Abstract

We're building an immortal virtual world called Asphodel.

Asphodel is immortal because it lives on Ethereum, a blockchain network designed to run forever as a World Computer. Building a game entirely on a World Computer and renouncing human ownership creates a true virtual world: a decentralized space in which humans and agents may act as they wish, bound only by the world's intrinsic ruleset.

We are building Asphodel for two reasons.

The first is to create a living game that lasts forever: that users can still play and interact with in ten thousand years, long after everyone originally associated with the project is gone. This is what we mean by immortality. You can read more about this on the Immortal Worlds page.

The second is to create the most economically significant virtual economy in history. We dream of a virtual world with a higher GDP than real-life nation states. We believe this is possible because a trustless, provably immortal virtual world with scarce ingame resources can become an appealing way to store capital. You can read more about this on the Decentralized Economies page.

Our team at Asphodel Studios defines the mechanisms, rules, and lore that make up these worlds. We build piece-by-piece and integrate systems into a single shared economy over time. Our role is to create and incubate these systems before handing them over to permanent decentralized governance.

We have already released the first part of our ecosystem. Kamigotchi World is a prototype MMORPG and prequel to Asphodel that runs on our sidechain, Yominet. Kamigotchi will, one day, merge more fully with Asphodel itself.

The second part of Asphodel, and the first part on Ethereum itself, will be released very soon after the first draft of this Whitepaper. This is the Prologue to Asphodel. A separate section will be added to this Gitbook soon with exact details on the game's economy.

This section serves as a whitepaper and overview of Asphodel as a project. It is a living document and will be updated over time. It was authored by https://x.com/0xl3th3 with art, content and editing assistance from https://x.com/jb0x_, https://x.com/genesis_14_2, Claude Opus 4.8, and Claude Fable 5.