I have an announcement to make: I am a self-avowed "Cosmonaut."
I haven't been in the crypto space for a very long time, but in the months that I HAVE been, I've really come to admire the Cosmos ecosystem.
It started with the ATOM token.
A number of things drew me to it, even as my cryptocurrency knowledge was basically at a kindergarten level. First, the name. I'm a math and science geek, so of course a name like ATOM would enthrall me. I still think it's one of the coolest names out there, and if people picked alt-coin success the way my wife makes March Madness selections, it would be based entirely on the cuteness of their names.
Another thing I really liked about ATOM was the immediate ability to stake it and start earning interest. I was given a crash course in crypto by my younger coworker (I've mentioned him before; he's so young he doesn't even know there were James Bonds before Daniel Craig), and he got me set up on Coinbase first, so that's where I bought all of my coins at first. Coinbase offers roughly four and a half percent interest on ATOM for staking it within the exchange. Later, when I had a Trust Wallet and Metamask set up, I saw I could make three times that interest rate if I moved my bag off of the Coinbase exchange.
I've made almost $75 in staking rewards alone off my ATOM coins since Christmas-time. For someone who's not a whale, I think that's pretty darn good!
Towards the end of January, I noticed on Trust Wallet that I could earn almost 90% interest by staking another coin called OSMO. In order to obtain this coin, I bought ATOM and used the Osmosis Zone app in conjunction with a Keplr wallet to swap ATOM for OSMO. Since I started staking OSMO, I've earned nearly a HUNDRED dollars in rewards!
Let's look at some great things about the Cosmos ecosystem.
First, transactions happen very quickly. I've never had to wait more than ten days for something to go through! I kid, of course, most transactions occur within ten seconds, not days!
Second, the fees are MINISCULE! Transactions with ATOM usually run around nine cents, and nearly everything I do with OSMO incurs no fee whatsoever! That's like, FREE! And who doesn't love FREE?
Third, the extra rewards. From what I've seen on Reddit, there have been and continue to be tons of airdrops available to holders and stakers of coins within the Cosmos ecosystem. I personally have yet to be able to claim anything, as most of them either had a snapshot date before I started staking (outside of Coinbase) or I qualify (I think), but they just haven't paid out yet. But I am looking forward to participating in lots of these juicy rewards payouts as the year moves forward.
Lately, as I've explored the Osmosis Zone app even more, I've discovered several very exciting things. For one, there is a way to interact with the KAVA token, another one I have been staking a lot of. For another, there are a myriad of tokens that have very well reviewed projects associated with them. I have formulated a plan whereby I will harvest all of my staking rewards once a week, then use Osmosis Zone to pool them all together and purchase new coins. I'm starting off by trying to expand my portfolio. Last week I bought some Secret (SCRT), this week, I plan on buying some LUNA. I've heard good things about Persistence and Sifchain. And of course, at some point, I will invest in some JUNO, but, you know, we don't talk about JUNO.
So now I open up the forum to you. If you are a fellow Cosmonaut, please share the projects/coins you've fallen in love with or the pools you benefit from the most. If you haven't explored the Cosmos ecosystem, let me know if there's a reason for that.
I leave you with one final thought. Since the market is down a bit now, we should all do what my younger coworker always advises - "Stackin' those chips, so I can buy those dips."
