Executive Summary
Stargaze proposes a strategic acquisition by Cosmos Hub, migrating its core apps, NFTs, and users to the Hub. The acquisition entails three key components: a STARS-to-ATOM token migration, operational funding for the Stargaze frontend, and team funding to ensure seamless integration and continued growth.
What Cosmos Hub gets: the #1 NFT marketplace in Cosmos— $50M+ lifetime volume, 20k+ monthly active traders, protocols generating ~$50k/month in revenue, and ~3,000 ATOM in monthly gas fees—plus a shipping-fast team and blue-chip collections such as Bad Kids and Celestine Sloths, revenue share in future growth.
What Stargaze gets: deep ATOM liquidity, Hub-grade security, and full IBC Eureka reach, removing the limitations of a small app chain, and enabling cross-chain mints, trades, and launches from any wallet.
| Component | ATOM Requested | Vesting / Lock-up | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| STARS ➜ ATOM Migration | 2,750,359 ATOM | Locked until claimed | Redeem all circulating STARS [1] at the 200-day moving average price + customer acquisition cost (CAC), with a clawback of unclaimed funds to STARS stakers. ATOM price = $5.20 (on 5/22/2025). STARS price = $0.00408 (200-day moving average on 5/22/2025). CAC = $3 million. |
| Stargaze Frontend Licence | 48,077 ATOM | 25% liquid, 75% 12-month lock | Keeps stargaze.zone frontend + infra live on the Hub for 12 months ($250k / yr). |
| Stargaze Team Funding | 276,923 ATOM | Stargaze-Hub Oversight DAO | One year transitional fund for the core team ($120k / mo) to ship the roadmap, run the marketplace, and support launches over the next year. Distributed quarterly from the DAO. |
This proposal will accelerate Hub user acquisition and transform it into a true economic hub that’s not only useful, but fun (and bad!).
Key Metrics
| Category | Metric | Value | Context / Period |
|---|---|---|---|
| Platform Performance | Lifetime marketplace volume | >$50 million | Oct 2021 – Apr 2025 cumulative GMV |
| Secondary-market volume (Q1 2025) | $7.14 million | Jan – Apr 2025 | |
| Creator revenue paid | $14 million | Cumulative since launch | |
| Average monthly protocol revenue | ~$50k | Apr 2024 – Apr 2025 mean | |
| User Base | Monthly active traders | 20,000+ | Organic users, web + mobile |
| 30-day user retention | 40% | Industry benchmark: >25% is “excellent” | |
| Competitive Standing | Marketplace revenue rank | #4 globally | Past 30-day window; ahead of Blur & Rarible |
| Value to Cosmos Hub | Estimated gas fees to Hub | ~3,000 ATOM / month | At current trading volume |
Context and Motivation
Background of Stargaze
Launched in October 2021, Stargaze established itself as the canonical NFT marketplace within the Cosmos ecosystem, hosting blue-chip collections like Bad Kids, Mad Scientists, Celestine Sloths, and OMies. Lifetime volume surpasses $50 million, with recent growth reaching $27.84 million in 2024 and $7.14 million in Q1 2025 alone. Furthermore, the top collections on Stargaze have a combined market cap greater than $15 million.
Why the Hub?
As a low market cap app-chain, Stargaze is liquidity constrained. Joining the Hub unlocks more liquidity – ATOM is CEX-listed everywhere. With IBC Eureka and ICS-721 routing, you’ll be able to buy an NFT from any chain, and any wallet. Stargaze will join Stride and others, for the first time, in building directly on Cosmos Hub. The Hub will benefit from adding a proven platform for incubating projects and artists, for user onboarding, and community growth.
STARS Tokenomics Background
STARS launched in 2021 via an LBP (liquidity bootstrapping) event on Osmosis with a loan of OSMO from the Osmosis Community Pool. This was basically a reverse Dutch auction, enabling price discovery. It was the first time in blockchain history where a chain was bootstrapped from another chain. STARS launch included an airdrop of 25% of the supply to ATOM stakers and OSMO LP participants.
STARS was designed with similar tokenomics to Bitcoin, where new issuance decays over time. So while STARS started off with high inflation its first year, it significantly got reduced to its current value of 4.3%, one of the lowest inflation rates in the Cosmos ecosystem.
For the first 3 years of operations, all fees collected from Launchpad and Marketplace trading went to STARS stakers. The Stargaze team didn’t start earning any revenue until mid-2024. STARS was the first Cosmos token with real yield, yield earned from protocol operations instead of inflation. STARS was also the first Cosmos token with a burn mechanic. In the first few years of operation, 50% of fees went to stakers, and 50% was burned.
Cosmos Public Goods Funding
Alongside bootstrapping the NFT ecosystem in Cosmos, STARS funded the development of several public goods such as ICS721, DAO DAO, and AtlasDAO. Stargaze developers also have many contributions to Cosmos ecosystem projects like Cosmos SDK and CosmWasm.
Protocol Usage and Metrics
Marketplace
Stargaze apps launched during the marketwide “NFT Winter” that began in early 2022 and is recently warming. Despite difficult macro conditions, projects have launched and thrived on Stargaze, contributing to steady growth in NFT TVL and Marketplace volume.
As digital platforms use GMV (Gross Merchandise Volume) as the key metric for evaluation, Marketplace volume provides the best yardstick for platform performance. It is a gauge for platform revenue through trading fees, ongoing creator revenue through royalties, total economic throughput from traders, alongside a proxy for user growth and culture.
Secondary marketplace trading is the primary source of revenue for the protocol due to a 2% fee on each trade made.
Broken down by year, Stargaze Marketplace has demonstrated strong growth and survived a brutal bear market. It has achieved 74.4% annualized growth from launch that has gradually accelerated, demonstrating 144% annualized growth from Q1 2023 to Q1 2025.
2022: The first year of Marketplace saw a total trading volume of $3.91 million, during a difficult bear market and the start of the NFT winter.
2023: Volume rose to $5.25 million, showing steady growth of ~34% year-over-year despite ongoing market headwinds and low global NFT sentiment.
2024: A breakout year with $27.84 million in volume — a more than 5x increase from 2023. This surge marked Stargaze Marketplace’s emergence as a leading marketplace with strong product-market fit and adoption.
2025 (Jan–Apr only): In just four months, Marketplace has already recorded $7.14 million, outpacing the entire volume of 2023 and on track to exceed 2024 if momentum continues.
Furthermore, Stargaze Marketplace has seen growth despite morass in the global NFT market. As a normalized percentage, growth on Marketplace has outpaced estimates on the global NFT market by 500%.
The continued growth of Stargaze Marketplace volume in the face of challenges is a strong testament to the product, team, and community. It is the top choice in Cosmos for independent creators, for protocols launching an NFT project for their community, and as a destination for projects looking to migrate from other chains.
We anticipate Marketplace volume to continue to grow across 2025 and into 2026. With deployment on the Hub, we expect this growth can be amplified to attain long term platform sustainability. With sustainability, there’s potential for ATOM stakers to share in Stargaze’s growth via distribution of trading fees.
In comparison to top marketplaces, Stargaze Marketplace ranks #4 in revenue based on data from the past 30 days. Note that Stargaze usage and growth is completely organic. Stargaze does not have a points program like many of the other marketplaces in this list and does not have incentives for trading. It also has protection against wash trading, and has little to no NFT farming in hopes of a token launch (like OpenSea).
| Rank | Marketplace | Revenue ($) | Share (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Magic Eden | $743,000 | 69.7% |
| 2 | OpenSea | $260,000 | 24.4% |
| 3 | Tensor | $25,000 | 2.3% |
| 4 | Stargaze | $20,000 | 1.9% |
| 5 | Blur | $12,000 | 1.1% |
| 6 | Rarible | $6,100 | 0.6% |
Source: nftpulse.org (30-day)
Launchpad
Mint revenue is distributed to creators at launch with the platform taking a 5% to 8% fee. Stargaze Launchpad fees are on the lower end across major NFT launchpads at present.
Market-wide, mint revenue has trended downward relative to Marketplace volume as most projects opt for a strategy of lower mint prices and a focus on the secondary market. This trend has been reflected on Stargaze since launch at the very start of the NFT Winter.
2022: $7.97 million in mint volume, driven primarily by the genesis launch event when dozens of projects launched for the first time and NFTs first came to trade in Cosmos.
2023: $1.67 million in mint volume reflecting the above market trends toward small launches.
2024: $3.03 million in mint volume, showing growth but maintaining a trend toward less expensive mints.
2025: $270,000 in mint volume to date.
The inverse relationship between mint volume and Marketplace growth reflects the maturity of the NFT platform and community. NFT collections are becoming more popular as low price or free mints to reward existing communities, such as with Elys, MANTRA, Union, and Lava Network. Other top trading projects like Architects and Mad Scientists minted elsewhere and moved to Stargaze. The community has more discerning buyers and there are far fewer rug-pulls. As Marketplace volume represents stickier activity than mint volume, this inverse relationship is a positive indicator of platform health.
We anticipate mint volume will continue to reflect a preference for inexpensive mints and more secondary volume. Nonetheless, the platform has several key mints scheduled for the remainder of 2025 and a Hub deployment would provide the opportunity for a Hub Genesis Mint.
Names
Stargaze Names is a popular ENS-like name service, with close to 25,000 names minted. Names is integrated into the Stargaze platform for creator verification, linking social media, and other key functions. A migration to Cosmos Hub can include a deployment of Stargaze Names, updated to service Cosmos Hub addresses.
Names can be another revenue-generating app for the Hub. Names uses a market-based renewal mechanic, with a fee split between stakers and the Community Pool. This could be deployed on the Hub with revenue split between the Stargaze team and the Hub Community Pool or ATOM stakers.
Furthermore, Names can be renamed to Cosmos Name Service (or ATOM name service), and be expanded to service all app chains over IBC. It can be a shared, human-readable identity layer that:
- drives recurring fee revenue to ATOM stakers,
- removes a big UX hurdle for every app-chain, and
- reinforces the Cosmos Hub’s role as the service-provider nucleus of the Interchain.
Infinity Pools
Similar to Sudoswap, the Stargaze Infinity Pools allows users to create pools between NFTs and fungible tokens and earn swap revenue. Due to NFT market maturity and overall liquidity in the Cosmos, this and other NFTFi tooling are not a focal point at present but can be deployed at a later date.
App Usage and Metrics
Stargaze’s main frontend has been live since March 2022 when the 12 genesis collections launched. The website has facilitated over 20,000 monthly active users (MAUs), and has a 30-day user retention rate of 40%.
For reference, a retention rate of 25% is considered excellent for web apps. Only the top 10% of consumer apps have a retention rate of greater than 30%. This shows that Stargaze has an incredibly loyal customer base, facilitated by the app/website. This is a solid base that can continue to grow if Stargaze is given the opportunity to continue iterating and building.
The website also has shown MAU growth, with as much as 35,000 in a single month. These are addresses that have performed an NFT action like minting and trading, and excludes non-NFT actions like staking.
When compared to market cap, Stargaze user metrics are even more impressive. Stargaze’s MAU per $1 million token market cap is more than 10x Osmosis’ MAU per $1 million token market cap.
Another useful comparison is with Magic Eden, a competing NFT platform. Magic Eden’s token, ME, has a valuation of $140 million, around 50x the market cap of STARS. However, many NFT traders claim that Stargaze is a better product. We have a proven track record of cost-efficient user acquisition and retention resulting in one the most passionate communities in crypto – see Testimonials in the Appendix.
Customer Acquisition Cost
Stargaze has almost 20,000 monthly active NFT traders, completely organically. Zero incentives, no paid ads – just real users who genuinely like what we’ve created.
Our competitors (Blur, Magic Eden) spend thousands of dollars per user through airdrops. Blur spent about $2,700 per user, and Magic Eden spent even more, around $5,000 per user. Those users were often farmers chasing incentives, while Stargaze users weren’t.
Stargaze users are real NFT enthusiasts:
- About 40% monthly retention – they keep coming back.
- Each wallet is worth, on average, $334.79 each (active wallets for the last 6 months, NFTs only).
- Each user has spent $25.17 in Marketplace fees on average (last 6 months).
Therefore, Stargaze users are economically active, genuinely committed, and socially engaged. Given the above metrics, we can easily justify valuing each user around $100 - $150 each, much cheaper than what our competitors have already spent.
With around 20,000 monthly active users, that means Stargaze’s user base is worth roughly $2 million - $3 million. So the Hub would be getting an active, passionate NFT community at a huge discount compared to the industry average.
Bad Kids and NFT Assets
A passionate user base and top tier user experience have allowed NFTs to thrive on Stargaze.
The top collections on Stargaze have a combined market cap of ~$15 million. The Cosmos Hub would be acquiring some of the most builder-centric and influential communities in crypto, outside of just Cosmos. For example, Hasu of Lido has a Bad Kid, as does Jon Charbonneau of DBA, Mippo of Blockworks, and Richard Chen of Varrock VC.
| Collection | Market Cap (USD) | Floor Price | 24h Volume |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bad Kids | $9,324,168.00 | $932.79 | $2,303.41 |
| Celestine Sloth Society | $2,750,274.00 | $1,100.55 | $916.65 |
| Onchain OMies | $483,661.00 | $54.23 | $552.10 |
| Mad Scientists | $393,684 | $186.12 | $1,104.31 |
| Wandering Whale Sharks | $1,271,700 | $510.25 | $1,911.63 |
| After The Filter | $414,007.00 | $41.41 | $773.29 |
| Bit Kids | $255,677.00 | $25.58 | $104.93 |
| Pixel Wizards | $113,278.00 | $51.10 | $142.91 |
| $15,006,449.00 |
Stargaze Marketplace is one of the few NFT marketplaces that allows denominating collections in assets besides the main asset of the chain. For example, Bad Kids is already denominated in ATOM, and Celestine Sloth Society and Wandering Whale Sharks are denominated in TIA. There are several high-profile Sloths holders as well, such as Nick White of Celestia. Integration with more denominations and associated high profile collection launches are already scheduled in 2025.
Following a deal, the Hub would become the cultural hub for these diverse communities and associated protocols.
Comparable Token Valuations
| Marketplace / Infra | Chain | Token | FDV | M-cap | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Magic Eden | Solana | ME | $940M | $140M | Largest NFT platform |
| Blur | Ethereum | BLUR | $312M | $244M | Pro-trader aggregator |
| Metaplex | Solana | MPLX | $186M | $141M | Creator tooling |
| Tensor | Solana | TNSR | $150M | $57M | NFT marketplace |
| Stargaze | Stargaze L1 | STARS | $3.3M | $3M | NFT chain + marketplace |
In comparison to the competition, a 2,688,260 ATOM (~$13.98M) valuation is relatively small:
- 1.5% of Magic Eden’s token FDV
- 4.5% of Blur’s FDV
- 9% of Tensor’s FDV
- <1% of Magic Eden’s last valuation ($1.6B series B in June 2022)
If this proposal passes, the Hub would acquire the suite of Stargaze products, including Launchpad, Marketplace, and Studio (similar to Metaplex), all at barely 10% of Metaplex’s token value.
Therefore, this leaves ample upside for ATOM holders if Stargaze captures even modest NFT market share. For ATOM stakers, it is the equivalent to buying the Cosmos NFT crown jewel for roughly only seven weeks of Hub inflation.
Deal Terms
STARS -> ATOM Migration
The metrics above demonstrate that the value of Stargaze should take into account performance, volume, brand and user base. Stargaze serves as the NFT Hub for numerous protocols.
We propose using the 200-day moving average price of STARS for the migration because it is the fairest, least arbitrary compromise between spot-price risk and historic relevance, and backed by decades of precedent in finance, especially in mergers and acquisitions.
A contract will be deployed on the Hub that burns STARS for ATOM. If the proposal passes, then 1000 STARS would convert to 0.7846 ATOM.
After the launch of the EVM version of Marketplace (see Hub Roadmap), any remaining funds will be clawed-back to a snapshot of STARS stakers, in proportion to their staked amount on May 15, 2025. Furthermore, the conversion price will start decaying to 0 linearly after 1 month, to encourage a speedy migration.
Delegations will be snapshotted and the ATOM equivalent value will be allowed to be claimed on the Hub. In order to prevent double claiming, unbonding after the snapshot will be disabled (pending Stargaze governance).
Note that the above is conditional on a separate proposal passing on Stargaze that sunsets the STARS token, and converts Stargaze L1 to a proof-of-authority chain that does not depend on the security of STARS. Stargaze L1 will continue to operate for at least one year until everything is fully migrated, including non-STARS assets.
| Component | ATOM Requested | Vesting / Lock-up | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| STARS ➜ ATOM Migration | 2,750,359 ATOM | Locked until claimed | Redeem all circulating STARS at the 200-day moving average price + customer acquisition cost (CAC), with a clawback of unclaimed funds to STARS stakers. ATOM price = $5.20 (on 5/22/2025). STARS price = $0.00408 (200-day moving average on 5/22/2025). CAC = $3 million. |
Stargaze Frontend Operational Cost
Software licenses are commonplace across crypto and Cosmos for wallets, oracle services, block explorers, and other infrastructure. This proposal offers the use of the Stargaze frontend app that powers stargaze.zone for a yearly fee of $250k to Public Awesome, the entity that develops and maintains the code. This is in line with peer apps in the ecosystem and industry standards. After one year, this fee can be paid from Stargaze operational profit and should not require more Hub funding requests.
The frontend license guarantees that all operational and infrastructure costs, such as running dedicated RPCs, IPFS hosting, indexers, and backend APIs that support the site.
| Stargaze Frontend Licence | 48,077 ATOM | 25% liquid, 75% 12-month locked and staked | Keeps stargaze.zone frontend + infra live on the Hub for 12 months ($250k / yr) |
|---|
The Stargaze Frontend app is built with modern web technologies such as Next.js, Typescript, and GraphQL. It includes powerful micro-services and APIs for blockchain indexing, IPFS hosting, image processing, rarity calculations, currency tracking, analytics, and more. Much of the backend is built in Rust and Go. This is the secret sauce that makes stargaze.zone so fast and powerful. It took over 4 years to develop, and is non-trivial to build. Many teams in Cosmos have tried to build apps like stargaze.zone but have come up short.
The Stargaze frontend app was also the first NFT platform to be fully functional on mobile. It continues, to this day, to be one of the only mobile-friendly NFT platforms.
Stargaze Studio
Included in this license is Stargaze Studio — a suite of no-code creator tools to launch collections, create whitelists, set royalties, perform airdrops, and more. Studio gives creators full control over their collections from launch to post-mint management.
Stargaze Team
The Stargaze team includes seasoned blockchain engineers with backgrounds in web2, mobile, Ethereum, and Cosmos. The team has always operated very lean and efficiently, and can continue to thrive on the Hub with a small team of 6-8 people. Half the team are technical while half are non-technical. Operating an NFT platform includes a lot of human capital, such as providing support to creators and traders, helping with NFT launches, marketing, growth, social media, and technical support. The team has kept the Stargaze L1 blockchain operational for 4 years without any halts or downtime besides for standard upgrades.
To date, the Stargaze team has managed both the core apps, NFT project support, and all tasks associated with a chain. Deploying purely as apps on the Hub will allow the team to focus entirely on product development and facilitating NFT project success, and as such we anticipate we can achieve strong growth and sustainability after one year.
However, migration to the Hub will be an extremely intensive exercise. Alongside technical implementation, the team will be stewarding the transition for existing creators, projects and users, while delivering new key NFT launches. To ensure the team can facilitate a smooth and successful transition, $120k for the team per month is enough to fund development for the first year.
| Stargaze Team Funding | 276,923 ATOM | Stargaze-Hub Oversight DAO | One year transitional fund for a six-to-eight-person lean team ($120k / mo) to run marketplace, support launches & ship roadmap. Distributed quarterly from the DAO. |
|---|
Sustainability for the Stargaze team following the first year is dependent on marketplace growth and fees. The team aims for 6 to 8 million marketplace volume by early 2026 and achieve sustainability via onboarding and growth for the Hub.
Funds will be distributed to the Stargaze-Hub Oversight DAO, a new DAO to be formed immediately after the passage of this proposal, made up of 3 members representing Stargaze, 3 representing the Hub, and 1 external rotating auditor. The Oversight DAO will distribute 20% of the funds to the Stargaze team for each quarterly milestone after an initial 20% distribution.
For transparency, public Github project boards will be created and mapped to quarterly deliverables. Furthermore, there will be quarterly video town halls and written progress reports.
Hub Roadmap
Besides deploying existing Stargaze apps on the Hub and migrating assets, we propose building new features only possible with IBC Eureka, such as a next-gen Marketplace that operates as a single logical marketplace across all IBC Eureka chains, with NFTs routed through the Hub.
The Stargaze Team plans on implementing the following roadmap after this proposal passes:
Roadmap: 12-Month Deployment Plan
Months 1–3: Migration & Stargaze Marketplace Deployment
-
Deploy Stargaze Marketplace on Cosmos Hub
Update all contracts, frontend, backend, and indexing infra to run on the Hub. -
NFT Ownership Snapshot & Provenance Upload
Snapshot NFTs on Stargaze L1 and persist provenance data to IPFS (or store directly as inscriptions). -
STARS ➝ ATOM Migration Contract Live
Deploy Hub-based contract for token redemption and clawback logic. -
NFT Airdrop to Hub Wallets
Complete NFT migration using bech32-compatible addresses. -
Stargaze L1 Governance Transition
Convert Stargaze L1 to a proof-of-authority chain via governance vote. -
(Optional) Stargaze Names Deployment
Deploy updated ENS-like name service for Cosmos Hub users.
Months 4–7: EVM Contract Migration
-
IBC-native Launchpad Deployment (EVM)
Rewrite Launchpad contracts in Solidity for Hub’s EVM environment. Mint from anywhere with any token. -
Cosmos Hub Genesis Collections Launch
Launch new collections exclusively on the Hub, with whitelists and airdrops for proposal voters. Include at least 3 high visibility mints. -
IBC-native Marketplace Beta Deployment (EVM)
Deploy Beta version of the EVM marketplace.
Months 8–10: Ecosystem Growth + IBC NFT Hub Routing
-
EVM ICS-721 (IBC Eureka) Upgrade
Deploy Eureka-ready ICS-721 for interchain NFT routing via the Hub. -
IBC-native Marketplace Full Deployment (EVM)
Fully functional version of Marketplace with IBC Eureka routing. Buy NFTs from anywhere with any asset. List NFTs from anywhere in any token. -
Targeted Ecosystem Marketing
Run campaigns to highlight Cosmos-native NFT narratives and collections.
Months 11–12: Retention & Monetization
-
ATOM Staker Loyalty Program Launch
Launch trading fee discounts, exclusive access, and rewards for ATOM stakers. -
New Feature Rollouts
Explore AI-powered listings, dynamic royalties, and collection-owned treasuries. -
Sustainability Milestone
Target $6 million in monthly Marketplace volume to reach break-even; initiate ATOM staker revenue share if exceeded.
A next-gen IBC-native NFT Marketplace
IBC Eureka enables functionality not possible before. Imagine a Hub-based marketplace that can trade, lend, swap, and build on NFTs living on Ethereum, Solana, and all other Eureka chains. This is now possible with Hub routing and multi-payload IBC packets.
Marketplace features you can’t build anywhere else (yet):
| Feature | How it works |
|---|---|
| Cross-chain offers / intent escrow | Buyer on ETH signs I want any Mad Lad ≤ 5 ETH. Order routes to the Hub; funds escrowed in ATOM-denominated stable via Stride DEX. Seller on Solana deposits a matching Mad Lad into Hub escrow and triggers a swap. |
| Gas-abstracted trades from any IBC Eureka chain | Buyer on Solana submits IBC transaction to buy a Bad Kid with SOL. Tx routes to the Hub, SOL swapped to ATOM on Stride DEX. Bad Kid purchased and transferred to Solana via ICS-721. |
| Chain-agnostic auctions | Bids arrive as token-transfer payloads from any chain. Hub order-book sorts by value in ATOM. Winning bid refunds losers automatically over IBC. |
A next-gen IBC-native NFT Launchpad
Launchpad, too, can benefit from functionality that IBC Eureka provides:
| Feature | How it works |
|---|---|
| Mint from any chain in any asset | Users on Ethereum pay for mint in ETH. Mint tx routes to Hub over IBC, ETH is swapped on Stride DEX to minting asset. NFT is minted and transferred to Ethereum over IBC. |
| Cross-chain aidrops | Snapshot IBC destination addresses on Cosmos Hub and airdrop via IBC transactions to all holders across all chains. This leverages the Hub as a single-hop IBC router. |
| zk-TLS whitelists for Sybil resistance | Creator sets a rule for a whitelist that only allows X users to mint. zk-TLS is used to verify the X user via the API, preventing minting bots. |
Sustainability and Growth
A key goal of this proposal is to provide sufficient funding for Stargaze to operate sustainably without further injections of capital from the Cosmos Community Pool. The valuations proposed in this document suggest 4 to 5 years of sustainability even with no additional revenue source or capital injection. This sustainable period is calculated as follows:
A: Funds available to the Stargaze team, if a proposal on Stargaze passes to distribute a portion of the Stargaze Community pool to the team for continued development.
- $2.862 million total (based on the 200-day moving average of STARS)
- 210 million STARS in Foundation account valued at $890,400
- 465 million STARS from Stargaze Community Pool valued at $1.9716 million
B: Projected revenues from future Launchpad and Marketplace fees.
- Baseline $2.7 million ($50,000 per month over a 12 month period)
- Average Revenue between April 2024 - April 2025 is $49,916.66
- Revenue expected to decrease short term during redeployment
C: Funding provided for team for year 1
- $1.44 million ($120,000 * 12)
(A + B + C) / (team cost monthly) / (12 months) =>
(2.862 million + 2.7 million + 1.44 million) / (120,000) / 12 => ~4.9 years
For indefinite fiscal sustainability, one of the following is projected to occur during the sustainability period:
- Increase in revenue from higher marketplace volume
- Product innovations that generate new sources of revenue
- Capital injections by VC’s
With our baseline revenue and implementation of our roadmap centering Stargaze at the heart of cross-chain NFT trading, we project solid marketplace volume growth beyond the sustainable range of $6,000,000 in monthly volume, a modest target which has been achieved in high volume months on Stargaze in the past. We do anticipate volume will be disrupted for the first quarter at minimum during the transition period.
As such, the team expects to achieve complete self sufficiency within 12 months of the acquisition (estimated below in Q3 2025).
With $6,000,000 in marketplace revenue or $120,000 in fees as the threshold for sustainability, the Stargaze team proposes a revenue share program with the Hub above that threshold where 15% of fees are distributed to ATOM stakers that use Stargaze for 5 years.
At current transaction volume, Stargaze would generate an estimated $15,000 in gas fees for Hub stakers. As this correlates with marketplace activity, we project that Stargaze can deliver $36,000 in gas revenue to the Hub within the first year. These projections are made assuming proven volume targets and fixed at the current price of ATOM.
With a focus on growth, Stargaze will become a valuable driver of gas fees for the Cosmos Hub alongside revenue share for ATOM stakers who use Stargaze. Our projections are kept within range of already-achieved Marketplace volume numbers in peak months, which can realistically be achieved again. We are confident, however, that within 2 years we can achieve a more ambitious scenario where Stargaze consistently drives $25,000 or more monthly to ATOM stakers through marketplace revenue share alongside gas.
Here are some strategies we plan on working on to increase NFT volume:
User Re-engagement
- Implement off-platform notifications (email, Telegram) reminding users about trending mints, price alerts, new listings, and other personalized updates.
Volume-Based Loyalty Program
- Introduce platform-specific benefits (discounted fees, badges, UI skins, special access, etc.) to reward high-volume traders, incentivizing more frequent and larger transactions.
Gamification
- Incorporate gamified elements such as leaderboards, badges, or daily streak rewards to encourage frequent engagement.
Onboarding High-Volume Collections
- Actively recruit and onboard creators or projects likely to generate high transaction volume, increasing overall trading activity.
Improved Social Sharing Integration
- Enhance social media integration, making it easier and more appealing for users to share their mints and trades publicly, driving organic marketplace traffic.
Referral/Affiliate Program
- Create a dedicated influencer role or affiliate program where users can earn a small fee by successfully driving minting or trading activity through their shared listings or collections.
Trading Competitions
- Run periodic trading competitions with rewards for highest trading volume or most transactions completed, promoting user engagement and activity.
Personalized Recommendations
- Leverage user data to deliver tailored recommendations of collections and NFTs, increasing the likelihood of minting and trading.
Value Accrual to Cosmos Hub and ATOM
Stargaze is already the dominant NFT marketplace in Cosmos.
Immediately following deployment, the Hub would inherit Stargaze’ status as the cultural hub of the Cosmos. At present volume, it would gain 3,000 ATOM in monthly gas use from transactions as a baseline.
Stargaze users engage in a large amount of transactions when minting and trading NFTs. As represented as transactions on the Cosmos Hub with gas fees, ceteris paribus Stargaze would provide a range of 6,000 to 12,000 ATOM in gas fees for the Hub per quarter based on Q12024 to Q12025 volumes.
In the case of a Stargaze deployment on the Cosmos Hub, gas fees are direct value capture for ATOM stakers from a large-scale community and product onboarding.
Following deployment on the Hub, our goal is to place Stargaze at the forefront of ecosystem growth within crypto-native audiences alongside new crypto users. We will continue to gain market share in the NFT space by way of technical innovation via cross-chain NFT transfers alongside working with projects to facilitate high visibility, high activity NFT collections launching on the Hub. We will leverage our community, experience and relationships alongside product innovation to make the Hub a top choice for NFT launches across crypto.
Operating as purely a product team, resources can be more efficiently deployed for product development, project support, and growth. Our goal is sustainability within 1 year at a range of $4 to $8 million of monthly volume.
$100,000+ in monthly revenue is very feasible following a one year transition period. From that point, Stargaze can sustain itself indefinitely on the Hub with a very lean team.
In summary, Stargaze brings value to ATOM from:
- Gas fees from increased transaction volume
- Dynamic gas fees from popular mints
- Marketplace trading fees
- Launchpad minting fees
- Names purchases and renewals
- Increased volume from NFT’s use in marketing and narrative building
- Real world use-case exposure through RWAs and NFTs for ticketing
- Increased exposure and trading activity from new collections
- Fees from increased IBC Eureka usage
NFTs as Cosmos Brand Assets
The assets facilitated by the Stargaze platform have become brand identifiers for the entire Cosmos ecosystem. This includes projects incubated on the platform from the very beginning such as Bad Kids - the iconic Cosmos PFP - alongside projects designed to be the face of specific communities like Sloths for Celestia, Mad Scientists for Osmosis, and OMies for Mantra. As such, Stargaze has consistently provided ecosystem-wide value that is not demonstrated in STARS.
The Stargaze platform and team play a critical role in the success of these projects. This includes artist outreach and onboarding, connecting projects with artists, extensive launch preparation, ongoing advising (often from early iterations), and dedicated support. The entire Cosmos ecosystem has benefited from these ongoing incubator services to date and those benefits will increase following a merger. Stargaze has several major NFT launches booked for the remainder of 2025 that could be scheduled to launch shortly following Hub deployment. In total, Stargaze has paid out $14 million to creators over its lifetime.
The most successful enterprises know that it’s not just about technology or product-market fit. It is great storytelling that captures attention and drives adoption. Merging Stargaze into the Hub would affirm commitment to the Hub’s narratives on revival, product-focus, and attracting top-tier teams. Further, it will open the Hub to the organic storytelling, community growth and brand exposure that NFTs enable.
New NFT Use Cases on Cosmos Hub
On the Hub, Stargaze has the potential to leverage IBC Eureka to enable, for the first time, for NFTs to be bought from any chain from any wallet. NFTs can be transferred across chains over ICS-721, an IBC protocol.
NFTs also have use cases in DeFi and RWAs. For example, Uniswap uses NFTs to represent liquidity positions. NFTs can be a foundation for future RWA products such as real estate, where NFTs representing real estate are fractionalized for trading.
Stargaze was one of the first NFT platforms to have an AI minter (thanks to PS Labs). We intend to integrate AI further to improve the user and creator experience, such as AI-priced listings, adaptive royalties based on trading volume, PFPs with personality, user-owned model weights as NFTs, self-governing collection treasuries, and more.
Migration Plan
Migrating a blockchain is not a trivial matter, but here’s a high-level outline of the plan:
- Apply for a Cosmos Hub developer account
- Deploy Stargaze Marketplace on Cosmos Hub
- Snapshot NFT ownership on Stargaze
- Pause NFT minting and trading on Stargaze
- Upload NFT provenance to IPFS
- Airdrop NFTs to same bech32 addresses on Cosmos Hub
- Snapshot balances and delegations on Stargaze
- Convert Stargaze L1 to a Proof-of-authority chain
- Deploy contract to migrate STARS -> ATOM on Hub
- Deploy and migrate Launchpad and do Genesis Mint
Risks & Mitigation
As one of the first chain-to-chain acquisitions, this proposal is not without risk.
| Risk | Likelihood | Mitigation / Control |
|---|---|---|
| Migration-tech slippage – contracts or other software fail and delay the first milestone | Medium | Deploy on testnets Budget for external audits of the claim contracts |
| ATOM price draw-down (<$4) before milestones are reached. | Medium | Allocate team funds into stATOM on Stride and dATOM on Drop to earn yield and hedge downside. |
| Security regression – Hub’s larger attack surface (Marketplace, Launchpad, Name Service) invites contract exploits. | Low | Mandatory external audits + ongoing bounties. Testnet deployment: all new contracts enabled with admin backstops. |
| Team execution fatigue – 7-8 people may struggle with L1 sunset and EVM rewrite while supporting creators. | Medium | Set aside contingency budget (10% of team line-item) for short-term contractor sprints. |
| Stargaze governance dependency – Stargaze governance may not pass proposals required for the migration, such as disabling unbonding after the snapshot. | Low | Post and discuss parts of this proposal that are conditional on Stargaze governance in the Stargaze forum. |
With phased funding, milestone-gated tranche releases, and dedicated audit budgets, the acquisition’s primary risks are manageable and transparent. Governance can monitor each milestone and pause subsequent unlocks if red flags emerge.
Appendix
[1] Circulating supply includes the Stargaze Community Pool. The Stargaze team aims to propose distributing a portion of the Community Pool to the team for continued development. Much of this ATOM will be converted to stATOM and dATOM to preserve staking rewards.
Testimonials
Sincerely hope Stargaze gets a good deal. Team deserves one for grinding all these time, and token holders deserve one for holding all the way.
— Larry Engineer 🍡 (@larry0x) May 2, 2025
A rare project today that actually built a community and culture, didn't max extract, but hasn't been rewarded price-wise. https://t.co/au8ZJaDsvq
Stargaze and its NFT communities bring me lots of joy,
— Zerk (@Rekt_Zerker) May 1, 2025
hope they can continue operating.
Stargaze did a lot of things great:
- UI/UX
- Onboarding NFT degens and creators crosschain
- Real users, real volume.
Having Stargaze on any network is a huge benefit. https://t.co/YrDMQvggbX
Honestly, massive props to @StargazeZone for the smooth, hassle free, 0 gas experience.
— Emir Beriker 0______0 (@e_beriker) February 14, 2025
► Mempool filter improvements allowed to consistent block production with mint transactions
► Phase 2 minted out in 37 seconds
► 3k req/s phase 1, 5k req/s phase 2
These upcoming… pic.twitter.com/A0OhMv4K2k
Happy anniversary! The team at Stargaze is amazing, and supported me throughout my crazy and unexpected pivot to full time professional illustrator. Congratulations all on building a great platform for creativity. https://t.co/a7kzOTcZsb
— sk (@sadsadstory1984) March 12, 2025
I have said it a few times now 😂
— nftdreamer 💧🪽 (@nftdreamerstar) March 17, 2025
But @StargazeZone has some of the most die hard community of all time
Fight me in the comments if you don't think so 😂 joking 😉 we are friendly over here 😆 #StargazeZone 🌟
Stargaze is a great example of the kind of application we want to support on the Cosmos Hub:
— barry (🥧,📈) (@BPIV400) May 1, 2025
1. Serves app chains: Stargaze has PFP collections that define many different blockchain communities. We want to continue serving and supporting these and more
2. Needs excellent… https://t.co/AZIyB4u6Ne
Massive Overvaluation
Declining Performance in a Receding Market
Ballooning Monthly Costs with No Payoff in Sight
Unproven Tech Migration Risk
Gross Misrepresentation of “Value”
This is Not Strategic — It’s a Bailout
Recommendation