Dark energy stars from the modified Chaplygin gas: <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>C</mml:mi> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> <mml:mi>I</mml:mi> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> <mml:mi>Λ</mml:mi> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo>

Dark energy stars (DESs), described by the modified Chaplygin gas (MCG), can be dynamically stable and fall within different observational measurements. In this work, we employ diverse macroscopic properties, such as compactness $C$, moment of inertia $I$, tidal deformability $Λ$, gravitational binding energy $E_g$ and $f$-mode nonradial pulsation frequency, to explore whether they are correlated by universal relations (URs). Remarkably, our stellar configurations always obey the causality condition and are compatible with several observational mass-radius constraints. Via the $C-I-\text{Love}-f$ URs, our results reveal that we cannot distinguish quark stars (QSs) from DESs in the sense that DESs satisfy several URs very similar to those of QSs. However, when we involve $E_g$, DESs and QSs can be strongly distinguished through the $I-E_g^{-2}$, $Λ-E_g^{-5}$ and $f-E_g^{-2}$ URs. We also make use of these findings and the tidal deformability constraint from the GW170817 event to forecast the canonical properties of a $1.4\, M_\odot$ compact star. Furthermore, we present a set of fine empirical correlations involving the tidal deformability, obtained from an extensive scan of the parameter space of our DE stellar models.