What we're building

Blockstars is a deeply social, deeply immersive and deeply engaging music management simulation game on the Solana blockchain.

Why did we choose to build a management sim?

Because we believe that the management simulation genre, where the goal is to be a good manager, and the goal is (typically) to accumulate progressively more resources, is the absolutely perfect model for a game designed from the ground up to be Play-and-Earn. Management sims reward players for being strong economic stewards - but until now, those rewards have been purely make-believe. Now, blockchain technologies fundamentally flip the script, and allow players to actually benefit from the actions they take (or don't take) in-game, to benefit financially from "putting in the time" that so many of us gamers do with our favorite games, currently for "free" (in fact, we pay the devs for the privilege of playing their games!). While many (if not all) genres of games can benefit from what blockchain technologies enable (most notably, true ownership and real scarcity), we believe that management sims are the purest and cleanest genre of game to fit into the Play-and-Earn mould.

Manage the in-game economy well and reap the real-world rewards, it really is as simple as that.

If you want more you can dive much deeper on our blog, where we wrote a detailed post on the subject of Why Blockchain Is the Perfect Fit For a Management Simulation Game. You can also check out our Twitter thread on the same subject.

Why did we choose music as the theme?

Because music is universal. Music transcends all cultures, all languages, all regions of the world - and we truly believe in a vision of making crypto accessible to everyone. Crypto and blockchain technologies are not (and should not be!) limited to just rich countries, or English-speakers, or those with particular knowledge of a specific niche. Quite the opposite, in fact - just like many developing nations leapfrogged landline telephone infrastructure by going straight to mobile networks, we are seeing the same dynamics at play with blockchain technologies. El Salvador has adopted Bitcoin as an official currency. Axie Infinity is enabling many Filipinos to earn three times the national minimum wage. Blockchain more broadly is bringing financial inclusivity to parts of the world where the notion of a stable & frictionless financial infrastructure previously seemed like a pipedream.

Everyone in the world has music - and as a result, we hope to make Blockstars as accessible as possible to everyone around the globe, and in so doing, be a part of making crypto mainstream everywhere.

Why did we choose the Solana blockchain?

Because we believe that Solana is the best place for game developers to build, with the best that blockchain enables, at this moment in time. Solana recognizes that games are the on-ramp to blockchain for the mainstream, a vision that we strongly believe in as well.

We could have chosen a layer-two solution on top of Ethereum, and the vast majority of the alternative partners we considered were indeed layer-twos, but in the end we chose Solana due to not only low costs, but fast & scalable infrastructure and, perhaps most importantly, a very supportive team. We believe that Solana is a partner for the long haul, and with our multi-year roadmap, that is what we need.

We also believe that our players will benefit from the technical decisions the Solana blockchain has made - for example, building on the Rust language. As Anatoly Yakovenko, creator of Solana, said: "This [Rust] is a language that is as fast as C, gives me all the modern type safety of Haskell, and it works." This could be said of the rest of the Solana technical stack as well - ensuring reliability and security without sacrificing speed and scalability.

By taking a bold step to create a new layer 1 blockchain, the Solana team enabled the community to benefit from learnings built on both first principles and the shoulders of past giants alike. We are proud and excited to build Blockstars on the Solana platform to help bring that future into the present.