Project Overview
Astar Cats is an NFT/DAO project originally envisioned by a small group of people that wished to show their appreciation for our feline companions and immortalize the species artistically on the blockchain.
Due to the artistic background many of the core members have, the DAO is primarily aiming, but not limited to, in playing the role of an incubator for future art projects on the Astar chain and provide creative support (artistic & advisory) to any promising artists and projects.
The support provided may also extend, given that the community votes and agrees to it, to economical backing through the community governed DAO fund that was collected from the minting of the first collection of Astar Cats, the Dapp staking and various other revenue streams the DAO will strive to achieve.
Here at Astar Cats we recognize the power that a community of like minded individuals can hold when striving towards a common goal and we wish to utilize this to create a bustling interconnected and interoperable ecosystem focused on the Astar blockchain.
We envision a future for the blockchain where we can help unlock the creative potential of individuals and teams so they can focus solely on birthing their art and ideas without worrying about things such as investment and networking.
The DAO will be ran and governed fairly, transparently and democratically by the people holding the DAO’s first NFT collection, Astarcats. The holders will vote and decide the best use of the DAO’s treasury and vote on every and all projects and ideas ensuring that only initiatives that have the DAO’s approval come forth and receive our backing.
To do this, we propose that we create a solid foundation for the DAO and utilize a broad marketing strategy both in social media and outside of it focusing on not only spreading awareness of the Astar blockchain and the underlying technology but also on creating CC0 license products, Astar Cats is one of them, to help unlock the creativity of a broader pool of people.
To ensure the long continuation of the Astar Cats initiative we are looking to join the Dapp staking program so our members and believers of the project can create a solid foundation upon which the DAO and its collaborations can build and expand upon. Funds originating from the Dapp staking will 100% go to the DAO’s wallet which is secured by XDAO.
The DAO’s wallet is already multi-sig and the signatories thus far are the product director Beru, the lead developer Hayatti, Astar Ambassador Ramz, and Founder of Astar Network Sota Watanabe. We will be looking in due time to further dilute the hold the core team has over the project and make it fully decentralized with adding not only more signatories in the wallet but also creating a team structure that can run the DAO without any central authority, a first step towards this has already been made with the creation of the role of Astar Cats ambassador. Each ambassador will take the lead on a certain aspect of the DAO and can formulate a team around them as to maximize efficiency.
Team:
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Product Director: Beru.
Beru is a founding member of the Astar Cats initiative, a Polkadot Ambassador and admin/collabmanager of big projects on other chains. -
Developer: Hayatti.
Hayatti is a founding member of the Astar Cats initiative, and has the role of developer and lead marketer. She is also is the founder of SoundanNFT. -
Art Director: Lira.
Lira is a founding member of the Astar Cats initiative and an artist at Sanrio, the largest IP/Art company in Japan. -
Animation Artist: Nemuko.
Nemuko is a founding member of the Astar Cats initiative and the lead animation artist of the project.
Important Links:
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Website: https://astarcats.xyz/
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Discord: AstarCats
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Twitter: https://twitter.com/astarcatsnft
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NFT Collection: https://tofunft.com/collection/astarcats/items
Past Performance and track record
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We launched our first NFT collection on 15/4/2022 which sold out very quickly and did our art reveal on 20/4/2022. Our community at this point consists of over 6000 cat enthusiasts.
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We achieved No.1 trading vol on TofuNFT in less than a week after the project went live, we also have collaborated with Astar Degens, ArthSwap and GaiaStarter and we had the highest NFT sale ever made(33K astr) on AstarNetwork.
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We have also collaborated with Eren the Southpaw a graffiti artist in the first Manga/IP auction in history where we became the first DAO to ever bid on such a project.
Milestones
Milestone 1: Mint of the first collection and art reveal
Estimated Date of Completion: 15/4/2022-Already completed.
The Astar Cats NFTs are the highest level of Astar Cat membership. The NFTs originating from the first collection will have the utility of governance voting for the DAO, will also be able to be used as staking tokens in our partner’s GaiaStarter platform and reward backers with IDO token allocations, be used as early supporter proof so we better allocate future projects airdrops and listings and finally provide holders with various perks on all future projects of the team and partners including but not limited to GameFi and Defi uses.
The mint of the first collection was completed in two rounds, one where whitelisted individuals that got their role through community engagement and various contests and collaborations including an art one, and a second round open to the public where the remaining, around 5,000 NFTs were minted.
Milestone 2: Breaking Ground
Estimated Date of Completion: 31/5/2022
This is the current milestone we are striving to achieve. After the initial mint is over we are tying up any pre mint obligations and closing contests as to move further into the DAO’s development. In this stage of development we are breaking ground and setting the foundations that the DAO will be built upon. One of the first and most important things in this milestone is setting up the voting mechanism and incentivizing the community to actively participate in the voting process. For that we have chosen the platform snapshot where every Cat holder can create a topic to be voted on. Our first DAO vote was for bidding on Eren’s The SouthPaw amazing NFT “The Monster” which received overwhelming attention from our community and we easily reached consensus on the direction that we would go with. The vote allocation is 1 Astar Cat equals 1 vote. This milestone will also include the creation of dedicated teams that will handle all aspects of the DAO’s life such as curating the treasury and handling investments, marketing and engagement, developing and advising projects and overseeing the day to day processes. The teams will be headed by leads called ambassadors and the core team, the role of ambassador is a first step towards the DAO’s decentralizing. Finally this milestone will be concluded with the creation of a dedicated Subsocial space, a detailed long term roadmap of the project and a staking mechanism with our partner GaiaStarter. We will also create dedicated teams
Milestone 3: Setting up the DAO
Estimated Date of Completion: 31/7/2022
This milestone will be split in two different phases. Phase One deals with Governance and Engagement and Phase Two with Financial backing.
Phase One. To better curate the proposals that come forth for voting we aim to create the operating guidelines our DAO will run on. The guidelines will encompass the spirit of the Astar Cats DAO, our primary goal of creating a diverse and supporting environment for any artist or developer seeking to create a project, ensuring that we don’t lose focus on what’s important. Artistic and creative freedom.
The guidelines will also introduce quality checks on the projects we will incubate and partner with and governance failsafes. After creating those guidelines we will codify them in a single document that will act as our DAO’s constitution ensuring that the vision of the members stays clear and help guide us in the long run. Members will be called to contribute in the guidelines creation and ultimately called to vote on them.
Phase Two .The initial DAO funds coming from the minting of the first collection will act as a stepping stone not only for new projects in the space but for the DAO itself too. We will explore options for additional revenue streams utilizing the DAO’s treasury. Additional income will be allocated to the DAO’s wallet from where it can be further distributed. Such options may include but not limited to 1) Staking, 2) Pool allocations on the Astar Network, 3) Investments both in Astar Network projects and crosschain too where we will aim to connect the Astar chain to the broader market for increased network effect.
Milestone 4: The DAO is complete.
Estimated Date of Completion: 30/8/2022
After reaching the above mentioned milestones, the DAO will be complete and will be ready to fully back new projects that we find or come to us. We will also launch a marketing campaign for the benefit of attracting new developers and artists in the Astar Network and strive to organically grow the blockchain that hosts us.
Future Plans:
Here are some examples of goals we have set but with no particular timelimit, of course we will strive to complete them as soon as possible.
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Second collection and play to earn game.
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NFTs with DEFI elements such as staking and collateral.
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Broader marketing strategy.
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Educational material on art and development.
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Content creation such as Manga/Anime featuring the genesis collection.
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Mobile app where members can see the aggregated information available for the entire Astar Cat ecosystem and news about Astar Network.
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Launchpad where projects incubated through the Astar Cats DAO can launch.
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Adding additional utility to our NFT collections.
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Increasing the network effect of the Astar Network.
