Hex Gorilla and Talis Protocol
With so many NFT (non-fungible tokens) projects entering the space, it’s a hard community to know where to start. My experience is similar to that of many of you in the Web3 arena, but it has been diverted to an unexplored alley; Terra.
Terra (Luna) seems to be the forgotten ecosystem, and yet it has gained 9th place in the marketcap of all cryptos today. When I was introduced to Terra and, more specifically, $UST, I was kind of offended. Not at anybody, but myself. I have always prided myself on staying with the pulse of web3, and yet here I was, somewhere new.
The Terra protocol is the premier decentralized and open-source public blockchain architecture for mathematical stable coins. Terra uses a combination of complex market arbitrage motivations and decentralized Oracle polling to create stable coins that track the price of any fiat currency. Terra stable coins can be spent, saved, transferred, and converted quickly on the Terra network.
Terra and Luna
Terra is a network of stable coins that track the price of fiat currencies. The base Terra stablecoin tracks the IMF’s SDR, named TerraSDR, or SDT. Other stablecoin denominations include TerraUSD or UST, and TerraKRW or KRT. All Terra denominations exist in the same pool. Users mint new Terra by burning Luna.
Luna is a staking token that absorbs the price volatility of Terra. Users stake Luna to validators who record and verify transactions on the blockchain in exchange for rewards from transaction fees. The more Terra is used, the more Luna is worth — the more Terra goes up in value.
The one thing that separates Terra from the rest is it’s user base. For some reason even though it has so much to offer, it falls short of widespread adoption. While other chains are happy building subnets on layer 2s , Terra is silently moving along creating really innovating defi approaches, and of course unique NFT projects as well.
Far from the most popular NFT platform even on Terra, The Talis Protocol brings an interesting approach to a saturated market. With their unique PoD, (Print on Demand) model, they have been able to gather some of the more unique, and really impressive projects out there. They intend to give artists the ability to connect directly with Print shops to print their work directly on anything that you can think of. One of the more ambitious projects out there, Hex Gorilla has some very interesting ideas on how to change not only the platform, but how we use NFTs in the future.
NFT Staking
Staking non-fungible tokens on a platform or protocol in exchange for staking rewards and other benefits is known as NFT staking. Staking NFTs allows owners to profit from their collection while keeping control of it. Hex Gorilla intends to use this concept, and take it further. According to Gorilla Nixon , digital designer and leader of the group in control of the project, “We want to make a place where artists not only can stake their assets and gain rewards, but an ecosystem where artists can collaborate with other staked projects to bond into a larger collective.” Basically taking the collective staked energy and reward mechanics, and putting it towards an entirely new chain or subnet. With this collective bargaining power, artists can not only control their works throughout perpetuity, but they can also almost unionize their collective resources to determine the outcome of their staking. It isn’t a model that will be very popular with platform operators, but in terms of rewarding artists it will be revolutionary.
Hex Gorilla — Live Live in Color
The project is more unique than the bold aspirations its lead designer has for it. The project itself is centered around color. Specifically, hexadecimal or “Hex” colors. You know, the web RGB model you see on almost every stylesheet you inspect. Right now, it seems really boring when you think about colors, right? That’s why this group has consulted and has on board an advisor from the ICC, or International Color Consortium. Their first launch, or Phase one “Genesis” will include only 100 NFTs in it’s initial release. These 100 are intended to reflect the more rare and obscure colors found within the color spectrum, and more specifically, the use of these colors on the web. Using the Common Crawl, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing a full copy of the internet to “researchers, companies, and individuals at no cost for the purpose of research and analysis,” Hex Gorilla is searching for the appearance, or in this case, non-appearance, of certain colors within the archive. At this point they have discovered that more than anything, color representation within the web from 2008 to January 2022 has changed drastically. That is understandable given the rise of HTML5 and other technologies such as Vue, Angular, and, most importantly, Material Design, which have altered the color landscape.
The group will provide more than just a hexadecimal representation of color. They also emphasized that every color has a name, which the ICC and other organizations accept as a global way to express the color or the mood it symbolizes.
The project itself is very interesting, and the tentative date for launch is May 1st exclusively on The Talis Protocol.
Project: Hex Gorilla
Platform: The Talis Protocol — Terra (UST)
Social: Twitter — Reddit — Behance — Facebook
Litepaper: Hex Gorilla v1.0
