Good News and Bad News
- First the bad news - Rising Star will be shutting down in it's current form.
- The good news - Blockchain Gaming, run by
, will take over the management of the game and will be working with the Rising Star community to relaunch it taking everyone's feedback into account. I (Jux) will also be part of this new team as an advisor and some of the developers in the community have agreed to be involved in various ways.
Weren't You Going To Make The Game Self-Sustainable?
Yes it is true that I have been working towards this goal since this long bear market started however a few things have happened that have meant this is not happening fast enough and the costs are now too prohibitive for this to work anytime soon.
- Firstly the HBD interest rate dropped from 20% to 12%, that's quite a difference and had an immediate hit on our plan.
- Secondly our hosting company increased their prices
- Thirdly HIVE has not started to recover and I really had hoped that it would have done so by now but the entire crypto market is struggling at the moment. Things do seem to be indicating that we are likely to be at a bottom and recovery should happen in the future but we could still be many months from that recovery starting.
The Straws That Broke The Camel's Back
A couple of things happened in the last week that were the last straw - some of the Hive Engine bridges were hacked and some HIVE & Hive Engine nodes shut down.
I have tried to get the game running again on different nodes but none of them have worked. Even if I could get them working I have had issues in the past where the game was blocked from using them after a while as we put a lot of calls in.
I had also started accumulated some SWAP.ETH & SWAP.SOL and those funds were stolen during the hack. They weren't large amounts but were part of the plan.
The Next Steps
I will be cancelling the current hosting contract soon and if possible will leave the game running until they shut down the server so you can at least play and have a think about what features you would like to see in the relaunched game.
I will hand over management of STARPRO & STARBITS to Blockchain Gaming and will stop selling those tokens.
The Rising Star discord will probably be the place that Waggi wants to discuss things so I will keep that going.
Conclusion
It has been a lot of fun running Rising Star for over 6 years. I have learned a lot and met some amazing people, many of whom I now consider friends.
I want to thank everyone who has supported the game through the good times and the hard times and hope that you will continue to support Waggi and his new team as they work towards relaunching in the future. Please keep in touch with him in Discord so that you end up with the game you really want and can enjoy for years to come.
Lastly a massive thank you to the two people that have been with me since the beginning and have worked for almost nothing, 
Cheers and rock on \m/
Jux.