Star Atlas is a next-generation video game incorporating aspects of the metaverse and Solana blockchain.
The game, where players travel through space to discover new planets and hidden treasures, was created by Michael Wagner and launched in December 2021.
Star Atlas is a play-to-earn game where players earn money by selling NFT items in an online marketplace.
Ships are one of the core assets in the Star Atlas metaverse represented by NFTs, allowing players to explore the universe, perform work on the game, and battle others.
Players must also choose between a human, android, or alien faction and then help their faction expand its sphere of control in deep space.
Star Atlas and the metaverse
At present, the developers of Star Atlas are focused on economics. They believe that the metaverse could potentially attract billions of new users, so it is important to balance the release of new assets with user adoption rates.
This will ensure that the economy on which Star Atlas is based does not suffer from hyperinflation.
To that end and since the full version has yet to be released, the business model of Star Atlas is currently focused on a phased release of game assets. This approach will enable the developers to raise the capital required to bring their full vision to life.
Phases include:
Phase 01 (Galactic Asset Offering) – after Star Atlas was launched, the first batch of in-game NFT assets were sold. While these assets could not be used in the game until the second phase, they were available for trade on decentralized exchanges.
Phase 02 (Browser Mini Game) – Star Atlas was then launched as a browser-based minigame where asset purchases on the Solana blockchain were usable across the entire Star Atlas feature set. During this phase, there is continuing revenue from the sale of the minigame.
Phase 03 (Shipyard Module Sale) – production then commenced on Star Atlas in Unreal Engine 5, with the first milestone a shipyard module allowing collectors and players to see their final assets including ships, crew, and components. To fund this phase, another round of assets will be made available for purchase in addition to further revenue from minigame sales.
Phase 04 (Final Pre-Sale at Beta) – all pre-live assets will go on sale once the beta version is released. Assets will be fully playable immediately after purchase.
Phase 05 (Ongoing Sales) – in the final phase, revenue will occur from continuing sales of assets and concepts created by the Star Atlas development team. When the full version of the game is launched, production-ready assets will no longer be available for purchase (excluding Phase 03 beta version assets). Once this point is reached, the parent company of Star Atlas plans to collect transaction fees on all in-game trades.
Key takeaways:
Star Atlas is a next-generation video game incorporating aspects of the metaverse and Solana blockchain. A browser mini-game was released in late 2021, with a full version for PC in development but currently without a scheduled release date.
The business model of Star Atlas is currently focused on a five-phase release of NFT assets sold to players in its marketplace. This approach will also allow the developers of Star Atlas to bring their vision of the game to life.
Revenue will also come from ongoing sales of the browser minigame which was released in late 2021. Once the full version is live, the parent company of Star Atlas will collect transaction fees from in-game trades.
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A Merkle tree is a data structure encoding blockchain data more efficiently and securely. The Merkle tree is one of the foundational components of a Blockchain protocol.
The nothing-at-stake problem argues that validators on a blockchain with a financial incentive to mine on each fork are disruptive to consensus. Potentially, this makes the system more vulnerable to attack. This is a key problem that makes possible underlying blockchain protocols, based on core mechanisms like a proof-of-stake consensus, a key consensus system, that together the proof-of-work make up key protocols like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
A 51% Attack is an attack on the blockchain network by an entity or organization. The primary goal of such an attack is the exclusion or modification of blockchain transactions. A 51% attack is carried out by a miner or group of miners endeavoring to control more than half of a network’s mining power, hash rate, or computing power. For this reason, it is sometimes called a majority attack. This can corrupt a blockchain protocol that malicious attackers would take over.
A Proof of Work is a form of consensus algorithm used to achieve agreement across a distributed network. In a Proof of Work, miners compete to complete transactions on the network, by commuting hard mathematical problems (i.e. hashes functions) and as a result they get rewarded in coins.
An Application Binary Interface (ABI) is the interface between two binary program modules that work together. An ABI is a contract between pieces of binary code defining the mechanisms by which functions are invoked and how parameters are passed between the caller and callee. ABIs have become critical in the development of applications leveraging smart contracts, on Blockchain protocols like Ethereum.
A Proof of Stake (PoS) is a form of consensus algorithm used to achieve agreement across a distributed network. As such it is, together with Proof of Work, among the key consensus algorithms for Blockchain protocols (like the Ethereum’s Casper protocol). Proof of Stake has the advantage of security, reduced risk of centralization, and energy efficiency.
Proof-of-Activity (PoA) is a blockchain consensus algorithm that facilitates genuine transactions and consensus amongst miners. That is a consensus algorithm combining proof-of-work and proof-of-stake. This consensus algorithm is designed to prevent attacks on the underlying Blockchain.
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A Blockchain Business Model is made of four main components: Value Model (Core Philosophy, Core Value and Value Propositions for the key stakeholders), Blockchain Model (Protocol Rules, Network Shape and Applications Layer/Ecosystem), Distribution Model (the key channels amplifying the protocol and its communities), and the Economic Model (the dynamics through which protocol players make money). Those elements coming together can serve as the basis to build and analyze a solid Blockchain Business Model.
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The history of Bitcoin starts before the 2008 White Paper by Satoshi Nakamoto. In 1989 first and 1991, David Chaum created DigiCash, and various cryptographers tried to solve the “double spending” problem. By 1998 Nick Szabo began working on a decentralized digital currency called “bit gold.” By 2008 the Bitcoin White Paper got published. And from there, by 2014, the Blockchain 2.0 (beyond the money use case) sprouted out.
An altcoin is a general term describing any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin. Indeed, as Bitcoin started to evolve since its inception, back in 2009, many other cryptocurrencies sprouted due to philosophical differences with the Bitcoin protocol but also to cover wider use cases that the Bitcoin protocol could enable.
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An imaginary flywheel of the development of a crypto ecosystem, and more, in particular, the Ethereum ecosystem. As developers join in and the community strengthens, more use cases are built, which attract more and more users. As users grow exponentially, businesses become interested in the underlying ecosystem, thus investing more in it. These resources are invested back in the protocol to make it more scalable, thus reducing gas fees for developers and users, facilitating the adoption of the whole business platform.
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In essence, Polkadot is a cryptocurrency project created as an effort to transform and power a decentralized internet, Web 3.0, in the future. Polkadot is a decentralized platform, which makes it interoperable with other blockchains.
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BAT or Basic Attention Token is a utility token aiming to provide privacy-based web tools for advertisers and users to monetize attention on the web in a decentralized way via Blockchain-based technologies. Therefore, the BAT ecosystem moves around a browser (Brave), a privacy-based search engine (Brave Search), and a utility token (BAT). Users can opt-in to advertising, thus making money based on their attention to ads as they browse the web.
Uniswap is a renowned decentralized crypto exchange created in 2018 and based on the Ethereum blockchain, to provide liquidity to the system. As a cryptocurrency exchange technology that operates on a decentralized basis. The Uniswap protocol inherited its namesake from the business that created it — Uniswap. Through smart contracts, the Uniswap protocol automates transactions between cryptocurrency tokens on the Ethereum blockchain.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
