🥅 FIFA's Launching Its Own Chain. FIFA will migrate its official NFT collection from Algorand and Polygon to a new EVM-compatible FIFA Blockchain to support future fan experiences.
⚙️ Bitcoin Debates Bigger Data Storage. A proposal to lift Bitcoin’s OP_RETURN limits and allow larger data storage like images has sparked debate; critics claim it strays from Bitcoin’s purpose, while supporters argue it reflects how the network is already used today.
🖼️ CryptoPunks Head to the Museum. 12 'Punks will be featured in Infinite Images: The Art of Algorithms, a generative art survey opening July 12th at the Toledo Museum of Art. The show traces art from ancient systems to generative onchain works.
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GUIDE
Eternum Season 1: Starknet's Biggest MMO Expands Its Battlefield
Starknet has a gem in Eternum, which is built atop the Dojo engine and the Cartridge gaming stack. It's one of my favorite titles in onchain games because it plays like one of my favorite mainstream franchises, Sid Meier’s Civilization.
Yet unlike Civ, Eternum runs on fully open infrastructure. Its economy is real, its non-player characters are AI-powered, and its emergent gameplay is immutable.
After years in development, Eternum launched its Season 0 starter campaign in December 2024. It was an immediate hit, with 100s of players joining the fray to experiment with alliance-building, in-game trading, and securing territory.
Now, with Season 1 officially underway, Eternum has started the first of its next three gameplay phases. Let’s break down what’s new and how to jump in.
🆕 What’s New in Eternum S1
Season 0 laid the foundation here, so Season 1 is all about expanding and finetuning the gameplay.
Of course, one of the biggest changes in S1 is the arrival of Daydreams agents, i.e. AI NPCs that will now wander Eternum's map.
Each agent is randomly generated with its own personality and goals, so unpredictability will reign. You can talk to them, fight them and take their loot, or even try to turn them against your enemies.
“The agents this season are NPCs, not one-to-one equivalents of players,” Loaf, one of the creators of Eternum and Daydreams, told me via Telegram. “They appear on the map as armies that can explore, attack, pillage, and communicate with players while carrying a bounty.”
“Their behavior is fairly simple,” he continued. “Each agent is aware of its surroundings and chooses what to do next based on a set of generative traits assigned when it spawns. An agent might be ultra-aggressive and refuse to negotiate, or ultra-passive and avoid combat entirely. I haven’t hand-designed any specific agents. Instead, onchain randomness from the Cartridge VRF determines their traits.”
Another major update in S1? A more casual onboarding process. Players now have two distinct ways to enter the game:
🛖 Village Lords can jump in quickly using cash or stablecoins using a streamlined Cartridge Controller wallet, no NFT required. Villages are cheap, can be pillaged but not conquered, and offer a low-stakes way to explore the world, hunt agents, or support a larger Realm. This is the way to go for casual players and newcomers.
🏰 Realm Lords, on the other hand, mint a free S1 Pass using a Realms NFT or buy one via secondary market. This approach unlocks full control of a Realm city-state, including the ability to manage multiple armies, create resources, and tax surrounding Villages. Realms can be conquered, so it’s a more advanced, higher-risk player experience.
Additionally, there are a series of core gameplay improvements to look forward to in S1. One of the biggest shifts here has been integrating real-time combat.
This means in-game battles are now rapid and stamina-based, and this streamlining has been complemented with other tweaks. For instance, now you can block rivals' movements by positioning your armies shrewdly, plus terrain affects battle stats.
Troop tiering has also been overhauled, along with the game's production system. Eternum's Troops now have power tiers (T1, T2, T3), and production has been simplified with a new Labor mechanic. You can still micromanage your supply chain, but Labor allows casual players to focus on strategy without getting overwhelmed by managing resources.
🧭 How to Get Started
Another notable shift from Eternum S0 to S1 is the introduction of gameplay phases.
The first is the Season Pass phase, which begins today, April 30th. Realms NFT holders can mint their free passes during this period, and anyone else who wants to play as a Realms Lord can buy one on Element's secondary marketplace. If you plan to play as a Village Lord, you can skip this window.
Next up is the Settling phase, which begins on May 7th. At this point, players can start placing their Realms and Villages on the map. There's no combat during this wave, just scouting and prep.
Lastly is the Empire phase, which kicks off on May 14th. This is when gameplay will officially begin and players can start accumulating resources, trading, making alliances, and battling their armies for dominance. This phase will run indefinitely until a player achieves enough Victory Points to end the season.
“In Season 0, we seriously underestimated demand across the entire stack,” Loaf told me. “Since then we’ve re-engineered everything from the smart contracts to the server architecture to handle the load this time around.”
“Breaking the launch into stages spreads traffic, but it also adds strategy to where you place your Realms,” he added. “You could cluster them to gain economic strength, yet that same concentration can make you more vulnerable to destruction if you’re not careful.”
👀 What to Watch For
If you're planning on jumping into the Eternum S1 campaign, remember you can take various strategic approaches to your gameplay.
Conquerors focus on dominating territory with their armies. Merchants go for economic superiority via resources. Hunters track Daydreams agents to steal their $LORDS and $STRK loot.
Of course, you can blend these strats. They're overarching paths, not hard-set classes. Plus, hunting Daydreams agents isn't the only way to earn token rewards in-game, as S1 comes with a hefty war chest: 1 million $LORDS (the native token of the Realms World multiverse) and 100,000 $STRK are up for grabs, spread across four pools.
There’s a Victory Pool for top tribes (i.e. player guilds), an Achievement Pool for leaderboard grinders, a Hunt Pool for players who defeat or ally with agents, and an Arts & Emissaries Pool for creatives who contribute to the world’s lore and culture.
All that said, there’s plenty of incentives to dive in, test new strategies, and leave your mark on S1’s chaos. With new mechanics and slicker onboarding, Eternum is now better positioned for a breakout as one of the most compelling experiments in fully onchain worldbuilding to date.
“If players engage as they did in Season 0 and we nail performance and scaling, Eternum will be a wild success and a platform we can keep building on,” Loaf said. “The first 1,000 users are always the hardest, Season 0 attracted about 800 sign-ups.”
Personally, I have a feeling that 1k milestone will be easily eclipsed this season. If you're keen to join the fray, follow Eternum's comms for updates ahead of the Settling phase on May 7th, and check out the game's docs to brush up on key concepts like settling, resources, and managing armies.
In the meantime, I wish you good fortune in the wars to come, milords and miladies.
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