Introducing Stargaze
A layer one protocol for NFTs and decentralized social on Cosmos and beyond
Note: Much of this post is outdated. Stargaze is a fast moving project and the current focus is the NFT market.
Currently, NFTs, DAOs, DeFi, and social tokens live in their own universes. There isn’t much cross-pollination, though we are starting to see some early experiments. These primitives have grown past their nascent stage, and are now ready to be integrated. Crypto social is what finally brings them all together.
Technology has matured to the point where decentralized social is now possible. We now have high-throughput Ethereum L2s. We have Cosmos and IBC, Solana, and soon, Polkadot.
To build a truly crypto-native social network, we have to unlearn what worked for web2.0 and build something entirely new from crypto-native first principles. We can design protocols that don’t have to optimize for advertising revenue. They can instead be designed to give users ownership over their content, while rewarding them with protocol incentives.
Introducing Stargaze
Stargaze is a protocol that re-imagines the social network from a purely crypto-native context. The social graph is based on social token ownership. Content, including profile avatars, are NFTs. And curation and moderation are done by DAOs.
Stargaze is built as a proof-of-stake Cosmos zone, giving it maximum flexibility in protocol design, interoperability, and scalability right out of the gate. The governance-driven development process of Cosmos chains allows rapid development and iteration required for a consumer social protocol. Furthermore, due to IBC and Gravity Bridge, it can interoperate with every other blockchain, including Terra, and Ethereum and it’s L2s.
How it works
Here’s a high-level overview of Stargaze’s functionality.
Yield-bearing social tokens
It’s undeniable that social tokens are the foundation of crypto social. They allow a creator to express their social capital in its purest form. Social tokens can go beyond individuals and also represent brands or communities. For example $WHALE is a community of NFT curators, and $FWB is…, well here’s what Vitalik thinks FWB is.
Stargaze social tokens are minted on a bonding curve with STARS as the reserve asset. Users will be able to customize their curves, choosing how much they want to mint for themselves (genesis phase), their following (liquidity bootstrapping phase), and how fast/slow they want the curve to rise. This allows a wide range of social tokens that can represent everything from an individual with a small following to a large brand or community token.
A portion of social token purchases are reserved for a creator DAO for the user. This DAO comes with its own governance. It can be used to commission the user to write an article, mint an NFT, contribute code, etc. The amount that goes into the DAO is another parameter that can be customized. For example, a large community token may want a large portion going to their DAO compared to an individual creator.
Staking + DeFi
Because Stargaze social tokens use a staking reserve asset, the social tokens themselves can be staked for yield. When staked, the underlying reserve asset, STARS, is delegated to validators and earn rewards. This makes Stargaze social tokens productive assets. A portion of staking rewards go to the token holder, and the rest to the creator. So when staking a social token, you are supporting a creator while securing the network at the same time.
Stargaze social tokens can also be used in DeFi within the Cosmos ecosystem via IBC, or be used in Ethereum DeFi via Gravity Bridge.
Open social graph
Social token ownership gives us a weighted social graph for free. Stargaze clients will use this to construct feeds that can sort content based on how much of each token you own. Stargaze’s social graph is open, decentralized, and transparent. Anyone can build on top of it without permission or API keys.
Open social graph data can also be leveraged in DeFi. For example, you may be able to get a good rate on loan if your social graph connects you to others that have a good financial track record.
Crypto-native media
All content on Stargaze is crypto-native. Meaning, they are either NFTs, or a type of post with crypto functionality, such as an incentivized poll, a prediction market, or a crowdfund.
Stargaze also allows custom post types. For example, if you want to implement a mini-game as a post, you can develop a smart contract in CosmWasm, and submit it to Stargaze governance. Once accepted, it becomes just another content type in Stargaze.
Curation Market
Content curation via likes and upvotes is the core functionality of most social networks. Yet it hasn’t really become a thing in crypto yet, mostly because it is a high frequency, low volume activity that isn’t ideal for slow proof-of-work blockchains with high gas fees. This is a non-issue for Stargaze since its a high-performance proof-of-stake sovereign chain with its own block space with super low gas fees.
Content curation in Stargaze is inspired by Vitalik Buterin’s post Prediction markets for content curation DAOs. In this post he describes a DAO (named Doug), that curates content. Users that vote with Doug earn rewards. Similarly, Stargaze has a built-in curation DAO. The curation DAO is a membership-based inflation-funded organization that is independent of protocol governance. Stargaze users earn rewards when they happen to vote on the same content the DAO selects.
To prevent bots that always vote with the DAO (DAO Extractable Value?), Stargaze will make use of Threshold cryptography to encrypt DAO votes. This is possible because, as its own layer 1 chain, Stargaze has access to the consensus layer and validator set.
Like-to-Earn
A “like” on Twitter or Facebook is flat. It has no weight. You can’t “super like”. There’s no way to express intensity. Instead, Twitter’s opaque algorithm determines how much weight to give a post in your feed.
A Quadratic Like on Stargaze is a way of expressing your like intensity with the STARS token. Each vote is more expensive than the previous. Because STARS is a staking token, there’s a cost to keeping too much STARS around to vote. Users have to be intentional about what they are voting on. This results in a human curated feed that is higher quality than Twitter, at least according to our beta tests.
To perform a Quadratic Like, you deposit a certain amount of STARS based on how many votes you want to give a certain post. For example, 1 vote = 1 STARS, 2 votes = 4 STARS, 3 votes = 9 STARS, 4 votes = 16 STARS, etc. After 24 hours you get the deposit back. However, if the curation DAO selected the post, then you get an additional reward from the DAO.
Quadratic Likes are better than tipping since its positive-sum. You don’t have to give up anything except a negligible amount for gas and a temporary deposit.
STARS Token
STARS is both the native staking token and governance token of Stargaze. Some of the use cases for STARS include:
- Delegating to validators to secure the network
- Minting social tokens
- Minting NFTs + paying for storage
- Voting for membership in the curation DAO
- Voting for protocol upgrades in governance
Timeline
Stargaze plans to launch Mainnet Alpha sometime in October, soon after Terra’s Columbus-5 upgrade. This upgrade turns on IBC on Terra, allowing UST to flow in Osmosis. Stargaze plans to do a STARS/UST Liquidity Bootstrapping Pool (LBP) event on Osmosis, via governance vote.
Stay tuned for more.
Follow us
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/stargazezone
Come hang in our Discord: https://discord.gg/QeJWCrE
PS: If you like designing jaw dropping experiences, got React experience, or want to write smart contracts in Rust, get in our DMs.
