Michael Wagner building a space metaverse with Star Atlas

0:01i'm ashton addison from event chain for investmentpitch media and the cryptocoin show and today on blockchain interviews we have michael wagner the ceo of star atlas michael welcome to the show and thanks for taking the time to be here today hey ashton great to be here thanks so much i'm really excited to dive into star atlas i know your team's working on

0:20some really interesting parts of your project right now and i would love to just kick it off for the viewers with a high level overview and the focus of star atlas and the metaverse absolutely let's let's describe that across really the dual prong approach that we're taking internally as a company uh so first and foremost what we're building is a high quality or triple a title uh

0:43space exploration themed video game concept and we're building that on blockchain we are building on the solana blockchain um in addition to that so this is our near-term focus is to build out an entertaining engaging video game experience that would be attractive uh to a mainstream audience not just the niche that is blockchain gamers but rather all

1:03gamers globally so that's our near term focus is to deliver this functionality longer term we see a tremendous amount of potential in building what is commonly referred to as the metaverse essentially a virtual alternative universe within what which an individual can persist and when you start to consider gaming coupled with financial incentives uh delivered via blockchain mechanics

1:29alongside the metaverse you you the result is a real economic experience in which players are actually able to derive real world value from very cool and i'm super excited about star alice specifically as a metaverse because there have been other platforms that are working on metaversus but it seems you're just in one little island or on a country and

1:50to build a full you know space themed one i i anticipate that to be super exciting and intricate um can you just explain a little bit more about you know how you've designed this platform i know you're working on building the metaverse and you're sort of early on right now where are you at right now with the platform yeah our immediate focus as i said is

2:12really on the video game experience uh i will caveat that and say you know we've worked extensively in the digital currency blockchain space for years um and have followed a lot of the trends um and and momentum the evolution of the industry over time and so seeing what was taking place in both d5 and nfts and coupling that with blockchain gaming was important to us

2:33uh so we have a near-term uh milestone in that we're calling rebirth which is a 14-piece digital art collection we're launching that on april 24th but but really the immediate focus is on delivering this gameplay experience uh which will be launched in july of this year the the general game uh mechanics include things like space exploration so you know purchase a spaceship and fly

2:57around navigate the stars uh territory control so you can actually purchase land build structures on that land participate in mining which actually generates some of the financial rewards and political domination we have two tokens in the game atlas and polis and polis is our governance token which is usable both in-game to exert power over other players and then also outside of the

3:19game to um to have voting rights in the actual development decision making process that we execute under as a development company very cool michael and yeah that sort of leads me into the question on i know you mentioned that there's going to be blockchain integrations and it's going to really open it up to a lot more interaction with the players but you're trying to focus

3:39on you know getting this to people outside of the blockchain as well but in terms of the blockchain integration can you just touch a little bit on you know how does star atlas differentiate itself by integrating the blockchain rather than just being a space exploration video game sure and and let me you know give a quick shout out to the solana protocol here because they've

4:01been amazing uh partners and collaborators with us in the development of this concept uh solana itself is a web is the first and really only web scale blockchain protocol in in production today uh which is absolutely essential to deliver the type of gaming experience that we're uh proposing here and so it's been fantastic working with them working with other ecosystem

4:24participants um and working with serum directly to deliver decentralized finance protocols within our our uh our video game concept so the the primary tools that we use from blockchain uh first and foremost are nfts or non-fungible tokens essentially unique uh assets that live on chain and so in our case that's everything from ships to crews components land equipment building

4:50structures the list goes on and on but effectively every one of those assets that a player can control are truly owned by them which means they can they can turn around and sell that asset later or trade that asset later or upgrade that asset and destroy that asset later but it's entirely up to them what they do with it uh secondary to that we incorporate

5:09crypto native assets uh as the core unit of the economy so as i mentioned atlas that's our in-game transactional currency it's effectively the same as in-game gold in any other video game concept with the exception of it's an actual cryptocurrency where it's traded freely on crypto markets and so players go through the various gameplay loops uh the rewards in most cases will be

5:33atlas which they can then cash out to real dollars we think this is very powerful um uh polis as i mentioned is our governance token and then finally the the third tool that we're utilizing to assist players with the generation of both income and yield on their assets is the integration of defy directly into the game and so players will be able to stake their assets

5:54they'll be able to contribute to liquidity pools and automated market makers uh and yield farming and one of the most promising pieces of technology that's emerging right now is effectively uh a concept that is a lending pool if you will um so players can contribute assets they own to the lending pool and then other players are able to go and borrow those or rent those

6:18so we're able to create a true sharing economy experience within the star atlas metaverse as a result of this players that otherwise couldn't afford assets per se um won't have an opportunity to rent them short term play in game make money off of that you know ideally they'd be making a profit and in the meantime the player who isn't engaged in game play is now earning

6:38residual income off of the asset that they're loaning out so we think these are all incredibly powerful tools for the for the gamer definitely it sounds incredibly powerful and just so much more interaction than your regular video game and to integrate decentralized finance and like financial products into it as well this is so interesting to be able to be engaged in something

7:01that's such more exciting than what you would find in the traditional financial industry of just putting some money somewhere and getting a return when it's actually something that you're super interested in and you did touch on the fact that you've worked closely with selena and serum you shout out shout out to them and i'm interested to learn a little bit more on you know that

7:19decision how you guys work together you know the majority of decentralized finance applications are on the ethereum blockchain and uh celana is not as known by as many but it seems like it has a lot of up-and-coming potential was there specific reasons that you decided to move in that direction or you know that moving forward you see that as the best option

7:41for star atlas absolutely there was a lot of due diligence conducted in advance of us selecting protocol uh the solana as our layer one protocol um as a quick aside though just on your on your previous point i think defy itself is the gamification of finance um and now we're just extending that one step further and saying here's an actual game environment where you can interact

8:02with it and gamify it even further so i think that that's a great opportunity to attract people and educate people on financial literacy and tools so but with respect to solana you know first and foremost the technology needed to be capable of handling a high number of transactions because as you can imagine if we scale this game to millions of players

8:25all of these player interactions taking place need to be recorded on chain and saving state on chain and so um solano was really the only protocol that would be capable of managing not only the transaction throughput minimizing transaction costs so in solana case case it's less than 1 100th of a penny per transaction things add up when you have millions of

8:48transactions occurring frequently and further they have sub-second finality which which just implies low latency low lag on the network and if you're a gamer your biggest enemy is lag you know that will get you killed more than often than not so um having this all in a unified package delivered by solano was was just essential now beyond that we also

9:12analyzed the team um and these the the founding members of solana come from uh high pedigree technology backgrounds at companies like qualcomm dropbox intel these guys understand how scalability works on a broad scale and so once again that was important um looking at the participants the people that were building within the solana ecosystem was also attractive

9:37we've made a number of relationships and partnerships with with other companies within the salon ecosystem such as audience such as as stardust such as ray starter soul starter seeing all of this innovation come about that was something that we wanted to be associated with right and then further really just the the other members of the ecosystem that have

10:00brought reach and have infrastructure capabilities so serum is you know largely supported and backed by ftx and alameda research and understanding that we would have that type of infrastructure at our disposal as a result of the relationship just made it a pretty straightforward decision for us and we do believe that we'll be able to build exclusively on solana into you know

10:21future definitely uh great information thank you for that michael and you mentioned near the beginning that you're in the works of releasing the platform in july in terms of actually having user adoption and growth do you expect to have a lot of organic growth just because this is an exciting project or are you also putting in user incentivization and early adopter

10:42incentivization uh into the platform to try and attract people right away i would say um really a broad spectrum so our go-to-market strategy is largely focused on the crypto community initially and we've seen a tremendous amount of interest from gaming groups such as yield guild gaming uh that operates a sizable uh guild of players that are interested

11:06in having ownership of assets in metaverses like star atlas and so we're reaching out to various groups like this to ensure that they have a place that they have a home in star atlas um you know longer term thinking we do when we do get further into the development pipeline and we create this fully immersive 3d vr enabled experience that is the starless metaverse

11:29um then then we'll be more proactive in reaching out to the broader uh gaming user base but for now it's to attract the people that understand how cryptocurrency works understand how defy works and so the you know the immediate benefits that we're delivering through this mini game experience is one exposure and touch point with the actual gameplay itself

11:49although not fully immersive um but perhaps more importantly are the financial incentives so as early as july players will be able to start mining and making money or participating in defy and making money so we think that that in and of itself is going to be a major point of attraction to um a lot of people in the crypto space and we think that that will extend out

12:09and bleed into the mainstream audience in time definitely thanks for that michael and i'm curious on the actual platform you know having experience with some other metaverses like decentraland for example i noticed that in the early stages of it because they're trying to make it decentralized it wasn't as quick or smooth as like a centralized game could be and maybe the

12:29graphics weren't as good and there's trade-offs between you know adding in all these financial functions versus a gameplay that doesn't have that stuff but it has more of the you know a console high level uh quality graphics is that a trade-off that you're seeing having to make and did you have to sacrifice any of those traditional video game qualities to

12:47integrate these financial functions i wouldn't i wouldn't call it so much a sacrifice um we operate as a hybrid ecosystem so there is the centralized game development company that is behind star atlas and we are you know we are the entity that has done all of the planning and strategy necessary to execute on this vision in time we do anticipate that we will be

13:11able to move this to a fully decentralized model but you know decision by committee is not always the best approach especially when you have a vision as large as ours and so the intent is let's get to a finished product a polished product that we understand you know the user base would want to play and then we can turn that over to the world now in the meantime the rest of the

13:31financial ecosystem is entirely decentralized so all of the assets the crypto native assets the d5 participation the the yield generation the interest uh or the income generation all of these things already execute in a decentralized world so um you know we'll just be monitoring this and determining at what point can we start to unlock more decentralization within the game itself

13:54definitely and i agree and i think that's a balance that is needed to be made especially in the early stages to get build that foundation get it off the ground then hand it over to the community because really you guys know what's best in the beginning i believe to grow it out so in terms of you know the late stage widespread adoption of star atlas and

14:13getting it to mainstream adoption what do you think will be one of the key factors to success to get to that point the the lack of better word the the hype is really real right now we we've just announced uh you know our intent to produce this game in january we have seen explosive growth in uh across discord across telegram in twitter and all of our social media channels

14:38and just the desire to play people just people understand how transformative this game can be uh how transformative the metaverse as a as an economic system can be and so word is spreading very quickly the interest is already there and we've done very little marketing outside of you know generally releasing to the public that we're here and we're already seeing massive

14:59adoption so i think that that will continue especially as we actually have these uh engagement points where the consumer can start to play right and one of the things that's really important to us we kind of consider this ultimate dream management which is to consistently factor in user feedback into the development process so once again we have the vision we know

15:21we have a good sense of what we think needs to be delivered but at the same time if there are feature requests or um let's just say feature requests from the community we want to incorporate that feedback and build on that feedback and get some sense consensus amongst the community so these are all important things to us definitely and for the viewers that

15:41aren't yet in the communities and they're looking to get involved follow along with the product launch and just learn more about star atlas what is the best way for them to learn more i think the easiest approach is just to direct everyone through our web domain which is star atlas.com we have links to all of our social media channels there and we also have some

16:01really exciting updates that we post there regularly so yeah i think that's the best uh avenue great thank you michael i will leave the link in the description box below as well thank you so much for taking the time to talk about star alice today it is a very exciting project and i'm excited to follow along for the launch and let's follow up in the near future

16:21that sounds great ashton really appreciate the questions