Welcome to our 187th 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 in the Star Atlas universe, the countdown to Community Week has begun in earnest, with fresh details about the festivities, competitions, and rewards on the horizon. The team has also released the latest Economic report for Q2 2025, while a new DAO proposal is now up for vote. And last but not least, Michael shared a message addressing concerns around the team’s recent token sales.
Let’s dive in!
Star Atlas – Community Week
Community Week
The team has still not disclosed when Community Week 2025 will take place, but they did share more about what to expect during the event on last week’s Atlas Brew.
The schedule is tentatively planned as such:
- Monday — Kick off
- Tuesday — COPA
- Wednesday — Secret event
- Thursday — Team vs Community shooter (prizes)
- Friday — Joni awards
- Saturday — Community Carnival Raffle
Community Carnival
Throughout Community Week, the team is organizing activities and challenges that present opportunities for community members to earn or win Carnival tickets. These activities will include Discord games (Gartic is being reintroduced, alongside other community favorites from the past), as well as Marble races.
At the end of the week, everyone will be able to submit their tickets and participate in the raffle that will take place on Saturday to win prizes from the (as yet undisclosed) prize pool.
Joni Awards
A few things were clarified/updated since our Joni Award coverage from last week:
- The most popular guild category will be 100% community-voted. The team will not vote on this category (unlike all other categories, where their vote accounts for 90% of the weight).
- The most knowledgeable community member will witness a live battle to decide who gets to bring home the trophy, and the team has not updated the Best Gunplayer category now with a live gunplay battle to determine who is the best.
Community Tool Ads
The Community team plans to run ads for community tools & products during the various events held during Community Week. If you want to see your product featured, DM Santi and send him a high-quality video ad of up to 2 minutes that showcases it.
Deadlines
Please submit your nominations for the Joni Awards and your COPA submission (if you are a DAC leader) by Friday, July 17th.
You can submit these here:
A Note from Michael
In response to people complaining about the team selling tokens, Michael (CEO) wrote the following response on Telegram, which we thought valuable enough to repeat here:
I’m not sure if people fully comprehend this, but ensuring the studio is solvent is my number one priority. Without ATMTA, every asset in the ecosystem is worthless. We have a number of core revenue streams, including asset sales, marketplace fee revenue, tensor crew revenue, etc., but revenues market wide are down to non-existent. Given we are facing major macro forces at play that are out of our control, we need to manage cash flows from systems that we can control.
I don’t have any desire to sell tokens at these levels, but they are necessary to ensure we are here for the true alt bull cycle. And as we emerge from that, given the rapid maturity of our product, I have confidence we can decouple from crypto correlation being a driver for revenues and can achieve success with a mainstream audience. We need to get there. And all of the actions we take as a team ensure we will. Fundamentally, we have many great tokenomics mechanisms that ultimately encourage acquiring, holding, and staking (saving) the tokens. With many more features still to come online as we continue to develop. I believe these will be major catalysts for token appreciation over time, but again, we need to be around to see them materialize.
FWIW, I’m the single largest holder of both tokens. I’ve acquired those tokens on the open market using personal funds. So I feel the pain when price goes down. But I also appreciate the significant upside potential available here.
DAO Update & Comet
A new PIP has opened up for voting!
PIP-18: Marketing & Merch Expansion for Gamescom 2025 — This proposal seeks funding of up to 5,775 EUR (in ATLAS equivalent) from the DAO Treasury to expand the reach and impact of the already approved PIP 8 (Star Atlas Comet Meetup at Gamescom 2025). The event will take place on August 23, 2025, in Cologne, Germany, during Europe’s largest gaming convention.
Results around time of publication: 96.08% For | 3.92% Against | 0% Abstain Closes: Thursday, July 17th, end-of-day UTC
This PIP is a follow-up to the first community proposal ever created (and approved), PIP-8. On Saturday, August 23, 2025, from 16:00 to 24:00, the community will host a Star Atlas meetup, dubbed Comet, which is expected to welcome ~100 community members and Gamescom visitors who want to learn more about Star Atlas and get to know each other. There will also be some presentations from community members.
If you’d like to join, make sure to sign up soon! Once ~100 people have signed up, the Comet team will no longer be able to accept additional visitors. There is considerable interest from outside the Star Atlas community, so this will happen sooner rather than later.
Econ Report Q2
The Econ team published the Quarterly Economic Report for Q2 of 2025 this past week. We copied the Executive Summary and Key Highlights below!
This quarter marked a pivotal phase in the evolution of the Star Atlas economy, marked by a renewed focus on operational self-sufficiency and long-term value retention. Faction Infrastructure Contracts (FICs) re-emerged as the dominant source of ATLAS emissions, supported by a growing preference among players to hold or reinvest rather than liquidate tokens. This behavioral shift, alongside record ATLAS locking activity, reflected increased confidence in the ecosystem’s stability amid broader macroeconomic headwinds.
While overall wealth and population experienced minor declines, the Star Atlas Census highlighted a continued migration toward resident and citizen groups, now the majority holders of ecosystem wealth. Economic output, as measured by GDP, contracted sharply for most of the quarter but showed signs of recovery as the period progressed. Holosim also gained early traction as a low-barrier, free-to-play entry point, reinforcing the ecosystem’s capacity to attract and onboard new participants.
Activity in the ship crafting and rental markets remained healthy, with crafted ships increasingly integrated into productive fleet deployments. Ship prices across rental-relevant classes appreciated steadily, while volatility in certain segments created room for opportunistic trading despite a challenging macro backdrop.
Key Highlights
- Despite the 41% increase in daily ATLAS emissions this quarter, the swap volume of emitted ATLAS remained at only 5% of decentralized exchange ATLAS volume on average.
- For the first time in Star Atlas history, employed groups such as citizens and residents now control over 70% of the total wealth within the ecosystem.
- The ATLAS token locker reached a new all-time high locked balance of 2.147 billion ATLAS.
- Fleets rented from the Star Atlas Fleet Rental Program account for 10% of all active fleets within SAGE Starbased.
- The xSmall ship class saw 12% appreciation this quarter as one of the most dominant ship classes used in rental fleet compositions.
News Bits
Lastly, there are a few small news bits worth your while:
- Santi (VP of Community & Ecosystem) shared that the team is in talks with the Solana Seeker phone team to explore potential opportunities for collaboration.
- Dominic (Sr. Community Manager) showcased Spectator mode during the Atlas Brew, plus the new Gattling gun. Both are included in the planned Summer UE5 update (expected in the 2nd half of July).
- Holosim testers will likely receive some token of recognition (a Discord role or badge)
- Beyond the quarterly Economic Report, there was another Economic Forum last week as well!
You’ve reached the end of this week’s issue! Thanks for reading!