At Staracle, you can now underline the personal nature and uniqueness of your star with a Non-Fungible Token (NFT). While many other star naming services give away the same star over and over again, Staracle is proud to only offer unique stars. A Non-Fungible Token for your star brings this to the next level by documenting the star in the Ethereum blockchain in a tamper-proof way.
What is a Non-Fungible Token?
A Non-Fungible Token (NFT) is a digital asset, a proof-of-ownership documented in the Ethereum blockchain. An NFT always belongs to a ctypto wallet, so the owner of the crypto wallet owns the NFT. Being a digital asset, NFTs can be transferred or sold to other crypto wallets by the owner.
All our NTFs are documented using the Staracle Stellar Smart Contract in the Ethereum blockchain, which complies with the ERC721 standard for Non-Fungible Tokens. This makes our NFTs tradeable on platforms like opensea.io.
NFTs have gained popularity over the past years, with the first Tweet sold as and NFT, and many NFT-based digital art projects.
Why choose a Staracle NFT?
At Staracle, we carefully designed the Staracle Stellar Smart Contract which hosts the NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. It is the only Smart Contract and token collection that assigns individual NFTs to all our catalog stars and deep-sky objects in a structured way such that no star or object can be assigned more than once. This makes our NFT collection very unique. Moreover, every NFT supports our free star naming service for everybody to enjoy at no cost.
In fact, it is so unique that you can trade your NFT with someone else, since it is based on the ERC721 Non-Fungible Token standard.
NFT for your named stars
At Staracle, all stars are unique. We never give away the same star twice (while many other star naming services do). A Non-Fungible Token is a wonderful way to underline the uniqueness of your star and document it in the Ethereum blockchain. This way, you will have an ever lasting certificate.
You can obtain the NFT after you named your star on Staracle.com. Simply visit your star's profile page and choose the NFT tab. All you need is an Ethereum wallet and the Metamask browser extension for Firefox or Chrome. Payments can only be made in Ether via your crypto wallet.
NFTs for astronomical objects and super-bright stars
None of the stars you can name at Staracle is visible with the naked eye. The reason is simple: There are simply not enough of them. While other star naming services give away the same bright stars over and over again, it is important to us that all our stars are unique. Therefore, it is not possible to name those stars at Staracle.
However, you can now purchase the NFT for many bright and super-bright stars. This does not mean that you own the star, since no one can actually own a star. But it brings you as close to owning it as possible by documenting the NFT in the Staracle Stellar Smart Contract in the Ethereum blockchain, and subsequently owning the NFT.
Moreover, you can purchase the NFT for many interstellar objects, such as the famous Orion nebula. All our NFTs are digital assets and compliant with the ERC721 standard. They can be traded on platforms like opensea.io. If you purchase an NFT on such a platform, the NFT ownership will be reflected on Staracle automatically.
No, it is not possible to own a star or astronomical object. But our Staracle Stellar Smart Contract brings you as close to it as possible by uniquely documenting the corresponding NFT in the blockchain. You will own the NFT, and it is impossible to issue an NFT twice, making the NFT a unique digital asset.
Unique Non-Fungible Token Structure
Every NFT is represented by a unique token identifier. This token identifier is not a random number. Instead, it follows a well-defined structure to clearly and uniquely identify a celestial object. You will not find that elsewhere, since all our stars and objects are given away only once.
Let's have a look at the token of Aldebaran, the brightest star in the constellation Bull:
The token consists of the following elements:
A version identifier that defines the token's structure. At the moment, 0 is the only valid value.
The naming type indicates whether the token identifies a nameable object, such as stars that may be named on Staracle.com (type 0), or a non-nameable object, such as a deep-sky object or a very bright star (type 1).
The object category indicates the type of the celestial object, such as a star or a deep-sky object. The category also indicates the astronomical catalog the object can be found in. In this example,the object is a star (01) that is recorded in the Tycho star catalog (01).
The catalog identifier identifies the celestial object in the respective catalog.
The cryptographic signature adds another layer of security.
