Original link: https://blog.cosmos.network/cosmos-history-inception-to-prelaunch-b05bcb6a4b2b
The core Cosmos and cross-chain development organizations have a complex history. Details about Cosmos are scattered across the internet, blog posts, news reports, tweets, github repositories, and even blockchain. What stands out from this history is a truly outstanding group of intelligent, passionate, and meticulous contributors who have come together to create the vision of the "Internet of Blockchains." This article outlines the journey from the origins of Cosmos to the eve of the Cosmos Hub mainnet launch. Subsequent articles will continue this timeline and tell the story since the mainnet launch. As the Cosmos ecosystem continues to expand and prosper, we think it is important to reflect on the journey along the way, which can remind us to keep our goals in mind and how to turn historical lessons into future opportunities.
Cosmos "Prehistoric Story"
Years of practice on PoW networks have proven that it is difficult, expensive, and unsustainable to continuously secure new networks using the PoW (Proof of Work) mechanism, and the early crypto community has been researching alternatives. By 2012 and 2013, the idea of PoS (Proof of Stake) became popular, but early PoS protocols (such as those used by Peercoin and Nxt) had very limited security guarantees because modifying historical data was free. This was later called the "Nothing at Stake" attack and was considered a fundamental problem facing PoS. Although some practical problems have been solved today by adjusting the security model¹, the core problem still exists.
"Nothing at Stake" attack:
https://vitalik.ca/general/2017/12/31/pos_faq.html#what-is-the-nothing-at-stake-problem-and-how-can-it-be-fixed
Adjust the security model:
https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/11/25/proof-stake-learned-love-weak-subjectivity
Jae Kwon founded Tendermint
2014 was a formative year for PoS and blockchain more generally. By early 2014, Vitalik had founded Ethereum and was working on the first implementation of Ethereum. He also published a lot of articles on protocol design and conceived a way to deal with the "Nothing at Stake" problem using security deposits - an approach he called "slashers". In this version of PoS, validators need to "bond" assets on the chain, and if validators misbehave - that is, try to illegally rewrite history - their bonded assets will be slashed.
slasher：
https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/01/15/slasher-a-punitive-proof-of-stake-algorithm
Inspired by the ongoing PoS research, Jae Kwon founded Tendermint in the spring of 2014. Tendermint is unique in that it is the first blockchain system to implement the following two designs:
Tendermint：
https://tendermint.com/static/docs/tendermint.pdf
Uses a classic Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus algorithm
Implemented a PoS system based on a security deposit (“slasher”) mechanism
The above two points are the main components of almost every modern PoS system.
Prior to Tendermint, the original PoS systems did not actually solve the consensus problem securely. Tendermint is the first system to build on decades of academic research in Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus, specifically by developing a variation of the 1988 DLS algorithm to achieve partial synchronization, upgrading this mechanism to use blockchain data structures and stake-weighted governance voting rights. By combining this BFT mechanism with Vitalik's "slasher" approach, Tendermint both outlines a new PoS model and provides the first implementation that can actually be used for construction.
1988 DLS algorithm:
https://groups.csail.mit.edu/tds/papers/Lynch/jacm88.pdf
By the end of 2014, more and more researchers gathered online in the form of a research group (CCRG Research Group, now disbanded)², most of whom believed that PoS was the future of blockchain and began to build this future. Group members include Vitalik Buterin, Vlad Zamfir, Ethan Buchman, Jae Kwon, Zaki Manian, Dominic Williams, Arthur Brietman, etc. Vitalik invented Ethereum, and Vlad has been serving as the chief researcher of Ethereum. Ethan worked closely with Vlad and contributed to go-ethereum. Jae Kwon founded Tendermint; Dominic was working on an idea that later evolved into Dfinity; Arthur founded Tezos; Zaki was running a supply chain-focused blockchain startup called SkuChain at the time, infiltrating all aspects of the industry in another way.
Around the spring of 2014, Jae Kwon began work on an initial implementation of the Tendermint software in Go under his company All in Bits Inc, doing business as Tendermint Inc. Jae Kwon chose Go at the time because the language was growing in popularity, especially in the areas of distributed systems and blockchains. Ethereum's main software is also written in Go. At the same time, Ethan was working as the lead blockchain developer at Eris Industries (predecessor to Monax), with a primary mission to advance Ethereum's adoption in the enterprise and find PoS solutions that could integrate with it. Tendermint was a prime candidate.
Monax：
https://monax.io/
Ethan Buchman joins Tendermint
In early 2015, the CCRG research group held a meeting in Silicon Valley, attended by most of the early group members. Cosmos founders Ethan and Jae met for the first time at this meeting and discussed possible attacks on the Tendermint algorithm. Soon thereafter, the two began to work closely together on the development of the Tendermint software.
Conference link:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHRJAd29VhyhLVT5tEOvhIw
Ethan and Jae worked closely together on the Tendermint software throughout much of 2015. They implemented the Ethereum Virtual Machine as part of the Tendermint application state (technically, the first iteration of “Ethermint”), implemented various features to increase Tendermint’s usefulness, and made several improvements to the consensus algorithm.
Ethan was a graduate student at the University of Guelph at the time. His thesis, Tendermint: Byzantine Fault Tolerance in the Blockchain Era, focused on Tendermint, including its consensus algorithm, software architecture, and performance under test. The paper is widely regarded as an important introduction to the historical context of blockchains and PoS using classic Byzantine fault tolerance mechanisms.
Full paper:
https://atrium.lib.uoguelph.ca/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10214/9769/Buchman_Ethan_201606_MAsc.pdf
In late 2015, Jae and Eris Industries had a discussion about the copyright of the Tendermint codebase (including the Ethereum Virtual Machine implementation), which led Jae to introduce an abstraction between the Tendermint consensus engine and the application state machine it replicates, a programming interface now known as the Application Blockchain Interface (ABCI). The ABCI interface enables application logic to be completely separated from the Tendermint consensus engine, run in different processes, and even written in different programming languages³. This makes Tendermint the general-purpose state machine replication engine it is today, and allows components related to the Ethereum Virtual Machine to be refactored out of the Tendermint codebase. In particular, ownership of the Ethereum Virtual Machine components was transferred to Eris Industries at the time, and its code evolved into the current Hyperledger Burrow project.
Hyperledger Burrow：
https://www.hyperledger.org/projects/hyperledger-burrow
In late 2015, Ethan decided to leave Eris Industries and, together with Jae, founded a company around the Tendermint codebase, subsequently becoming a co-founder of All in Bits Inc, where he served as CTO⁴.
Cosmos and its technology adoption
In early 2016, All in Bits (AiB) was trying to find support to develop an enterprise-grade product and PoS application hosting service based on Tendermint. At that time, organizations were just beginning to understand the blockchain industry and were not ready to step into this field. During this period, Ethan and Jae began to work with Peng Zhong, a designer and web developer who had worked with Jae on previous projects. Peng Zhong then began to work on early blockchain browsers and application designs to support related products. After a few months, they realized that the timing was not right, so Jae and Ethan revisited their original motivation: to solve some outstanding problems in the security, speed, flexibility and usability of public blockchain systems to lay the foundation for a more sustainable approach.
After repeated designs and discussions, they came up with the concept of Cosmos and wrote the Cosmos white paper. The white paper puts forward the vision of building an "internet of blockchains". The foundation of this vision includes the Tendermint consensus engine, the ABCI application interface, and a TCP-like protocol for reliable communication between trustless blockchain networks, called the Inter-Chain Communication (IBC) protocol. Jae wrote the first specification of the IBC protocol, which is also included in the white paper. The first blockchain in the Cosmos network is called Cosmos Hub, a PoS blockchain system.
Cosmos first generation white paper:
https://cosmos.network/resources/whitepaper
The Cosmos whitepaper was well received by the community. Tendermint was gaining widespread adoption as a flexible and mature platform for building blockchain applications. By late summer 2016, Ethan and Jae had secured initial support to build Cosmos.
At the same time, Votem Inc invited All in Bits to host the annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame voting event on a Tendermint blockchain, which was completed in the fall of that year. This meant that the 2017 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees (including famous rapper Tupac!) were actually voted in using the Tendermint blockchain. This event brought credibility to the Tendermint project and helped to further increase its adoption. (For more information on this event, see the Votem press release.)
Original press release:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210724065702/https://votem.com/news/press-releases/largest-ever-online-vote-using-blockchain/
At the time, Tendermint’s user base was growing significantly, and the Cosmos project was gaining recognition. In September 2016, Cosmos won the Most Innovative Project Award at the Shanghai International Blockchain Week, co-hosted by Ethereum Devcon II.
Award Details:
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/tendermint-wins-innovation-award-and-announces-cosmos-at-international-blockchain-week-1474657507
At the end of 2017, Jae and Ethan began recruiting the first batch of developers for All in Bits. The list of employees and the time they joined can be found in the appendix. The appendix list is only the initial version, and will continue to be updated in the future!
2017: Early Development
In February 2017, with initial support, the Interchain Foundation (ICF) was officially established in Switzerland, following the model set by Ethereum. The ICF is managed by the Foundation Committee (FC), which was initially composed of Jae, Ethan, and a local Swiss board member named Schmitz-Krummacher. At the same time, All in Bits is accelerating the development of Cosmos software - the team is running a Tendermint-based blockchain testnet and performing cross-chain data transfer through a simple account system and IBC prototype.
Over the years, the Cosmos and Tendermint projects have built significant reputations and adoption cases among early blockchain developers. AiB members grew to approximately 20 people in 2017, working on developing application frameworks, improving Tendermint, and designing PoS algorithms. The team was iterating on early versions of the Cosmos-SDK and Cosmos Hub software, as well as drafting designs such as an Ethereum bridge and smart contract language.
Many of the core team members joined AiB in 2017, and many of them are still active in the Cosmos ecosystem today. See the Appendix for details on the members who joined in 2017 and where they are now! This period was the formative years of the Tendermint Mafia.
Tendermint Mafia：
https://ali-the-curious.medium.com/the-tendermint-mafia-348bacd1c352
2018: Cosmos-SDK and Testnet
In early 2018, the Cosmos-SDK really began to take shape and was adopted in the early Cosmos Hub. The Cosmos-SDK aspires to be the "Ruby on Rails" of blockchains - a "full-featured" application framework and toolkit for blockchain programming.
Around the spring of 2018, Zaki Manian officially joined AiB. Zaki has been involved in ecosystem-related activities since the launch of Cosmos - for example, he contributed many early ideas with Ethan and Jae, reviewed the white paper, was one of the first project supporters, and provided many suggestions and insights. Zaki then went on to lead the Cosmos testnet program, with his contributions culminating in the launch of Game of Stakes and the Cosmos Hub. Zaki has since led major upgrades to Stargaze and continues to play a key role in Cosmos strategy and development.
During 2018, the testnet program grew significantly and became increasingly centralized. By the summer of 2018, there were some decentralized testnets launched with over 100 validators. The team achieved breakthroughs in the deployment of large-scale Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus systems. Many of today’s top validators gained a lot of experience in the early Cosmos testnet program. During this time, the technology has matured considerably. A new paradigm — PoS validators — was born.
The team continues to grow and many talented people have joined (see Appendix for details). Everyone is united by a common vision - to build a sovereign, interoperable blockchain future - which still inspires them to continue to innovate at the forefront.
At ICF, Michael Niederer was hired as CFO and took over ICF's operations in Switzerland. ICF launched an initiative to start supporting research projects more broadly, especially in consensus systems, cryptography, and formal verification. ICF helped establish the Stanford Blockchain Research Center and collaborated with researchers in Switzerland and other regions. At the same time, ICF also began to develop a broader support program to expand the ecosystem by supporting some early projects based on Cosmos.
Stanford Blockchain Research Center:
https://blog.cosmos.network/icf-supports-5-year-research-program-led-by-professor-dan-boneh-f0992c333129
Early projects based on Cosmos:
https://interchain-io.medium.com/ecosystem-expansion-189e9534038
By the end of 2018, the team began intensive preparations for the launch of the Cosmos Hub mainnet. The most notable of these was Game of Stakes. Game of Stakes is the first incentivized, decentralized PoS testnet, and it is the culmination of the Cosmos testnet program, putting the Cosmos software through the most rigorous testing to date. Game of Stakes set a new standard for incentivized and decentralized testnets, and its afterglow can still be felt throughout the Cosmos ecosystem today.
Learn more about the test network:
https://blog.cosmos.network/let-the-games-begin-21e66e34e2fd
For more information on the Cosmos Hub mainnet launch and the major events in the years that followed, please stay tuned for “Cosmos History (II)”.
Thanks to the multiple reviewers who contributed to this article. Content in this article was reviewed and approved by Jae, Ethan, and Zaki.
Notes
1. Informal Systems provides a more formal definition of the security model of Tendermint (and its light clients) in a paper.
Paper details:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.07031
2. Created a crypto research Google group. Jae later created a second crypto research group to continue the discussion.
3. See the original blog post announcing ABCI (originally known as TMSP, the TenderMint Socket Protocol).
Original article:
https://blog.cosmos.network/abci-the-application-blockchain-interface-f1bd8278cdd7
4. A third co-founder, Dustin Byington, also joined All in Bits Inc to lead finance and operations, but he left the company shortly after 2016.
Appendix
All In Bits employee chronology
This appendix is not complete, if you would like to add or correct the listed information please contact marketing@interchain.io.
2016
Ethan Frey (currently leading Confio, the development team for CosmWasm and Tgrade)
Anton Kaliaev (currently at Parity)
Matt Bell (currently co-founder of Nomic)
2017
Brian Crain (currently CEO of Chorus One)
Sunny Aggarwal (currently co-founder of Osmosis)
Judd Keppel (currently co-founder of Nomic)
Greg Szabo (currently at Informal)
Zarko Milosevic (currently CTO at Informal)
Arianne Flemming (currently COO at Informal)
Chjango (currently working at Osmosis)
Adrian Brink (currently co-founder of Anoma)
Joon Yun (Currently working at Osmosis)
Anna Harbaum (currently working at Interchain Berlin)
Rigel Rozanski (currently contributing to ICS cross-chain security features)
Jim Yang (currently working at Osmosis)
Jordan Bibla (currently working at Blockdaemon)
Fabian Weber
Alexis Sellier (currently co-founder of Radicle)
2018
Billy Rennekamp (currently working at Interchain GmBH)
Aleksandr Bezobchuk (currently working at Interchain GmBH)
Chris Goes (currently co-founder of Anoma)
Zaki Manian (currently co-founder of Iqlusion and Sommelier)
Dev Ojha (currently co-founder of Osmosis)
Jessy Irwin (currently at Agoric)
Shelly Chang (currently working at Osmosis)
Jack Zampolin (currently co-founder of Stranglove)
Federico Kunze (currently co-founder of EVMOS)
Aditya Sripal (Currently working at Interchain GmBH)
Alessio Treglia (currently at Ignite)
Jin Kwon (currently co-founder of Saga)
Ismail Khoffi (currently co-founder of Celestia)
Alex Simmerl (currently at Mekatek)
Mircea Colonescu (currently working at Informal)