Stargaze: A Decentralized And Incentivized Social Protocol

Note: This is an introductory post that may be outdated. It should not be seen as a promise or guarantee of a feature, roadmap, or timeline. Please follow development updates here. And stay tuned for more updates.

What problem does Stargaze solve?

Let’s start with an example:

As of this post, this tweet has 125 likes. This means 125 people (curators) did work to “like” this tweet. And the author (creator) also put in work to write the tweet. Yet the only entity benefitting from this tweet is Twitter itself, via ads.

Stargaze shifts content monetization from corporations to the actual people creating and curating content.

I first wrote about staking on content in 2019 as a form of content monetization. Stargaze revisits and realizes this vision to its full potential with an integrated and cohesive protocol for decentralized social.

What is Stargaze?

The Stargaze protocol enables three things:

• Content creators can post content, mintable as NFTs.
• Content curators can earn rewards for discovering good content early, while appraising it in the process.
• Buying the token of a creator to support them and follow their content.

These three functions provide the foundation for an integrated social protocol that rewards both creators and curators, enabling crypto-native apps that resemble Twitter, TikTok, and everything in between.

Stargaze is implemented as a proof-of-stake blockchain with Cosmos SDK. Cosmos enables a decentralized validator set, with fast block times and low gas. It also enables interoperability with Ethereum and other chains via IBC (inter-blockchain communication protocol), a sort of TCP/IP for blockchains.

Stargaze funds user rewards using inflation funding from block rewards. In a typical proof-of-stake chain, block rewards go to validators. In Stargaze, they are split between validators and users.

Content Creation

Creators earn rewards when curators upvote their posts, as rewards are split between creators and curators.

Posts can be any type of media, as long as the user pays for storage. However, storage costs are staked on the network, where interest keeps paying for future storage. A post on Stargaze can technically live forever on-chain.

All native posts on Stargaze are NFTs that conform to an ERC-721 compatible standard, and transferrable to Ethereum. Posts minted as NFTs can be bought, sold, and staked on to earn yield.

But what if someone posts illegal content? Or what if your roommate posts that image you hide in your shoebox under your bed? Stargaze has a governance mechanism based on token-holder voting. A proposal can be submitted to delete content.

Content Curation and Appraisal

The most common social media action isn’t content creation, its content curation with upvotes, likes, and other types of signaling actions. Curation has been ignored by crypto networks thus far, probably due to scaling issues. However, with high-performance proof-of-stake systems, we no longer have this limitation.

Every Stargaze post goes through a 24 hour curation period. During this time, users vote on the post with CREDITS, a voting token given out daily. After 24 hours, rewards are distributed in STARX, the native governance token of Stargaze, based on a quadratic voting mechanic. Quadratic voting solves some of issues with gamification that affected prior social attempts like Steemit. It favors the outcome of a larger group of voters than a small group of whales.

The process of curating also has the side effect of appraising a post. The amount of CREDITS collected over the 24 hour curation period is used as a proxy for the price. For example, if a post received 100 CREDITS, maybe it’s worth 100 * 0.5 = $10.

After a post is curated, STARX rewards are distributed to the creator and each curator, and staked on the network to earn yield. If the post is a native post, the creator has the option to mint and sell it as an NFT.

Social Graph and Creator Coins

To follow a user on Stargaze, you purchase their creator coin with STARX. Creator coins are priced on a bonding curve that favors early buyers. They are automatically staked on the network, earning yield. This yield goes to the creator themselves. So Stargaze is a great way to support your favorite creators and reward them for their content.

Stargaze clients can use the amount of creator tokens users own to prioritize content in a user’s feed. This gives users control over their own feed, rather than an opaque algorithm used by legacy social networks.

Creating a market around creator coins also makes the social graph a dynamic market. Users will buy and sell creator coins over time to adjust their feed and preferences, and to support new and up-and-coming creators.

Community Ownership and Governance

Stargaze is a community owned and governed network. On mainnet launch, much of the genesis tokens will be distributed to a community pool / DAO, to be managed by token holders.

The current incentivized testnet has 100 validators, and a few more are planned before mainnet.

If you want to contribute to Stargaze, follow us on Twitter and join our Discord. We’re looking for Go and Solidity engineers, and an awesome memelord.

Special thanks to Vitalik Buterin for help in flushing out the curation mechanic.