📗DAO History

A brief timeline of the various milestones in the DAO's existence

White Paper (Jan 14, 2021)

From the moment of Star Atlas' inception, the founders envisioned having a governance token (POLIS) that would allow the community to influence decision-making:

[...] control of POLIS will enable the gaming community to influence decision making of the Star Atlas development team. This will follow a period of centralization of decision making, likely 2-3 years of game development and balance. At the conclusion of the centralized period, holders will be able to influence game economics (i.e. inflation rates), asset release schedules, game direction, and will otherwise provide some degree of ownership in development decision making.

— White Paper (January 14th, 2021)

Economics Paper (Aug 18, 2021)

Very quickly, the team decided to go much further than that. Their goal was to ensure that the community, through the Star Atlas DAO, would own, maintain, and safeguard their creation after delivering their initial game vision.

With a long-term perspective, DAO governors will ultimately be able to drive the direction of Metaverse development. Even to the extent that the founding Star Atlas development team could be voted out as the primary vendor for game assets and game design. Other areas of more immediate focus include: economic revisions, feature releases, asset release schedules, and optionality to incorporate player-created content. The total supply of POLIS is permanently fixed and does not increase.

— Economics Paper (August 18th, 2021 ) [emphasis ours]

The Economics Paper goes into much more depth regarding the governance aspect:

The long-term vision of Star Atlas is an autonomous, player-owned game, fully controlled and funded by decentralized governance. Therefore, from its early stages, the economy is architected to run through a hierarchy of DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations), fueled by the governance token (POLIS) and cash flows of ATLAS.

And:

[The Star Atlas DAO] (universal for all players) regulates the overall well-being of Star Atlas. This is a constant in the in-game economy, and—in the long term —the game as a whole. [...] the DAO will be able to vote on developments to lend, grant, and invest in new developments.

And [emphasis ours]:

The ultimate vision of Star Atlas is to be fully decentralized and sustainable. However, in the early stages, it is critically important to get the game “right” and see it through to the fully-envisioned version. To this effect, the Star Atlas DAO is designed to allow the investors and players to take over the reins eventually, yet still allow a reasonable degree of control for the developers in the beginning.

TGE (Aug 26, 2021)

On August 26th, 2021, the POLIS token was sold for the first time.

Seeding the Treasury (Dec 17, 2021)

Before Governance went live, the team started seeding the DAO's treasury in various ways. This began in December 2021, when Faction Fleet (SCORE) went live. To maintain the fleets, players ("ship stakers") needed to send various resources (R4), which they could only acquire from the team at that time (through the Galactic Marketplace). Part of that revenue was split off and sent to the DAO Treasury.

Later, other revenue streams were made available, while the R4 one ended when players were enabled to craft the R4 themselves.

🪙Treasury

POLIS Locker (Jul 21, 2022)

The POLIS Locker was the first component of the DAO stack to become available. It became operational on July 21st, 2022. Though PVP could not yet be used in the governance process (as there was none), people locking their POLIS could at least profit from the POLIS earnings provided through the Locker.

The team marks the release of the POLIS Locker as the official launch of the Star Atlas DAO.

Star Atlas Foundation Registered (Sept. 8, 2022)

The Star Atlas Foundation was officially created. See the Memorandum of Association for details.

Sustainable Governance Framework (Sept 29, 2022)

The team released a meaty paper [PDF] titled A Sustainable Governance Framework for Star Atlas.

It covers three main points:

1. Why decentralization is mission critical and well suited for Star Atlas

2. The vision and structure of the Star Atlas DAO

3. A proposed sustainable governance framework for Star Atlas

The paper describes the importance of decentralization for a complex Web3 gaming project such as Star Atlas. It examines challenges faced by DAOs today—decentralization can be ephemeral if not guided by a sustainable vision—and presents a long-term framework to support the community-led governance and development of Star Atlas.

Publication of an early version of PIP-1 (July 6, 2023)

The inaugural on-chain POLIS Improvement Proposal (PIP-1) introduces the Star Atlas DAO on-chain governance mechanisms, the Star Atlas Constitution, and the real-world Star Atlas Foundation.

The team launched a very elaborate first PIP, which contains three articles:

• Article 1 is the “Blockchain Supremacy Clause”, defining the Star Atlas DAO as a set of programs that operate autonomously on the decentralized, permissionless blockchain of Solana.

• Article 2 sets forth the Star Atlas Constitution, defines the governance framework, its parameters and processes, based on three guiding principles: Ensuring high quality and safety, being community owned and community built, and striving for a resilient, sustainable ecosystem.

• Article 3 ratifies the operations of the Star Atlas Foundation, a real-world agent protecting and conducting legal and business actions on behalf of the Star Atlas DAO.

This was later rescinded after it became clear that the team would not be able to finish work on voting on the PIP (due to the need to shrink the team).

Note: Unfortunately, the PIP itself can not be accessed anymore.

Governance V1 (July 10, 2024)

On July 3rd, 2024, as a special "one more thing"-style ending of that day's Town Hall session, Michael (CEO ATMTA) announced that, thanks to one of their team members (Yves, aka Xaenor), Star Atlas DAO governance would soon be going live!

On July 8th, 2024, the team published a detailed Medium article on the rollout and inner workings of this "V1" version of governance, the lifecycle of POLIS Improvement Proposals (PIPs), and the first four PIPs to go live before the end of that month.

It's important to stress that this governance process (as explained in the article) is not taking place on-chain just yet, though it does verify the wallets of the voters as part of the process (in order to assign the correct PVP weight to the vote). This concession was the only way the team could get governance live on such short notice, as work on essential game components meant they could not afford to prioritize on-chain governance development just yet.

On July 10th, the first two foundational PIPs opened up for voting:

• PIP-1: Star Atlas DAO — Establishes key definitions about the nature of the Star Atlas DAO, the legislative process for PIPs, including the criteria for submitting PIP drafts, and the scope of the DAO activities.

• PIP-2: Star Atlas Foundation — Establishes all definitions and attributions of the Star Atlas Foundation, the legal and real-world branch of the Star Atlas DAO.

After the POLIS holders approved these on July 23rd, 2024, two more PIPs opened up a day later (July 24th):

• PIP-3: Star Atlas Council — Establishes the process for the election and role of Council Members.

• PIP-4: Star Atlas Ecosystem Fund — Establishes the Star Atlas ecosystem fund, a segregated budget at the Star Atlas DAO’s disposal to fund projects and initiatives to help the Star Atlas ecosystem grow and develop.