Celestia ($TIA) Helped Me Explore ... The MilkyWay

This weird journey in the Cosmos ecosystem started when I was one of the 576,653 addresses meeting the criteria for the Celestia Genesis Drop. The new modular data availability network that securely scales with the number of users was ready to storm the Cryptoverse.

The Celestia mainnet will consist of rollups that use the network as data availability and consensus layer. The capability of the network nodes to download transaction information and store the information will scale to the needs of the users. This means no more crazy fees for simple transactions.

Keeping in mind that my previous interaction with the Cosmos ecosystem was null, I had to read and take on-board a huge amount of information. I had to explore what other options and earning opportunities I can explore with $TIA ... and this is how I discovered MilkyWay! I dived into $milkTIA, as an option where I could stake my assets while retaining liquidity.

Let's enjoy a glass of milk while we chat about this! You can stake $TIA tokens on MilkyWay to mint $milkTIA, a liquid staked derivative that you can then use as you wish!

You can dive into DeFi with liquidity pools on Osmosis, where the $milkTia/$TIA pool has has deep liquidity and good rewards. Or you can check Quasar Finance where the dynamic S+ vault has a stablecoin oriented concentrated liquidity pool! The strategy dynamically updates the range at which liquidity is provided to optimize yield potential!

I had 100 $TIA staked and my initial plan was to claim the rewards at the start of each month, and compound them into the same validators. The rumors regarding a $MILK airdrop made me reconsider the plan, and slowly build a $milkTIA portfolio.

I had 1.04 TIA claimable rewards at the end of December, and decided to split the bounty. I compounded half back into the pool and dived into the Milky Way with the other half.

My first splash of milk was pouring, as 0.53 TIA was added into the pool. The MilkyWay APR at that time was 14.5%, approximately 0.27% per week. It will slowly add rewards, but nothing extraordinary as my share is minimal. The whole plan is to interact with the protocol, build up transactions across a longer period of time and tick boxes!

Had a sip of DeFi and staked half TIA, with an approximate transaction cost under one cent. I noticed that the MilkyWay reward fee is set at 10% and my predicted annual interest for my stake was 0.068 TIA.

The amount of TIA locked on MilkyWay is insane... over 15,500,000 USD! I am plankton in the pool, but hopefully spreading the assets across several protocols will bring long term benefits.

One more month passed and another batch of TIA rewards were ready to be claimed. I've done the same thing with the January rewards, splitting the bounty for compounding and milkTIA staking.

Added half $TIA into the P2P validators and the remaining share was staked on MilkyWay. Using the liquid staking protocol makes me feel that the hype on the Celestia modular blockchain ecosystem will amplify. Is Celestia the new "El Dorado"?

Expectations for 2024? Receive few more airdrops as a $TIA staker! It looks like all new modular chains are planning to reward Celestia OGs, and it started with the Dymension drop. Saga and AltLayer also announced that $TIA holders will be considered for airdrops.

I hope $MILK will be added on the list, and maybe my monthly interaction will generate enough transactions to be eligible for the airdrop. I have good vibes for 2024, and my cookies will go well with a big glass of milk! Currently 0.89 milkTIA available to use in DeFi, the question is which protocol will give me better coverage for future drops?