Alpaca Universe
Alpaca Universe (alpun) is a cozy browser farm game built on Solana. The homepage is a small playable world: players connect a Solana wallet, stake the ALPUN token to generate daily Alpaca Energy, and spend that energy restoring an abandoned alpaca farm — collecting resources, crafting materials and constructing buildings along a fixed, linear path.
Dedicated players earn scarce, on-chain reward NFTs on a first-come, first-served basis. Everything else — resources, buildings, timers, progression — lives off-chain in the game backend.
Collect → Process → Build → Unlock next plot → Repeat → Claim scarce NFT
The stack in one paragraph
A Next.js application embeds a Phaser game and talks to a Rust (Axum) backend backed by MongoDB. Solana holds the money: the ALPUN SPL token, the staking program and the reward NFTs. The backend is the authoritative game engine; the chain is the authoritative ledger. Phaser controls presentation, Rust controls game rules, MongoDB controls off-chain persistence, Solana controls financial ownership.
Where to go
| Section | What you will find |
|---|---|
| Architecture | System overview, on-chain vs off-chain split, deployment stack |
| Game design | Season 0 — ALPUN Founders Farm: map, parcels, resources, progression |
| NFT collection | The 3,000-piece ALPUN Founders Farm collection and how to earn it |
| On-chain | ALPUN token and the staking design |
| Technical | Rust backend, MongoDB schema, REST/WebSocket API, frontend |
| Operations | Kubernetes workloads and the GitOps deploy flow |
| Roadmap | The five MVP phases |
Principles
- Token utility over emissions. Staking generates energy and game benefits, not unlimited APY. Seasonal reward pools are fixed.
- The backend decides. The client may animate optimistically, but only the Rust backend decides whether a player receives a reward.
- Ledgers, not balances. Every resource balance is backed by an append-only ledger entry with an idempotency key.
- Minimal on-chain surface. Only deposits, withdrawals, locks, claims and NFT mints touch the chain. Ordinary gameplay never does.