CAT Profile | CATMOS
Short Summary
Ticker - CATMOS
CATegory - Gaming Token
Asset ID - ffbcf37f093d09410f17cdeb59fdaea24a544fdd5413e8eeca8fe68e917233e0
Creator / Parent Project - Catmosphere
CATMOS is currency used in events throughout the Catmosphere. The tokens are rewarded to community members who engage in the scavenger hunts, "battles", and other various events run on catmos.io. Some events reward CATMOS to participants, and others require an amount of CATMOS to be paid as as part of the event. The project plans for CATMOS to eventually be used as "experience points" or "XP", rewarding holders with the ability to "level up" their NFT releases for a certain amount of CATMOS.
Quicklinks:
Website | Discord | Twitter | Trade On - Offerbin.io
Project Background
The Catmosphere project is the brainchild of Josh Painter, aka enderTown, aka that guy that tweets way too much.
This profile is going to be a little different from our previous CAT profiles... as we'll just say Josh is very... verbose. For the most part, we're just going to let him tell his story based on some questions I asked him over Discord.
Buckle up. This is a long one. I'll leave what I think are the key takeaways of the interview at the end.
How did you get into Chia?
I've been into technology since first grade when my parents bought an Apple IIe computer. I was mesmerized not just with the simple games, but wondering how someone could even make something like that. How did the button down here on the keyboard make something up there happen on the screen? My little mind kept asking questions until finally my mom bought me an Apple IIe "computer book" that she found at a book store. It was an intro to programming in BASIC and it had examples for some games. I was hooked.
Anyway, almost 30 years later I'm still fascinated by technology. The first thing that happens when I see something new and interesting is the same thing that happened back then: how does that actually work? Is it any good? What's the science or math behind it and who created it? Do they know what they are doing? Let me poke it and see if I can break it.
Chia checked all those boxes for me. I was already mining ETH just cause I had some old video cards and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. A few months later I stumbled across some of @CalebCurry's videos and was hooked.
My first farmer was an open-case disaster.
After that first one, I built a DIY JBOD setup detailed here
And finally I have ended up with a full rack setup detailed here
I'm farming almost 1.7PB right now but have another half PB or so that I still need to rack if only I had more time <looks accusingly at CATMOS project>.
Why did you decide to issue a CAT?
When CATs were first announced, I don't think I really even "got it." I mean yeah, different tokens, that's cool I guess, right? I couldn't have imagined how fun they are though. Once CATs were released and I started seeing all the other creativity in the community, my mind started spinning. I've had so many ideas over the years for silly little games and projects, but never an excuse to actually do any of it.
The Catmosphere was born! My thinking was "ok, now there's lots of CATs and more coming, but what can people actually DO with them right now besides trade them? That might get old after awhile." Sure, some will be turned into NFTs but even that is just a waiting game. Not fun. How could I do something with all those CATs that were just sitting in people's wallets, having no fun at all?
And then Offer Files. OH MAN. Offer Files surprised us all and we still haven't scratched the surface of what they are truly capable of. I was teasing one of the Chia devs the other day that I think if they just added a few more features for me, I could port DOOM to Offer Files. Just amazing, brilliant, simple technology.
So simple that developers in our own community still haven't realized the full potential. Catmosphere hopes to change that and throw ideas out there. Some will stick and some will undoubtably fall flat, but that's the fun and challenge of it all. Steal my ideas and make them better, if you can!
What are your plans for CATMOS & the Catmosphere?
SO MUCH. Besides an event of some sort every Sunday, I'll be working on some ongoing events that everybody can play anytime. Here's one: how about a Battle Royale game based around HODLing? Last player standing wins the pot after everybody else breaks down and withdrawals a portion of their original stake. There could be "push" deadlines where everybody who remains just gets their money back plus the pool after a certain period. Or these rounds could last for YEARS. Up to the players! This isn't just an idea - this is minted and I'm working through the logic now.
Or why couldn't an author self-publish their own book to their own website and use Offer Files as both payment and proof-of-ownership? Owners of the token could go to the author's website and upload their offer file that offers their NFT token for the book and requests 100,000 XCH. It won't be accepted of course, but it will prove that they own the token and the website will then allow them to read the book. Once they are done they can trade their NFT like anything else and let somebody else read it. Again: this is not just an idea. I've already minted the tokens for the NFTs and written a preview for the story that I plan to publish. You can find the preview pinned on my Twitter account: @endertown
As you can tell, Josh loves offer files. He also intends to use them in some pretty creative ways! I believe that a few of his ideas are much better suited for NFTs/singletons... but I have a have no doubt that he'll squeeze every bit of creative functionality out of offer files while waiting for Chia Network to finalize the NFT standard.
As an example of the type of events you can expect from the Catmosphere... This Sunday, February 13th, the site will be playing some form of "rock, paper, scissors" using offer files - Event Page. Right now, there are only instructions indicating that you'll need to submit an offer file trading at least 250 CATMOS and any amount of any other CAT in order to receive either Rock (CATRCK), Paper (CATPPR) or Scissors (CAT6OR), for use in the game. No idea what Josh is planning for this one, but we'll definitely be watching / playing ourselves.
In case you missed them, a list of all past and future Catmosphere events, their budgets, and results, can be found here.
Do you have any other successful projects that you can point to outside of Catmosphere?
Yes! When COVID hit in early 2020, I was laid off my from my job at a lending company. One of my hobbies is 3d printing, and so after getting laid off and feeling sorry for myself for a few days, I thought "what can I do to help?" So I designed a simple face shield that used off-the-shelf components available at the time (remember all shelves were empty). With help from the community and several college students, we ended up donating thousands of these to local hospitals and clinics who sorely needed them.
Once the supply chain caught back up, we were able to pivot into selling them - especially to dentists, who loved them for some reason. We found our niche! Anyway, check it out at makers4medicine.org if you are interested or need a face shield. Demand has cooled down quite a bit, but we still have our loyal customers!
Anything else the community should know about you and your projects?
The main takeaway is that Catmosphere is here to stay. If I can figure out a way to make a living off of this and feed my family (and 2 cats) then that is what is happening. If not, I will continue to spend my free time on it. I've had such a blast working with the community and learning new stuff!
And of course we are launching our CATMOS ZERO token this coming Sunday Feb 2nd. I've already taken up enough of your time so just go here to read more: CATMOS ZERO
Thank you for the opportunity to talk more about my favorite subjects: myself and my projects! :)
Editor's Notes / Key Takeaways / Summary
For those of you still reading... (hopefully some of you). I just wanted to give my take on Josh and the Catmosphere.
Obviously, by making this post and adding Catmosphere to our curated list of CATs, we think the project is worth a little bit of your time.
Some of the reasons we like Catmosphere:
Catmosphere is hosting new events WEEKLY. These events take creativity to design, preparation time to set up, on the fly troubleshooting, and live support. It's not a small commitment.
Josh is active AF. I honestly don't know when the man sleeps... or sees his wife and children. He's always on Twitter engaging with the community and seems to pop up in random Discords at odd hours. I don't think he's going to disappear anytime soon.
There's a method to the madness (kinda)... You can read a little more about Josh's plans in his "Greenomics" page published at https://catmos.io/greenomics
I highly doubt that this will be the last time we're writing a blog post about Josh and Catmosphere. Excited to see where the project goes!
Ps. If you're into NFT art, don't forget to check out the CATMOS ZERO drop here.
