game-related aspects!

Wrap Up

To wrap things up, here is the last WIP shot shared with us this past week. It’s a Pearce X4 with different weapons attached to its fixed hardpoints!

Until next week!