Stargaze, an IBC chain, airdropped a ton of tokens for ATOM stakers a couple of months ago - 20% allocation could be claimed initially, then 20% after initially staking STARS and the third portion of 20% for participating in governance. To be eligible for the fourth portion, one must mint an NFT on the Stargaze launchpad.
Say Hi to Colonial Cat #43 ;-)
The Genesis mints launched today and I snapped one up from the Colonial Cats collection. Incidentally, the 'minting' process on the Stargaze launchpad was super-smooth. This one stood out to me for a couple of reasons. First, the team have said that holders of Colonial Cats NFTs will get a share of the validator commissions and royalties. It is not known yet what chains the team will be validating - it’s to be decided by the DAO (NFT holders) - presumably, there will be a call-out for folks in the Discord to nominate suggested chains, which will then be formalised as a proposal for the DAO. The timelines for this to happen are unknown but the hope is that in the not too distant future holding a Colonial Cats NFT will provide some sweet juicy passive income. I am excited to be part of this process and to see where it leads. Second, as a fan of Mooncats, Cryptokitties and the broader ‘historical NFT’ space - in my opinion, it matters to hold an NFT from the first cat collection on Stargaze. So even if this proves to be smoke and mirrors or just a rugpull (not saying it will be!), Colonial Cat #43 will still have some value (at least to me anyways). Besides, I paid for this with STARS earned from an airdrop in order to qualify for more airdropped STARS.
I think the Stargaze devs have done a great job with these airdrop ‘quests’. The final quest for the last 20% airdrop allocation will be to bid on an NFT after the marketplace launches in late April. Hopefully these quests will bring a lot of people in the Cosmos ecosystem to NFTs and Stargaze and this will in turn create some noise and bring folks from outside the Cosmos to Stargaze. My last post was about ‘emerging ecosystems’ - I think Stargaze has potential to become one of these in its own right. If NFT people from Ethereum and other places come to Stargaze, this will feed back into the wider Cosmos ecosystem. I am loving the low fees, staking returns and the ease of using Osmosis to swap and move assets between chains and I’m sure Cosmos newbies will too!