We look back on the past not only out of a deep-seated nostalgia for that era but also in the hope of learning from past experiences and using those lessons to perform better in the future.

The official Dark Forest team maintained the project for approximately two and a half years, from 2020 to 2022 Q1.

During that time, they launched a total of 8 public test rounds: versions 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, and 0.6.1 through 0.6.5. Each testing round typically lasted one to two weeks. Player numbers generally grew steadily throughout the official team’s involvement, which reflected a healthy trajectory for the project. Unfortunately, after the two-week-long round 0.6.5, the official team never launched another public round. According to some secondhand sources, key members of the office Dark Forest team had moved on to pursue new paths in life.

The success of Dark Forest can be analyzed from two perspectives: external conditions and the inherent characteristics of the project.

From an external perspective, the development of the Dark Forest project happened to align with favorable market conditions. At the time, NFTs were the dominant trend in the crypto space, a strong bull market was underway, and confident market participants were actively searching for the next alpha opportunity. The market also needed broader narratives to support the growing NFT hype, and metaverse or gaming projects naturally became attractive themes. In this environment, where market attention was expanding and external conditions were relatively favorable, Dark Forest, an experimental project with forward-thinking design, gradually gained traction. In 2021, there were not many fully onchain games. Projects such as Dark Forest, conquest.eth, and ISAAC (developed by the Topology team) stood out. Dark Forest was able to capture a portion of the early attention thanks to its first-mover advantage. In mid-2022, however, a sharp drop in major cryptocurrency prices triggered a broader market crash. After that point, the official Dark Forest team no longer released new public rounds.

From the perspective of its inherent characteristics, Dark Forest possesses many highly attractive features. All of the game’s logic is implemented through smart contracts, with every player action recorded onchain, giving it a very geeky and cool appeal. While blockchain state information is typically public, Dark Forest leverages zero-knowledge (ZK) technology to conceal planet coordinates. In fact, Dark Forest appeared even earlier than the Tornado Cash, making it a representative project that combines ZK technology with blockchain. The Ethereum community’s strong interest in ZK technology also helped promote Dark Forest’s recognition. The game’s design is inspired by the Three-Body Problem novel, and it includes the broadcasting of planet coordinates within gameplay, serving as a perfect tribute to the Dark Forest theory from the book. Players in Dark Forest control planets within the same universe to attack one another, and the social attributes of this massively multiplayer online real-time strategy (MMORTS) game are also highly engaging.

Moving the timeline to 2022, after the official team disappeared, the overall player community remained quite active. Throughout the entire year of 2022, various teams continuously organized Dark Forest community rounds (for details, you can refer to the series of articles titled Dark Forest - A Revision of Previous Community Rounds by classicj). During the years 2021 to 2022, our team, DFArchon, was an active and hardcore player team. We set a long-term goal of developing fully automated interaction bots (this video represents the milestones we have achieved). At the same time, we also open-sourced many plugins that addressed player operation needs. Playing through the official rounds and the various community-organized rounds was a very enjoyable experience for us, and we had a great time.

At the beginning of 2023, we realized that the official Dark Forest team might have left for good. We decided to proactively take on the role of ecosystem promoters and continue development through an open-source, community-driven approach. From then until now, it has been exactly two and a half years. Overall, we have continued with the mindset of building experimental applications, advancing a new version every 2 to 3 months followed by 1 to 2 weeks of public testing. From 2023 until July 2025, we have conducted a total of eight public testing rounds.

Secondary development based on open-source projects often faces certain awkward challenges. Moreover, with the market downturn, the industry as a whole has yet to establish widespread recognition and confidence in fully onchain games, which has led to difficulties for our team in acquiring external resources. Despite this, we have chosen not to give up and have persisted in development to this day. Our idea is simple: as long as we continue to hold periodic gaming events, we can maintain community activity, and when the next bull market arrives, the project will experience another major breakthrough. Over these two and a half years, we have gained a lot. In the summer of 2024, we rebuilt Dark Forest based on MUD, making many optimizations from the ground up. Although we operate in a distributed development model, our team now possesses the experience and capability to independently develop a complete game project. On the other hand, we have also actively explored and learned about various projects within the ecosystem, witnessing the rise and fall of many fully onchain games, while gradually refining and enriching the narrative of onchain reality. It is possible that in the near future, we will launch new projects to further express our ideas.

Facing reality, the world has not developed as we imagined. Although the price of BTC has been climbing steadily, the Ethereum ecosystem has not prospered again as many expected. The much-anticipated altcoin season has yet to arrive. Projects within the fully onchain gaming ecosystem that we once had high hopes for have one by one announced they are halting development. The market attention we hoped would spill over again has not appeared, and the large influx of players we imagined has not materialized. Market focus has been taken over by AI and meme coins, and the blockchain industry seems to be experiencing unprecedented challenges.

This is the situation up to now. We will continue to explore and push forward with development. As long as we keep exploring, there is always hope.

We look back on the past not only out of a deep-seated nostalgia for that era but also in the hope of learning from past experiences and using those lessons to perform better in the future.

The official Dark Forest team maintained the project for approximately two and a half years, from 2020 to 2022 Q1.

During that time, they launched a total of 8 public test rounds: versions 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, and 0.6.1 through 0.6.5. Each testing round typically lasted one to two weeks. Player numbers generally grew steadily throughout the official team’s involvement, which reflected a healthy trajectory for the project. Unfortunately, after the two-week-long round 0.6.5, the official team never launched another public round. According to some secondhand sources, key members of the office Dark Forest team had moved on to pursue new paths in life.

The success of Dark Forest can be analyzed from two perspectives: external conditions and the inherent characteristics of the project.

From an external perspective, the development of the Dark Forest project happened to align with favorable market conditions. At the time, NFTs were the dominant trend in the crypto space, a strong bull market was underway, and confident market participants were actively searching for the next alpha opportunity. The market also needed broader narratives to support the growing NFT hype, and metaverse or gaming projects naturally became attractive themes. In this environment, where market attention was expanding and external conditions were relatively favorable, Dark Forest, an experimental project with forward-thinking design, gradually gained traction. In 2021, there were not many fully onchain games. Projects such as Dark Forest, conquest.eth, and ISAAC (developed by the Topology team) stood out. Dark Forest was able to capture a portion of the early attention thanks to its first-mover advantage. In mid-2022, however, a sharp drop in major cryptocurrency prices triggered a broader market crash. After that point, the official Dark Forest team no longer released new public rounds.

From the perspective of its inherent characteristics, Dark Forest possesses many highly attractive features. All of the game’s logic is implemented through smart contracts, with every player action recorded onchain, giving it a very geeky and cool appeal. While blockchain state information is typically public, Dark Forest leverages zero-knowledge (ZK) technology to conceal planet coordinates. In fact, Dark Forest appeared even earlier than the Tornado Cash, making it a representative project that combines ZK technology with blockchain. The Ethereum community’s strong interest in ZK technology also helped promote Dark Forest’s recognition. The game’s design is inspired by the Three-Body Problem novel, and it includes the broadcasting of planet coordinates within gameplay, serving as a perfect tribute to the Dark Forest theory from the book. Players in Dark Forest control planets within the same universe to attack one another, and the social attributes of this massively multiplayer online real-time strategy (MMORTS) game are also highly engaging.

Moving the timeline to 2022, after the official team disappeared, the overall player community remained quite active. Throughout the entire year of 2022, various teams continuously organized Dark Forest community rounds (for details, you can refer to the series of articles titled Dark Forest - A Revision of Previous Community Rounds by classicj). During the years 2021 to 2022, our team, DFArchon, was an active and hardcore player team. We set a long-term goal of developing fully automated interaction bots (this video represents the milestones we have achieved). At the same time, we also open-sourced many plugins that addressed player operation needs. Playing through the official rounds and the various community-organized rounds was a very enjoyable experience for us, and we had a great time.

At the beginning of 2023, we realized that the official Dark Forest team might have left for good. We decided to proactively take on the role of ecosystem promoters and continue development through an open-source, community-driven approach. From then until now, it has been exactly two and a half years. Overall, we have continued with the mindset of building experimental applications, advancing a new version every 2 to 3 months followed by 1 to 2 weeks of public testing. From 2023 until July 2025, we have conducted a total of eight public testing rounds.

Secondary development based on open-source projects often faces certain awkward challenges. Moreover, with the market downturn, the industry as a whole has yet to establish widespread recognition and confidence in fully onchain games, which has led to difficulties for our team in acquiring external resources. Despite this, we have chosen not to give up and have persisted in development to this day. Our idea is simple: as long as we continue to hold periodic gaming events, we can maintain community activity, and when the next bull market arrives, the project will experience another major breakthrough. Over these two and a half years, we have gained a lot. In the summer of 2024, we rebuilt Dark Forest based on MUD, making many optimizations from the ground up. Although we operate in a distributed development model, our team now possesses the experience and capability to independently develop a complete game project. On the other hand, we have also actively explored and learned about various projects within the ecosystem, witnessing the rise and fall of many fully onchain games, while gradually refining and enriching the narrative of onchain reality. It is possible that in the near future, we will launch new projects to further express our ideas.

Facing reality, the world has not developed as we imagined. Although the price of BTC has been climbing steadily, the Ethereum ecosystem has not prospered again as many expected. The much-anticipated altcoin season has yet to arrive. Projects within the fully onchain gaming ecosystem that we once had high hopes for have one by one announced they are halting development. The market attention we hoped would spill over again has not appeared, and the large influx of players we imagined has not materialized. Market focus has been taken over by AI and meme coins, and the blockchain industry seems to be experiencing unprecedented challenges.

This is the situation up to now. We will continue to explore and push forward with development. As long as we keep exploring, there is always hope.