The beginning of the epic bull run that pulled crypto out of its epically long "Crypto Winter" was, arguably, the debut of Polkadot on August 18, 2020. The date was chosen, most likely, due to the preponderance of Chinese investors who had invested in Gavin York's vision of a "multi-chain future." In China, 8s are hella lucky, so launching your "blockchain of the future" on 8-18 was considered to be a portent of things to come.
However, what was conveniently ignored at the time was that we had already seen the debut of the "Internet of Blockchains" on March 13, 2019 - the date when the Cosmos Hub, the first instance of what is known as Tendermint proof-of-stake consensus, began churning out blocks. The "multi-chain future" had already begun nearly a year-and-a-half before Polkadot!
Fast forward to today and the underlying coin of Cosmos, ATOM, is still ranked #21, far below the underlying coin of Polkadot, DOT, which is ranked #10.
ATOM is moving up the ranks fast, and the reason seems to be rooted in the way that the community has come to expect that new projects are launched in the ecosystem -
Airdrops!
Here's a look at five upcoming airdrops that you can stake for RIGHT NOW to earn potentially lucrative new tokens. Our research team at Fomocraft have confirmed that the snapshots for these airdrops have not been taken yet!
The Polkadot community relies on what it calls "parachain" auctions to expand its ecosystem of interconnected blockchains. They have only conducted five of these since their inception. It requires users to tie up an enormous amount of capital to be locked up in DOT tokens for 4 years. In exchange, they are airdropped new parachain tokens at genesis (and then linearly over the next 4 years). However, the pricing of these tokens after genesis has been especially bad. Down only.
In contrast, the Cosmos community has expanded by a series of very generous airdops FOR FREE that are handed out to those ATOM stakers that have supported the project for the long term. Despite the handing out of a lot of free tokens, the depth of the ATOM community and thus the reach that their airdrops enjoy in terms of distribution has meant that these airdropped tokens have done remarkably well after genesis. Up only.
The most successful of these new Cosmos-based blockchains are Osmosis (OSMO) and Juno Network (JUNO), both of which encourage their token holders to stake their tokens using both further airdrops and generous staking APYs. ATOM stakers who staked even just 1,000 tokens back in 2019 have enjoyed $10,000+ rewards from each of these airdrops.
What a way to build a community!
The Cosmos experience is a healthy reminder that 1) a profitable community is the happiest community, 2) breadth not depth of distribution is key (don't give too many tokens to VCs, crypto entrepreneurs!), 3) providing token value capture early in the life of a project is essential, and 4) don't be stingy! The community is the lifeblood of any project. It's what drives awareness of it to the outside world. It's what attracts developers who enjoy building product for enthusiastic users. It's what makes a crypto project sustain itself by attracting more people who are willing to buy and lock up a modest amount of tokens just in order to be a part of something bigger than themselves.
So please enjoy these 5 airdrop opportunities listed above. Become a Cosmonaut like myself and reap the rewards!