Star Network – the future of social defi?

Yes we have yet another review on a “mobile mining” application. This time around it is the Start Network [referral code: blong1234]. And this project is at its very early stages so I am guessing that is a some what of a good thing. At the moment it seems to have less than 500k users (or “explorers” as they call it). For those who don’t know how these mobile mining application works – they require you to download an app on your mobile device and once per day or so, you have to click on a button to activate your mining. The amount of returns you get depends on how many referrals you have. Basically they want you to invite as many people as you can to the network for it to really grow. Currently each user will get 1.6 “Star” Token per 24 hours and you can boost your rate by completing a draw or getting more referrals. The draw happens once every 12 hours. Yes so nothing too special or innovative about this application. Both the Pi network and the Eagle network does nearly the same thing. And this is meant for people who likes to fiddle with mobile phones while on the public transport, just like me. And honestly, it doesn’t really take up too much of your time either. At most about 10 seconds to open up an app on the phone and tap a few buttons. No issues for me. Honestly if you are the kind of people that hates doing such things, then this is definitely not for you.

The Star Network app is very clean and easy to use. Layout is amazing as well. Again this is something the Pi team should really consider. Their mobile application just isn’t that great. Just don’t understand why the Pi team don’t want to improve their mobile app. It really isn’t that difficult to do. And you get to chat with your referrals directly in the app, which I am guessing is the “social” part of their slogan. But then most other applications have chat functions in their apps as well. Perhaps they will work on that in the future.

Of course I am not entirely sure whether this project will eventually succeed or not. There are already quite a number of such mobile apps and they seem to do the exact same thing. And the Pi Network probably have the biggest number of members as they are probably the pioneers in this type of platforms. And projects like Hi Dollars have been in the market much longer and seemed to have some powerful financial backing. And if I am not wrong, seems that the Star Network is competing directly with Hi Dollars as both of them are concentrating on the Defi sector. So both are them are basically doing some sort of decentralized exchange, lending and borrowing, which I think do have still some room to grow. But as this project is still rather young, we won’t know for sure. And for those asking what value would their Star Token be, that I have no idea too. There is nothing much said about the Star tokenonmics as well. Even in their white paper. Looks like they are planning to develop their own blockchain and it should be something similar to the Stellar Protocol. If you are still interested, you should check out their white paper here.

Apparently the total supply of the Star Token will not be fixed. Users will stop minting when the number of users reach 100 million(estimated time July 2023). This number of definitely more realistic compared to the 1 billion users by the Hi team. I think if the Hi project can get to 1 billion users, they would have dominated the entire crypto scene already. A bit too ambitious. Anyway you can use that to guess as to the estimated total supply for the Star Token. Remember that they will do halving once they have reached a certain number of users. And from what I read in their white paper, only users who pass KYC (Know Your Customer) can get the tokens which they call your “realized balance”. That includes referrals as well. So if you want to get those referrals, you will need your invitees to pass KYC as well. At the moment, KYC has not been implemented yet. Seems like they will be implementing KYC in more developed countries first.

One of the things that got me a bit bullish about the Star Network is their white paper. Someone really took a lot of effort to create that white paper and it certainly looks very original to me. And it is relatively clearly written with very little non-sensical jargon to confuse readers. Most of these projects will copy white paper from older projects and they do look rather scammy. Heck some even copy the entire white paper wholesale without changing the names of the projects. Furthermore their website and application do not have advertisements and they only require you to click on one ad per day. Even their “boost” do not require you to click on advertisements or pay for the boost. The Pi Network application will show some advertisements from time to time so I am guessing they do need some form of revenue. And it seems that there is no way users can purchase the Star Tokens directly. Unlike the Hi Dollars project where you can purchase or even do a pre-sale of the Hi Dollars token at a discount, there is no way for Star users to get increased rates without referrals. So the Star Network app is your only choice. Which I think is fairer. And it is good since no pre-sale of tokens or coins means the SEC technically should not come after their asses. But you know the SEC right? It is however disappointing that they are not revealing the names and faces of their management team, especially seeing that they are supposed to be some of the best in the industry. If you have nothing to hide….

However I see nothing in the white paper about them limiting users from dumping the Star Token when it launches on various exchanges (estimated date in December 2022), except for some limit in KYC. Maybe it will work but I highly doubt it. Not to mention the potential backlash if some users are able to “withdraw” their Tokens but there are others who are NOT able to. Just imagine their telegram group exploding with angry complains! Not going to be a nice sight I would gather. Think perhaps they should take a playbook out of the Hi project and find some way to ensure their users will not be dumping the tokens and causing the price to crash. As they are delving into the defi space, might be wise to set up some lockup periods to incentivize users to hold in order to earn interests. Or just follow what Eagle is doing and forcing users to “stake” their tokens for some time before releasing them. This might mitigated some of the problems with token launches.

Anyway I will update you guys on how this is going. It is just too early to tell. But it is indeed a very interesting project with great potential. Take care bros and see you all in the next one! And once again, never pay for anything on these kind of apps. You will never know when they will do a rugpull or simply just give up. Probably no chance of getting any recourse if that happens.

Some updates on this project if you are interested. Seems that they are quite active in the development but I am thinking not all the changes will be good if you ask me. Anyway please read here and here.