Dark Forest Beta v0.3 Rules

UPDATE: We’ve extended this round to end at the end of the day (Eastern time) on 8/15/20.

Welcome to Dark Forest v0.3!

This round will take place over the course of one week, from 8/8/20 until 8/15/20. We will be conducting the game on the Ethereum Ropsten testnet. Note that you will need Ropsten Ether to participate in the game. Other than that, this round is free to play.

The Whitelist

This is a semi-private beta round. We’ll be distributing invite keys to players in the Ethereum and ZK communities in the days leading up to the start of the game and during the week of the game. If you obtain a key, you’re free to use it or to gift it to someone else. If you obtain multiple keys, you’re free to use more than one for yourself.

We may release additional keys publicly at our discretion. If you’re interested in obtaining a key, subscribe to our mailing list at the bottom of the page, or follow us on Twitter.

Prizes

A total of 1024 DAI will be awarded to winners of the game. This prize pool will be allocated as follows:

• 256 DAI will be awarded to the first-place address, by score.
• 128 DAI will be awarded to the second- and third-place addresses.
• 64 DAI will be awarded to the fourth- through seventh-place addresses addresses.
• 32 DAI will be awarded to the eighth- through fifteenth-place addresses.

We’ll send instructions on claiming your prize after the game is complete. If you’ve won a prize, we’ll ask you to sign the (mainnet) address you’d like us to send your prize to, using the private key of the address you used to play on Ropsten.

Scoring

Players will be scored based on planets owned and resources accumulated. Your score will be the sum of:

• The 10 greatest population capacities of planets that you own.
• 10% of the silver held in your empire. This is the sum of the total silver cost of upgrades purchased on planets you own, plus all of the silver you hold on your planets at the end of the game. Note that if you capture a planet belonging to another player, the upgrades and silver on that planet count towards your score.

At the end of the day on 8/15/20 (Eastern Time), we’ll take a snapshot of the leaderboard and use this to determine the winners.

Bugs, Exploits, Bots, etc.

You are free to use any programmatic tools at your disposal. In particular, you are free to inspect the source code, to write smart contracts which interact with the core Dark Forest contract, or to modify your frontend client (we will make the code used for this game public). Lies, deception, bribes, and coordinate reveals are also fair game.

However, with respect to exploits, we ask that you play in “good faith.” Specifically, if you find a game-breaking bug, please report it to us. We may end the game early or terminate the game at our discretion if a game-breaking bug is found and exploited in a way that significantly affects the gameplay experience of other players.

Our ZK circuits and Ethereum smart contracts have not been audited, and all of this code is very experimental! We make no guarantees as to their correctness.

The seed of civilization has been planted. It will germinate and progress through the unpredictable world of Dark Forest. We invite you to log on in the future.