Stargazin at the Future of the Cosmos
For existing markets, there are two types of innovation: Incremental and Disruptive. True to its name, incremental innovation is the process of turning out slight alterations and upgrades on existing products. Disruptive innovation, however, is when new technologies or business models are applied to an existing product to radically improve quality and efficiency, enabling the company to go after new markets and achieve huge growth.
Stargaze is the definition of a disruptive innovator.
As part of the Cosmos ecosystem, Stargaze aims to be a decentralized NFT market, totally owned and governed by its users.
— Let’s unpack that a little.
As still one of the hottest things going around in the different spheres of tech, finance, and creative industries, NFTs are finding their way into just about everything. Not only is NFT technology a tangible use case for understanding the value of blockchain, but the universality of NFTs is pushing mass adoption forwards.
Due to their popularity, most Layer 1’s are racing to promote their own standard of NFT contracts that support a growing number of functionality and innovation. The issue, however, is in the persistent copy-catting and focus on incremental innovation as a business model. As always, Ethereum has been leading the pack with ERC-721 and ERC-1155 compliant tokens assuming the role of the golden standard found on large marketplaces such as Opensea, Rarible, and Nifty Gateway, and then having this entire system (often including the actual content of the NFTs) being replicated on other chains.
Aside from diluting value and promoting cash grabs, the Ctrl C + Ctrl V process limits the innovative potential of the entire space by rail-roading newcomers into a step-by-step process to win and lose money. This is further compounded by the swarm of new Layer 2 ‘solutions’ now offering NFT compatibility and interoperability; now, you can own the same jpeg on Layer 1 AND the Layer 2 of your choice. There is a confusing disregard for authenticity and key metrics such as circulating supply.
Enter: Stargaze
Stargaze steps aside from this by offering something completely unique based on the principles of the Cosmos ecosystem and by being a blockchain built solely to cater to NFT development and usability. Builders in the Cosmos ecosystem are able to leverage mechanics of inflation and staking as a primitive, which opens the door to much more versatility for NFTs compared to other ecosystems.
Additionally, Stargaze is being built as a DAO from day one with carefully considered token release amounts and timings to maximize the number of unique participants that can establish a position in the DAO governance structure. This differs greatly from other leading NFT marketplaces, which have been criticized as being predominantly centralized and opaque. The development team has also laid out plans for SocialFi mechanics within the ecosystem, as well as a launchpad for NFTs, fully committing to promoting community projects whilst being community-owned and operated.
In being a DAO from the beginning and catering solely to new versatile NFTs based on Cosmos, Stargaze is able to radically improve efficiency and product quality whilst addressing an entirely new market.
DeFi & NFT Summer Coming to Cosmos
The development and launch timing of Stargaze fits in well with the growing trend of innovation on Cosmos being referred to as DeFi Summer. Over the past few months, the Cosmos native Interblockchain Communication Protocol (IBC) has supported the development of the ecosystem’s first DEXs — Gravity, Osmosis, and JunoSwap. Since then, most things on Cosmos have been booming as developers airdrop tokens and NFTs to community participants whilst exploring the inherent properties of cross-chain interoperability granted by the IBC between different projects.
Often compared to the 2019 Ethereum DeFi Summer, Cosmos DeFi Summer will be unique in that fractionalized NFTs will also be a component of growth. Moving forward, Stargaze will be an important piece of the DeFi puzzle as they allow innovators to create and build using NFTs.
