KuCoin AMA With Starly (STARLY) — A Launchpad and Marketplace for Gamified NFT Collections

Dear KuCoin Users,

Time: February 16, 2022, 11:00-12:04 (UTC)

KuCoin hosted an AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) session with Katrina Aboltina, Starly Head of Global Community, in the KuCoin Exchange Group.

Starly is a launchpad and marketplace for creators and collectors to expand economies around gamified NFT collections. Collecting NFTs here turns into an immersive experience with different NFT rarity classes, distribution in sealed packs, limited editions, rewards, collector score, and other continuously evolving game-like mechanisms. Collectors are engaged through adrenaline-driven pack opening. They buy and sell cards on the marketplace to complete sets and get rewards for achieving milestones. On Starly, owning NFTs is a social experience opening a new kind of relationship that empowers the community. Created by the team behind super viral F3 and Ask.fm. Backed by Dapper Labs, Animoca Brands, and 40+ top-tier crypto funds.

Official Website: https://starly.io/

Whitepaper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SVvLj-Zp41Rp0IFaJou_p4sD18-BY6uc/view

Follow Starly on Twitter and Telegram.

Guest:

Katrina Aboltina - Head of Global Community at Starly

Katrina is all things Community and Content person at Starly. She has been with the founding team for almost a decade, working on several projects. She has an extensive background in localization, content creation, and management. But above all, she loves building connections with the Community.

Q: Can you tell us more about the team behind Starly?

Katrina: Oh yes, our dream team and my second family. Literally, our core team has worked together for a decade now (some people even more, I believe) and has extensive social media experience. We have previously created social media networks, such as Ask.fm with 150 million users at the moment of sale to IAC and F3 with 30 million users today. The team is exactly like a family, and just everyone has the same driving force. And all our team members are one-of-a-kind people who work hard and never stop learning and growing. Proud to be one of them.

Q: Tell us about partnerships important for your project!

Katrina: Good and supportive partners are invaluable and not easy to find - especially as we entered a new space. We have been incredibly lucky to have all the support and guidance from Dapper Labs, who also chose us - just a baby of a project at the time (even before platform launch) - to partner up for the FlowFest. We hosted the Mystery Pack, an NFT from Flow ecosystem partners giveaway during the fest.

Another shoutout goes to Blocto. They have been and still are so responsive and involved, assisting in our somewhat ambitious plans.

We also get a lot of ongoing support and advice from our investors, like Animoca Brands, KuCoin Labs, and others. Everyone is nothing less than amazing.

Q: Many companies don't have a well-formulated vision/mission. How about Starly?

Katrina: When we started to look for the next new thing for us, we noticed that there was room for our experience in the crypto space. In previous decades, people have built connections and micro-communities on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. We believe it's about time to bring those relationships to the next level.

We are building an immersive NFT experience aimed at mainstream adoption. Though it might seem quite far away, it is actually just around the corner, and we are ready to board that journey.

I'd lie if I'd say that we haven't changed our targets a bit or made minor tweaks here or there, but we still believe in our overall vision and the big picture. Our very first Medium article still stands true. Check it out: https://bit.ly/3oS123x

Q: What do you look for in Creators? And what are the criteria to accept collections?

Katrina: While we have started strong with some very high-quality artists, we aim to be open our platform to all kinds of Creators with devoted communities in the future.

At the moment, we are still at the very beginning of the road, and all the collections on Starly are handpicked. All our collections are masterpieces of a kind, we are proud of them, but the Bar is set so high.

It is not only about art, though. What you see now on Starly is the most passionate Creators with the most exciting stories to tell.

I believe that this passion, spark, and the story will always be a requirement for featured artists, even after the platform is open to all creators.

Q: Please tell us more about the STARLY utilities. Will it be possible to stake it?

Katrina: After the token goes live, we are super excited to start our way to integrate it as the centerpiece of the Starly ecosystem.

We build an immersive NFT experience aimed at mainstream adoption, and STARLY will play a huge role in it as we fully integrate it into our platform. Our team is working on diverse game-like mechanics to make collecting ultimately entertaining and rewarding.

Staking STARLY is an initial utility of the token that offers different reward tiers depending on the amount of the staked STARLY tokens. There will be three staking tiers: Silver, Gold, and Platinum. Each tier will provide a list of benefits, including but not limited to exclusive drops, voting rights, and much more.

Q: You're one of the first platforms to launch on Flow. Why such a choice?

Katrina: We did our research, and building on Flow blockchain was an obvious choice - it is highly scalable and delivers performance and attributes for mainstream adoption.

Even more so, it's also environmentally sustainable, as associated energy consumption is considerably lower than alternatives. As per the latest Deloitte report, the minting of NFT on Flow blockchain consumes less energy than an Instagram post.

We believe there is a lot of future potential and feel very good about Flow's vision in attracting new users to the ecosystem. Not to mention Dapperlabs has been an excellent partner, and their advice and support have been invaluable.

Q: Can you tell us about your future plans? Probably share the highlights of your roadmap?

Katrina: Well, the star of the hour - also why I am here - of course, is token. Integration of it is super important, and we have a lot of features planned around it.

In general, you could say we are building a collect-to-earn experience with rewards, P2P games, challenges, competitions, and much more.

We also have extensive marketing plans that will bring in big brands and celebrities. Not losing our target to educate and reach out to wider audiences, towards mentioned mass adoption.

Then there are things like expanding - on Solana and Ethereum, being on more exchanges, and so on. We have a lot of plans and a lot of guts to fulfill them.

Q: Do you allow suggestions and feedback from the community? Are we allowed in decision-making? Do you put the community into consideration?

Katrina: This is a great question. Of course, the community is one of the most important things (would say the most important, but we have Creators to consider), and we consider creating a strong Starly DAO a very important task, where also STARLY will play a huge role, as stakers will be able to participate in the development and financial decision-making process, and so on.

Q: Regarding the Wyre integration you will do in your ecosystem, what is this about, what benefits will this integration bring to your ecosystem and community?

Katrina: Crypto payments are still taking the first baby steps. Therefore, we are continuously looking into developments and new partners. Wyre is one of them, as they also are very supportive of Flow blockchain projects. Collaboration is still in the early stages, and I cannot give you an exact timeline.

Q: Could you give us the main characteristics of the collectible cards offered by Starly? Tell us how many types exist, how they differ, what makes them special, unique, and valuable, and what we must do to acquire a pack of these cards?

Katrina: The standard collection consists of 21 cards, including 4 Legendaries, 6 Rare, and 11 Common. There are 50/100/600 respective editions each. Lately, we have been exploring making more personalized collections. The last of a kind we had was the amazing collab with Melos Studio - the David Bowie collection, with just 1 Legendary card, for example, and a totally different series.

Q: What do you think is Starly's advantage over its competitors?

Katrina: Starly is very different from Opensea and Rarible (by the way, Starly cards are available on Rarible now). It's not just a marketplace but a launchpad for gamified collections, all new features adding to the ultimate collecting experience. We also aim to open our platform to all kinds of creators, offer personalized collection creation, adding our own level of gamification.

Q: I know many creators with great potential who are afraid of starting to monetize their content through NFTs due to the high commission costs on some platforms. Could you tell us what benefits Starly has for new artists and what tools does it offer to build their collections?

Katrina: Creators do not have any fees to create collections on Starly. Even more so, they have our full technical support and step-by-step guidance. We collect our commission only after the sales. The amount, however, varies depending on prior agreement. Creators also get a 5% lifetime royalty from secondary market sales on Starly.

Q: Is it possible for independent artists and small galleries to exhibit at Starly NFT? Do you have a committee that evaluates all of the art pieces that are submitted? What if Starly NFT grows in the future, receiving millions of artwork every day from artists all around the world?

Katrina: As I have explained previously, we do aim to open the platform to all kinds of creators. In the meantime, what you see now is more of a future featured page on Starly. All creators who are interested in creating collections on Starly can reach out to us at hello@starly.io or in artists dedicated channel on Discord. We keep our eye out for passionate visionaries, and together we can make dreams come true.

Q: I realized that Starly offers the possibility to create their own collections, but are users free to put their own price? Or do you recognize an evaluation to put a price on each NFT?

Katrina: This is a bit tricky. As for the moment, artists cannot post collections without our complete approval. We offer them pricing strategies based on works and community interest. But it has to be stressed that at the moment, only the top quality collections are accepted on the platform, and we take a personal interest in their success. Making the platform public would, of course, lose a bit of that.

Q: How can users stay updated with this project? Are there channels, including local communities, where users can get the latest updates?

Katrina: So, this is a nice question to finalize. Our community has several channels. Telegram is mostly used for token news, Discord is where our collectors hang out, but Twitter features nice giveaways and such. We do believe in global reach with a local approach; therefore, there are several local groups such as Vietnamese, Korean, Turkish on Telegram, on Discord, the Russian group seems to be very active. We are planning to add more of those and reach out to local communities as much as possible.

Q: Is there anything else you would like to share or you want us to know?

Katrina: Thank you all so much for having me, and if I haven't replied to any of your questions, please reach out to us. Our official channels can be found here: https://linktr.ee/starlynft

KuCoin and Starly have prepared a total of 2,000 USDT to give away to AMA participants.

1. Free-ask section: 75 USDT

2. AMA activity: 1,925 USDT

Activity 1 — Quiz: 1,500 USDT

Activity 2 — Price Guess: 300 USDT

Participation Rewards: 125 USDT

. . .

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