- Michael Wagner is the CEO of Star Atlas, a gaming metaverse built on top of the solana blockchain.
- In an interview, he breaks down the tokenomics of $ATLAS and $POLIS and why they are undervalued.
- He also explains why metaverse games will entice new users into crypto and dampen its volatility.
Amid the Facebook rebrand-driven momentum around the metaverse, Michael Wagner and his team at Star Atlas are in the fortunate position of getting to say: “We were doing it before it was cool.”
Wagner, a chartered financial analyst who previously worked in portfolio management, started conceptualizing Star Atlas — a blockchain-based, space-themed, multi-player video game — in mid-2020.
The self-proclaimed “computer nerd” was listening to a podcast one day when he heard Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX and Alameda Research, talk about launching a decentralized exchange called Serum (SRM) on the Solana blockchain. That institutional endorsement was enough for him to build his gaming metaverse on the upstart layer-one protocol as well.
“In hindsight, I think we made the absolute best choice,” Wagner told Insider in an interview. “Solana has experienced explosive growth and innovation around the protocol as well as the price of their token.”
Solana, whose SOL token has skyrocketed 11,193.5% in the past year, claims to be one of the fastest blockchains in the world with an ecosystem spanning over 400 decentralized finance, non-fungible token, and Web3 projects.
In Wagner’s view, the network is the only layer-one protocol that would be capable of scaling to the massive Star Atlas user base he’s envisioning. Solana can support 50,000 transactions per second.
He believes that Star Atlas also stands to benefit from all the innovative projects being built on the protocol as they can be directly integrated into the game. For example, the gaming platform is fully integrated with FTX-backed Serum, which allows users to participate in lucrative lending and yield farming activities.
What is Star Atlas?
Being part of the Solana ecosystem is far from the only edge that Star Atlas can claim. Like any entertaining game, it touts an engaging storyline and visual experience.
The story, largely written by chief product officer Danny Floyd, sets its metaverse in the distant future of 2620 where three major factions have emerged and “are in an ongoing struggle for resources, territorial conquest, and political domination.” So far, about 42,000 players have selected their factions and stand to earn rewards while trying to influence the outcome of this intergalactic conflict, according to Wagner and its whitepaper.
To create a true sense of immersion, the company used Unreal Engine 5’s Nanite technology, which allows the game to exhibit hyper-realistic cinematic visuals.
The tokenomics of ATLAS and POLIS
For all its allure, the video gameplay is just the entry point to the metaverse, which Wagner pictures becoming a place where people can socialize, shop, perform and participate in a variety of experiences. That’s why his team set out to design “a truly functional economy within the game” where the ATLAS and POLIS tokens come into play.
The ATLAS token is the in-game currency where users can acquire NFTs of digital assets such as spaceships, crew, land, and equipment in order to play the game. The POLIS token is the governance token where holders can influence the decision-making of the Star Atlas development team.
Users can start earning ATLAS tokens when they play the game but they can also become entrepreneurs inside the metaverse. For example, a user can purchase a digital ship with a concert hall and contract with musicians. (The estimated pricing can range from $20 for entry-level ships to $5 million for “titan-class” ships, according to Wagner.)
“Say DJ Aoki wants to come spin a set in virtual reality, the person that owns the ship and coordinated that event gets to charge a ticketing fee for anybody who wants to access that,” he said. “I think people will create businesses on central space stations or on planets with no intention of participating in the gameplay, but they will be legitimate resellers or operators of businesses that deliver products in physical reality.”
‘A mass migration of users into crypto’
In its first year of operation, Star Atlas has already seen explosive growth, raking in over $65 million in revenue year to date, according to Wagner.
Over time, he sees the economy of metaverse encompassing the global GDP. The reason is that blockchain-based games are not only attracting the 2.7 billion mainstream gamers but potentially the entire global population due to the economic opportunities within the metaverse.
Indeed, according to research from Ark Invest, revenue from virtual worlds will compound 17% annually from roughly $180 billion today to $390 billion by 2025.
“If we attract the global user base, then really the metaverse economy could be synonymous with the global economy and GDP,” he said. “When you think about all of the trillions of dollars that are transacted even daily, I absolutely believe that both ATLAS and POLIS are undervalued, especially on a long-term horizon.”
By driving “one of the largest mass migrations of new users into crypto”, gaming metaverse could also help dampen the
volatility
of cryptocurrencies, because people will continue playing games whether crypto is surging or selling off, Wagner said.
“People will still derive value from interacting with the game,” he explained. “While there will still be some volatility that exists in the potential for earnings, I think it will all be dampened.”
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