GM - It’s been awhile since our last Realms update so there is a lot to cover.
So we don’t overwhelm you, we’re releasing just broad Realms Ecosystem updates this week and will focus on individual projects next week.
In general, though some might feel discouraged by the current valuation of the $LORDS token, things are looking healthy within the ecosystem.
First, Starknet has reupped its commitment with Realms and fully onchain gaming with major financial commitment to BiblioDAO, including a $2 million $STRK grant and a commitment to covering player gas fees for ten Realms games (so far). Second, BiblioDAO has passed several improvement proposals that make it possible to attract and bootstrap new gaming studios to the ecosystem. Third, several of the Realms teams have attracted outside investors in order to scale, which we’ll discuss next week Finally, the partnership between Realms and Cartridge also continues to pay dividends with many high caliber gaming studios building out their visions on the upcoming Realms L3 using Cartridge tools.
Okay, that’s enough intro. Let’s get to it.
Starknet Propulsion Program
The Starknet Foundation launched the Propulsion Pilot Program, an experimental initiative created to accelerate the growth of games and gaming studios on Starknet. Announced on June 18, the program has selected 20 projects to receive up to 1 million USD each, based on the gas usage of their games on Starknet Mainnet.
Key features of the program include:
A gas rebate mechanism, granting developers funds equivalent to the gas spent by users playing their games.
A decaying schedule for funding, starting at 90% of gas spent for the first $100,000 and decreasing gradually.
An upfront payment of $50,000 for applications live on mainnet or testnet with a proper UI at the time of application.
A 12-month execution phase for selected projects.
The application process, which ran from April 26th to May 17th, evaluated projects based on originality, innovation, team skills, community engagement, and long-term potential.
Among the selected games, ten Realms games secured funding:
Call the Banners
Blob Arena
Eternum
Force Prime Heroes
Loot Survivor
Paved
Pistols at Ten Blocks
Rising Revenant
zConqueror
zKlash
This initiative addresses the challenge of high network fees in blockchain gaming and is intended to support developers launching games on Starknet Mainnet or appchains settled on Starknet. The Starknet Foundation plans to follow this pilot with further seasons and opportunities for participation.
If you’d like to hear directly from developers on what this means for the space, check out this AMA hosted by Dylan Kugler from the Starknet Foundation featuring developers Loaf from the Realms Core Team, Revilo from Paved, and Chris Lexmond from Influence.
Eternum Update
We’ve been talking about Eternum forever and we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Private testing is live on the Realms L3 with public testing coming soon. The team originally planned on a public release in Q3 and that seems on track.
Core developer Loaf gave an update two weeks ago expanding on the vision behind Eternum, stating that the game may have started out as a more traditional online strategy game (though still epic), it has evolved into an “open-source async game engine” that’ll allow for any developer to spin up their own versions of the game and build however they see fit.
Over the past two months the team has completed the banking system with AMMs, completed combat contracts, allowed new combat options, reworked the client UI, and refined the art design.
You can see some of the fruits of this labor with this recently released screenshot:
Realms Studio Progress
Again, next week we’ll concentrate on the nitty gritty of what exactly is being built by specific teams but we wanted to give you a general overview of what’s currently available for players to test. I’ve included the link in the third column but unfortunately Substack doesn’t have great built-in table features. I’ll provide a link to all these at the end of this article.
Currently Playable:
Weekly “Belly Up” Spaces at the Fool and Flintlock Tavern
BiblioDAO members have started gathering weekly at the Fool and Flintlock Tavern in an X spaces event they call “Belly Up.” These casual meetups, held every Wednesday at 1pm UTC, provide an informal space for community members to connect and share stories.
The events have been hosted by several of the teams building within Realms including Grug from Grug’s Lair and Cumberlord from Paved. Attendees have been fortunate to also win some lucrative prizes over the last two weeks for correctly guessing the ingredients of a mystery drink. The awards have been $LORDS tokens and even a Realms NFT that provides DAO voting rights and will be usable in the upcoming Eternum launch.
Here’s a snippet by DAO member 4ry4 describing the last event.
Curious about what's brewing? Be sure to set an alert for the Realms Twitter account where all Fool and Flintlock announcements will be made.
BiblioDAO Governance
BIP-42: The proposal went live on June 5 and passed unanimously with 1,551 BIBLIO votes. This BIP will create multisig accounts on StarkNet for six DAO functions: 1) Frontinus House Funding Program, 2) Developer work, 3) Emissions, 4) AMM, 5) DAO Income, and 6) Ad Hoc Projects and Tasks
A naming system using ENS (bibdao.eth) and Starknet.id (bibdao.stark) domains will also be implemented to facilitate cross-chain account tracking. Subdomains will be assigned to each account, such as development.bibdao.eth on Ethereum and development.bibdao.stark on StarkNet. The proposal involves no changes to existing account structures or balances, with costs limited to gas fees for domain assignments. The Aelin Raise account, not under DAO control, will be excluded from the subdomain naming process.
BIP-41: Proposal 41 went live on May 26 and passed unanimously with 1,726 BIBLIO votes. The approved proposal allocates 200,000 $STRK tokens from a grant by the Starknet Foundation to fund the development of Eternum and Realms World. These tokens will be converted to approximately 250,000 USDC, providing about 5,000 hours or 33 months of developer work. The funding will allow for the onboarding of two new full-stack developers focusing on bringing Eternum to production readiness and improving the Realms World marketplace.
Legion of Lords
BiblioDAO recently announced the launch of the Legion of Lords, a new community guild initiative to unite BiblioDAO members and Realms gamers to compete in onchain gaming events, starting with Influence’s mainnet launch on July 27 (Today!).
Players looking to join the Legion of Lords can access detailed information here. The Legion will be gathering four times per week in the Realms Streaming Lounge to play onchain games.
FOCGers Forum (Fully OnChain Games)
Next week we’re going to introduce guest content from the newly formed gaming hub, FOCGers Unite. For the past two months, Nate from FOCGERs has been interviewing game developers and community members on their visions, strategies, successes and challenges related to fully onchain gaming.
Here are are a few of their recent interviews to give you a feel for the type of content Nate is creating:
Interview with LootHero, creator of Loot Survivor: Link
Interview with Y77cao from Project Mirage: Link
Interview with Cheelax from zKorp: Link
Interview with Recipromancer from Underware: Link
That’s it for now. We’re back weekly with new content including detailed updates on all the gaming projects building within Realms. Thanks for joining us!