from Osmocon Video Part 1: 02:28:25 - 02:42:37

@shan3v

tl;dr

Stargaze is a model for why appchains are great. They can customize the entire stack of their blockchain, from consensus, to SDK modules, to CosmWasm smart contracts, as well as interoperate with IBC, and now with the ICS-721 standard, NFTs can be moved around the Cosmos, as well as locked on other chains, with synthetic versions minted on Stargaze. Other features enabled for Stargaze as a result of being an appchain: fairburn fee mechanism that sends half fees to stakers and burns the other half, a randomness SDK module for ensuring truly random mints, true NFT staking that secures the chain, better UX, and scalability that will enable Stargaze to incubate gaming and other NFT-centered projects and ultimately send them off onto their own appchains, while Stargaze supplies shared security.

-taking Dev’s spot (busy fixing the chain): he was going to speak about ‘Superpowers of Appchains’

-a lot of people ask me why Stargaze is an appchain, so there would be a lot of overlap

Governance

-on Ethereum and other L1s, you don’t have a base layer for on-chain governance

-instead, you have rough off-chain governance [slides not visible]

-you have protocols and DAOs that govern the protocols, but not the base layer

-Cosmos improves this: here, you have governance at the base layer

-but if you build a generalized chain on Cosmos, you also get DAOs and apps, a two-tiered governance system

-oftentimes, you get misalignment: governance of the DAO may not align with governance of the chain

-appchains greatly minimize this problem

-appchains have focus, clear vision, and everything built on top is aligned with all stakeholders

-e.g. Stargaze is an NFT chain, and all stakeholders want it to succeed as such

Appchain Architecture

-on generalized chain, devs can deploy contracts: only working at the top layer

-on an appchain, the entire stack is there to be used

-can build custom SDK modules (more powerful than contract layer)

-can modify Tendermint consensus if you want

Appchains - best of both worlds

-rapid development in CosmWasm and Rust

-can deploy contracts easily on the chain (no chain upgrade necessary)

-and these contracts can interact with SDK modules for custom logic

-this is where the magic happens

Stargaze Appchain Features

Fairburn - loosely inspired by EIP-1559

-instead of regular fees, whenever there is a fee, half of it is burned, and half goes to stakers

-launching, minting, and trading all require fairburn

-ex. 3rd-party dev makes custom contract, you want to make a new minter

-right now minting is based on fixed price

-but you could build a Dutch-auction minter

-and you would get a cut of the fairburn fees

Random Beacon SDK module

-many NFTs need randomness

-ArtBlocks, FXHash — need for random minting

-building this as a custom contract is expensive: have to use drand, verify the sig.

-could use IBC to talk to Band Protocol: but this is slow

-takes at least 3 blocks: submit tx, relayer picks up, sends it to other chain, gets randomness, sends it back

-building as SDK module is much cheaper and faster