Hive Devs Should Learn From Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) Protocols On The Airdrop-Friendly Cosmos Hub

I've posted about how the COSMOS ecosystem has gifted and continues to gift airdrops to those who stake ATOM and OSMO. As the network grows, the airdrop eligibility is expanding to include those staking tokens they got from prior airdrops for a nice waterfall effect. This is a great strategy to reward early adopters and those who adopt subsequent chains because it provides compounding opportunities to learn and literally realize the power of the COSMOS network.

As icing on the cake, the staking rewards and liquidity providing incentives for many of these airdrops are rather high, and decay fairly slowly over time as TVL increases.

Detailed Airdrop Example:

On 12/22, I received a small airdrop worth $134 on the Cosmos Hub that I wasn't expecting. I was tempted to sell it to fund Splinterlands land plot purchases, but noticed that the staking rewards were roughly 800%. I made the decision to stake 100% and let it ride since I'd be able to extract my initial airdrop value quickly. A few days later, I received a second airdrop of the same token worth $26.90 at the time as the price rose. I added it my staked amount. This doesn't sound like much here, but my staked amount is worth $898 today. I also have $17.71 liquid unstaked right now, growing every second. To reduce risk, I've also already withdrawn $54.43 liquid rewards to UST. It's not a huge sum of money, but consider the exponential proportions. What started out as a $160.90 quick buck 12 days ago is now a net of $970.24 today with 1/3 safely extracted. While prices fluctuate, this is currently earning me over $17 a day. Project that with more investment and there's legit passive income opportunity here. Getting 100%+ APR in a stable fashion is extremely common on this chain.

Now if you invested $500 or $1,000 around the airdrop date because you were tracking it and new the interest potential, you'd be doing extremely well -- with excellent ongoing yield for the foreseeable future. While I could add more and do that myself, I most enjoy growing "free" into nice sums. I like making something out of nothing more than buying my way in, as foolish as that may be for me since I'm on the pulse of excellent opportunities.

Here's an overview framework, which you can easily do once you put yourself in a position to earn high yield airdrops on the COSMOS network.

I could've easily sold my airdrop deposits for $160.90 UST on OSMOSIS.
I researched, kept, staked, and managed the tokens.
I've withdrawn $54.43 UST of interest (~1/3 of the initial airdrop).
I left $106.47 of my initial airdrop value earning.
Current STAKED balance plus new LIQUID tokens pending UST conversion is worth $915.71 today.
Earning ~$17+ per day now and reinvesting 2/3 into staking, while taking 1/3 of daily interest into UST. I want to keep a structured balance.
I'm putting new staking rewards into a different validator to diversify.
Down from 800%, staking rewards are currently 679% APR after 12 days.

This is the basic structure I've been using on many airdrops from the COSMOS network over the last 6 months. Some airdrops are in the hundreds of dollars in initial value and some have been more. It depends on how much ATOM, OSMO, LUNA, or even JUNO you hold. This stuff has funded the majority of my 2 Splinterlands plots, while ready to potentially buy a third. I usually continue to compound and diversify, but have been starting to use these staking and liquidity pool rewards as a faucet for risk management in UST to ultimately move over to lend at ~20% for the long haul.

While I won't go back in time and detail past drops, I'll suggest that can be a game changer for the income and education. Not only has it been free money, it's taught me quite a lot about how blockchains work outside of HIVE, and that there is a bigger blockchain universe involved. There's a lot more than HIVE if you're mainly focused here, and those who try to keep you thinking that HIVE is the end-all-be-all Web 3.0 are not thinking bigger.

I'm not qualified to tell anyone where to invest, but I do think it's good to consider the upside of simply staking ATOM and OSMO on-chain to expose yourself to upcoming airdrops from a very generous ecosystem. There are many pending and future airdrops. I dig deep on Reddit, Discord, YouTube and the web to scout for these and prepare. There will be more.

A Bigger Trend/Picture

This is mainly possible because of COSMOS' growing interoperable ecosystem, fostering fluid integration with new projects, chains, and even connecting with different blockchains like TERRA and CRO.

To this point, the upcoming EVMOS airdrop is for a project that leverages the Cosmos SDK to be the first IBC-compatible EVM-based chain, bringing composability, interoperability, and fast finality to ETHEREUM. Whether this project succeeds or not, this is the direction we're going here.

^ Think about how projects like EVMOS can radically change interoperability across chains, and then ask if Hive has any framework to foster such development and fundamental reshaping of the blockchain universe. Hmm...

Should Hive devs stake steps to integrate more? I think so. I don't think an island is the best way to go.

P.S. Research the EVMOs airdrop eligibility framework. It's rather broad and you may already even be eligible!

More ABOUT THE COSMOS NETWORK:

COSMOS is promising as a Layer 1 ecosystem (and hub) because of its focus on interoperability between independent chains. I've watched it grow daily, one channel at a time. It also just had a major upgrade at the end of December.

OSMOSIS ia decentralized peer-to-peer blockchain used to create liquidity and for trading Inter-blockchain Communication (IBC) enabled tokens on designated channels. I was introduced to this by a generous airdrop last year and have used it daily since early July. While it's grown substantially, it's still largely under the radar. This is good because it keeps my yield higher until the pools become more saturated.

HIVE/COSMOS:

HIVE is good at what it does. It's fast and free. You can develop on it and earn from/capitalize on its inflation pool. It's a Layer 1, but it feels that those married to it seem content being somewhat isolated from other blockchains. If not, wouldn't have developers sought to integrate it in some form to prepare for cross-chain interoperability?

In the long run, blockchains talking to and working with each other will likely be what helps them sustain and succeed. Hoping to bring more inhabitants it to an isolated blockchain island aspiring to be best-in-breed just doesn't seem as promising and valuable to me.

Alternatively, COSMOS has developed and incorporated IBC via Tendermint. This was a theory years ago, but it's been launched and here now. This allows independent blockchains to directly communicate and trade assets. As a daily user, this is very convenient!

Additionally, COSMOS SDK is an open-source framework for building multi-asset public Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchains, like the Cosmos Hub, as well as permissioned Proof-of-Authority (PoA) blockchains. This creates organic demand and use case, increasing applications, and more VALUE.

I feel that @Splinterlands has wisely done their best to integrate some other chains/wallets within their platform, but generally think that HIVE isn't set up for future success in this respect. After all of these years of waiting for masses to adopt HIVE as undiscovered gem, alternatives are building more inclusive options to naturally attract this. As a reminder, what's probably the most successful thing about HIVE? I think it's Splinterlands -- and they have interoperable portals and onramps integrated. Makes sense to me...

Buy HIVE and build on HIVE, they've said as we tread water... Give people diverse onramps, channels, reasons, and utility, and then we'll move sustainably forward...

Outside from @Blocktrades swap service, I have no other way to get HIVE. There are no bridges or options that I know of that integrate HIVE with other chains outside of Hive-ENGINE's integration with PRIVEX. HIVE is not on any other exchange that I can use. Seeing the drastic alternative of decentralized and welcome interoperability makes me skeptical that HIVE's makeup is healthy for the long haul. Please chime in with your thoughts if you disagree.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

How you feel about the potential of independent blockchains working together?
Should blockchains stay in their own lanes and focus on their internal ecosystems/success instead?
Explore the concept of interoperability and how the Cosmos Hub/Tendermint Protocol works.
Consider how you can become for future airdrops and manage them to generate passive income.
My airdrop example is not an outlier. It's simply an example of a recent one. I claimed another last night for a mix of cashing out to UST and staking the balance at 33% to make sure that I keep it on my radar.
One airdrop was initially worth less than half of the ATOM I had staked, but I've grown those airdrop tokens and its value to be significantly more than the original ATOM! On top of that, I've additionally converted some of the liquid staking and LP interest to increase my ATOM stack by about 20% to make sure I compound future airdrops. This is not magic. It's from leveraging Cosmos' Defi, interoperable chains, IBC, and having faith in the good projects they onboard... It's truly brilliant.

Thanks for your time and I hope some of this helped you, @steemmatt