SAGE Labs, the browser-based sci-fi gaming experience Solana of the Star Atlas team, saw more than 2.29 million transactions on Sunday, surpassing the total for the entirety Polygon network with approximately 256,000 transactions.
According to facts from analytics platform Flipside Crypto, Star Atlas’ SAGE Labs experience has seen a total of more than 16 million transactions since its launch last month. The browser game is a completely on-chain experience, where almost every interaction requires the user to sign on the Solana blockchain with their wallet, which incurs a small gas fee to verify each transaction.
SAGE Labs is a 2D space management simulation experience that contains many menus, simulated resource management tasks and data, unlike an immersive 3D gaming experience like the core of Star Atlas MMORPG in development.
SAGE Labs has launched! Updated statistics below.
16,000,000+ Solana transactions
Join the journey now: https://t.co/o8W50NyxsP
— Star Atlas (@staratlas) October 9, 2023
On Sunday, SAGE Labs recorded 2,293,210 transactions per Flipside. By comparison, the entire Polygon network saw 2,037,330 transactions, according to data from blockchain explorer Polygon scan. Polygon is an Ethereum scaling network.
Ultimately, SAGE Labs transactions made up approximately 15% of all activity on the Solana network on October 8 alone. But while SAGE Labs’ transaction figures may indicate a significant player pool, digging into the data suggests otherwise.
SAGE Labs saw 1,442 active players on Sunday, each executing around 1,590 trades each. That’s a staggeringly high number of transactions for a single player, but that’s because of the way the game is designed.
Star Atlas unlocks tools to help game developers build on Solana
The spike in SAGE Labs activity has generated some attention on social media, with Twitter users debating how exactly a single game dwarfs an entire blockchain ecosystem.
However, it is unclear how many of these transactions may have come from bots or automated accounts. Star Atlas developer ATMTA did not immediately respond Declutter‘s request for comment regarding whether it is able to determine if and how many SAGE users may be bots or otherwise automate the experience.
A Star Atlas representative previously mentioned it Declutter via email that SAGE Labs is “unlike any other”Web3“game out there” because “absolutely everything is done on-chain.” When more (or all) game elements require a player to sign a transaction with their wallet, this can add up, even with a relatively small player base.
A game like SAGE Labs is different from other games that are used NFTs because many blockchain games offer an optional crypto experience, meaning players aren’t forced to connect to one wallet or spend crypto to play.
But SAGE Labs requires a Solana-compatible wallet to play, as well as some SOL or Star Atlas’ ATLAS tokens in said wallet to create a character and progress through the experience.
Michael Wagner, CEO of Star Atlas, said this earlier Declutter that developers can use SAGE Labs to build their own user interface or customize the game mechanics to create their own experience.
While SAGE Labs has seen substantial traffic, Star Atlas has faced economic challenges this year. It stopped in July 73% of its workforce. Wagner told it at the time Declutter that the layoffs were necessary to adapt to market conditions and reduce overhead to “enable a long runway” for Star Atlas’ continued development.