AMA Recap: CRYPTO MINERS X COSMOS

Cosmos is a rapidly expanding ecosystem of independent interconnected blockchains built using developer-friendly application components and connected with ground-breaking IBC (Inter-Blockchain Communication) protocol. This innovation enables you to freely exchange assets and data across sovereign and decentralized blockchains. There are currently more than 263 apps and services in the Cosmos network, including Binance Chain, Terra, Crypto.org, and Cosmos Hub, with over $62 billion of digital assets under management. The Cosmos Network is a decentralized network of independent, scalable, and interoperable blockchains, creating the foundation for a new token economy. Cosmos bills itself as a project that solves some of the “hardest problems” facing the blockchain industry. It aims to offer an antidote to “slow, expensive, unscalable and environmentally harmful” proof-of-work protocols, like those used by Bitcoin, by offering an ecosystem of connected blockchains. The project’s other goals include making blockchain technology less complex and difficult for developers thanks to a modular framework that demystifies decentralized apps. Last but not least, an Interblockchain Communication protocol makes it easier for blockchain networks to communicate with each other — preventing fragmentation in the industry. Cosmos is described as “Blockchain 3.0” — and as we mentioned earlier, a big goal is ensuring that its infrastructure is straightforward to use. To this end, the Cosmos software development kit focuses on modularity. This allows a network to be easily built using chunks of code that already exist. Long-term, it’s hoped that complex applications will be straightforward to construct as a result.

We hosted an AMA session with Cosmos on 15th September.

Mr. Ramsy was the host from Crypto Miners and Mr. Adrien was the guest. He shared with us the features and functions of Cosmos.
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Segment 1️⃣: Introduction

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Hello everyone 👋 Welcome to Our Another #Special AMA session With Cosmos

To help us learn more about Cosmos, We are lucky to be joined By Mr. Adrien

Adrien:
Hey what’s up everyone :)

Nice be here and thank you Ramsy for the invitation

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Once again Welcome here Mate

With pleasure ❤️

So Adrien I’m pretty sure that our Community is very much excited to learn more about Cosmos ✌️

Are you ready to Start?

Adrien:
Yes for sure :)

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
First of all Please Make a concise and brief introduction about Cosmos.
How it is playing its role in crypto world?

Adrien:
For sure!

So Cosmos is an ecosystem barely known as “The Internet of Blockchains”.
There is 3 things that defines it:
- The BFT consensus (Tendermint Core)
- The Blockchain framework (Cosmos SDK)
- The Interchain standard (IBC protocol)

It has been created to make accessible to anyone to create a blockchain, and make it possible to connect and interact with others based on the Cosmos SDK.
You already see a lot of applications running under Ethereum blockchains (to name a few: Uniswap, Aave…), but they are all running under one blockchain. The vision of Cosmos is to create dAppchain instead to not create congestion under one network.

For example, we see DyDx moving from Ethereum to Cosmos before the end of the year, building their own blockchain using the Cosmos SDK.

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
So What are the features of Cosmos that makes it superior and unique as compared to its competitors?

Adrien:
It’s hard to say superior as it’s mostly a unique point of view!
But the Cosmos ecosystem has some major features that the competitors doesn’t share!

Let’s dig a bit:
- First of all, the Cosmos SDK. It allow anyone to build a blockchain without some good developers knowledge, and had variants open source modules on top of it depending on what your Blockchain needs.
- Secondly, the IBC protocol. It allow anyone to transfer coins between different blockchains under the Cosmos SDK (and not only!). As said, even Solana or Near are integrating this technology. The benefit comes from the developers of the technology, made in Cosmos, and profiting to the others ecosystems too.
Note that IBC on the Cosmos SDK chains are quite different than subnet in Avalanche for example, as they need to define custom bridges to interact between them, creating possible breach.
- To end, the governance side. In Cosmos ecosystem, the governance allow everyone to delegate their coins in the native blockchains to earn rewards from the validator they choose (example with StakeLab, I delegate 10 ATOM to them, I will earn per year the inflation defined on chains, which is approx 18% per year! — less the commission that the validator takes).
If a validator vote on a proposal and you don’t agree with it, you can change the vote and the proportion of your delegated token will change to your vote.

It’s very community oriented and engaged, and different than for example Polkadot, which use a Council (quite closed).

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Cool 👌

Cosmos uses Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus algorithm. What is the reason and benefits for using this algorithm?

Adrien:
That’s a good question, and there is many points, but before doing it, all of this is done on the Tendermint Core:
- So first, it allow developers to write their application in any langage, so it’s very flexible, not like building something under Ethereum that will requires you to learn Solidity and be limited by it.

- The byzantine fault tolerant which is Tendermint software for securely and consistently replicating an application on many machines. By securely, that mean that Tendermint works even if up to 1/3 of machines fail in arbitrary ways. By consistently, that mean that every non-faulty machine sees the same transaction log and computes the same state.

So for example, you are able to decentralize the nodes of your blockchains, easily and securely around the worlds!

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Can you Tell us about Gravity Dex and bridge by Cosmos and its features.

Adrien:
Sure, the Gravity Dex was primarly invented to be build on the Cosmos Hub but then switch to the creation of a new blockchains, that can connect to any others (could have been the same on the Cosmos Hub actually, but they prefered to have their own coin to make incentives and governance more oriented on a specific chain).

What it does? Simple, as Ethereum doesn’t have IBC integrated, as Cosmos ecosystem can interact and connect using IBC, it was a need to connect with the Ethereum ecosystem.
They builded a bridge with a specfic and different design that allow any Cosmos chain connected with the Gravity Bridge using IBC to send coins from Cosmos to Ethereum. But also from Ethereum to Cosmos.

There is many others competitors like Axelar in the middle, but they use different design and it’s a bit complex and long to details everything.

Learn more on Gravity: https://www.gravitybridge.net/
Learn more on Axelar: https://axelar.network/

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Right, Let’s see our next question from this segment

Now tell us about the native coin $ATOM, what are its use cases and utilities in Cosmos ecosystem? Also share tokenomics if possible

Adrien:
ATOM is the first native coin of the Cosmos Hub (the first blockchain made on the Cosmos SDK)

There wasn’t much usecases since the beginning, only the possibility to delegate them to validators to secure the blockchain and earn more ATOM from the inflation.
Now, with IBC enabled, and more than 50 chains connected, there is a lot of usecases that come from all the dAppchain.

For example, you can now Lend, Borrow (Kava, Umee…) or even Liquid Stake (Persistence, Stafi Hub, Stride…) your ATOM and diversify your investment strategy.

There is also multiples liquidity pools on the different DEX or applications that allow you to put your ATOM with another coin at work and earn different types of coins depending on the application you are using!

Very fun right? An infinite amount of possibility, only using ATOM, or different coins from the ecosystem of your choice!

About the tokenomics, there is a huge upgrade soon on this subject coming during Cosmoverse in Medelin the 28th September, so stay tuned 👀

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Lastly, what Cosmos achieved so far and what important updates and developments we’ll get in coming months and years in Cosmos ecosystem?

Adrien:
As said, for the important updates, everything will be at Cosmoverse in the end of the months
Stay tuned for Cosmos v2.

But for what we already know that is coming:
- Interchain Accounts: that will alow you for example to vote on a Blockchain B from a Blockchain A, no need to moove if you wanna use more one blockchain than others one (not the only feature, but it allow more flexibility between blockchains)
- Security Shared: the main feature that will come for 2023 is the possibility the provide security from a blockchain to a consumer chain, using their validators set.
For example, you wanna build a dAppchain on the Cosmos ecosystem, but it’s too hard to build for you a validator set, get the partnership etc? Then build a consumer chain on top of the Cosmos Hub and benefits from his validator set security (the higher the TVL is, the more secure it is, that’s why Cosmos Hub is the chosen one for this feature and will help it growth even more!) — Note that it has to be validated by the community with a governance proposal :)

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Thanks Adrien for this well detailed introduction about Cosmos 💜

And that’s the wrap up of our the first part of the AMA session ✅

Let’s now proceed to our Twitter Questions section

i hope you’re ready for that!!

Adrien:
Let’s goo

Segment 2️⃣: Twitter Questions

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
1)Does the Cosmos Network team recognize Ethereum PoS as a competitive platform? After Ethereum’s PoS upgrade, what is the competitive strategy of the Cosmos Network? Higher DeFi Interest Rates Come With Unstated Risks Attached, Vitalik Buterin Said. So how do you think about that?

Here is the first Twitter Questions for you

Adrien:
I can’t speak for the Cosmos team, but as now Ethereum merge passed, it could be seen as a new competitor in the Proof of Stake scene. But actually, the two ecosystem are very different in terms of vision and values.

Cosmos has a “competitive strategy” that is live called IBC that is already integrated on the SDK and allow every new Blockchains build on it to transfer coins from a Blockchain A to a Blockchain B, without the same risk as a casual bridge like Wormhole or Nomad. (learn more about IBC here: https://tendermint.com/ibc/
Lot of blockchains are already implementing it, just to name a few: Solana, Near…

I could had that Cosmos governance is actually the most used one… there is aroudn 50/70k wallets voting per proposal. Comparing to most used dApp in Ethereum: around 100/500.

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
2)Can you talk about Hub’s staking module, which is built on top of the Tendermint BFT consensus engine? what kind of staking model does it provide?

Adrien:
As mentioned before, it allow any users to delegate native coin in the blockchain to validator that validate and secure the network.
Delegators and validators are both rewarded at each block created : around 6sec for most of the Cosmos blockchains

The reward % is determinated by the inflation parameter on chain! (which can be changed by governance)

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
3: For beginner/intermediate developers, how easy is it building on Cosmos? What is the best wallet recommended to store/use ATOM and experience features of Cosmos?

Adrien:
Developing skills are more likely determinate by only you aha!
But there is a lot of flexibility as you can use any langage to build your application.

Only the Cosmos SDK is mostly written in Go langage, but you can build your application in Typescript, Javascript, Rust for smart contracts or whatever…

The most known wallet for the ecosystem is Keplr, but I would recommend you to add a Ledger security on top by using a Ledger Nano to interact securely and not expose your private key.

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
4)Cosmos SDK recently launched a number of modules including Governance and Groups Module which is the secret power of the Cosmos SDK. Please elaborate more on these modules, their operating mechanism and how they aid developers to build on the SDK.

Adrien:
I don’t think they help developers to build on the SDK, but more likely help by providing open source module that people can implement on top of the blockchains they are building if they need it or not.
They can be use by anyone and permit different possibility.

For example the Governance module provide the possibility to put on chain proposal that can change on chain parameters, or define a Software Upgrade time or even a Community Pool spend for something…

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Let’s hear our last question from Twitter

5)All sustainable blockchain projects must prioritize adoption as one of the most crucial elements to attract investors.
Could you please explain what Cosmos has done and what you intend to do in order to achieve adoption in reality, in actual use cases, in our real society?

Adrien:
Very good question, and this is something that have been said since a long time to Cosmos ecosystem!

The adoption comes by something that has interoperability, and this is already the case with the IBC protocol deployment last year. The second part is the possibility of creating very easily new blockchains, so the barrier at the entrance is very small to help more people get onboarded there.

There is actually no real society use case, but it could come 👀

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
That’s the wind up of our last segment and now time to wind it up

Adrien:
Yeah. Thanks for having me
Feel free to ask any question to me on Twitter: twitter.com/zdeadex

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Thankyou so much Adrien For your valuable answers and information about Cosmos

Community, if you would like to learn more about Cosmos , here are some useful links for you:

Website: https://cosmos.network/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/cosmos
Telegram: https://t.me/cosmosproject
Discord: https://discord.gg/cosmosnetwork
Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/cosmosnetwork
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CosmosProject
Medium: https://blog.cosmos.network/ , Cosmos Network