Beginner's Guide to Cosmos
Hailed as the “Internet of Blockchains” by its founding team, Cosmos aims to create a crypto network united by open source tools to simplify transactions between them.
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It is this focus on customizability and interoperability that sets Cosmos apart from other projects.
Its goal is not to prioritize its own network, but rather to build an ecosystem of networks where data and tokens can be shared programmatically, and with no central party facilitating activity.
Each new independent blockchain (called a "zone") created within Cosmos is then tied to the Cosmos Hub, which keeps a record of the state of each zone, and vice versa.
Cosmos Hub is a proof-of-stake blockchain powered by its native ATOM cryptocurrency.
Users seeking to stay connected with the current state of development of Cosmos can follow its roadmap through the website.
For more regular updates from the Cosmos team, you can bookmark the Cosmos blog, which includes tips and tutorials about the network and its evolving technology.
Who created Cosmos?
The Interchain Foundation (ICF), a Swiss nonprofit that funds open-source blockchain projects, is the organization that helped develop and launch Cosmos.
Developers Jae Kwon and Ethan Buchman co-founded the Cosmos Network in 2014, creating Tendermint, the consensus algorithm that continues to power Cosmos.
Kwon and Buchman later wrote the Cosmos white paper and released its software in 2019.
The Interchain Foundation held a two-week initial coin offering (ICO) for the ATOM token in 2017, raising more than $17 million at the time. Tendermint Inc. raised $9 million in a Series A funding round in 2019 to continue developing the project.
How does Cosmos work?
The Cosmos network consists of three layers:
Applications — process transactions and update network status
Network – allows transactions and communication between blockchains
Consensus – helps nodes reach agreement on the current state of the system.
To tie all the layers together and allow developers to build blockchain applications, Cosmos relies on a set of open source tools.
Tendermint
The most fundamental element of this layered design is the Tendermint BFT engine, the part of the network that allows developers to build blockchains without having to code them from scratch.
Tendermint BFT is an algorithm used by a network of computers running the Cosmos software to secure the network, validate transactions, and commit blocks to the blockchain. It connects to applications through a protocol called an application blockchain interface.
Tendermint Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT)
At the heart of Tendermint is Tendermint Core, a proof-of-stake (PoS) governance mechanism that keeps the distributed network of computers running the Cosmos Hub in sync.
In order for participants (“validator nodes”) to contribute to the blockchain and vote on changes, they first need to stake ATOM. To become a validator, a node needs to be ranked in the top 100 nodes with staked ATOM. Voting power is determined by the amount of staked ATOM.
Users can also delegate their tokens to other validators, assigning them votes while still receiving a portion of the block rewards.
Validators are incentivized to perform tasks honestly as users have the flexibility to easily switch between validators they delegate ATOMs to based on their voting preferences.
Cosmos Hub and Zones
The Cosmos Hub is the first blockchain to be launched on the Cosmos Network. It was built to act as an intermediary between all the independent blockchains created in the Cosmos Network, called “Zones”.
In Cosmos, each zone is able to perform its basic functions on its own. This includes validating accounts and transactions, creating and distributing new tokens, and executing changes to its own blockchain.
The mission of the Cosmos Hub is to facilitate interoperability between all zones within the network by tracking their state.
Cross-chain communication protocol
Zones are connected to the Cosmos Hub via the Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol (IBC), a mechanism that enables information to be transferred freely and securely between each connected zone.
Once a zone is connected to the Cosmos Hub, it can interoperate with all other zones connected to the hub, meaning blockchains with vastly different applications, validators, and consensus mechanisms can exchange data.
Cosmos SDK
The Cosmos team also built the Cosmos Software Development Kit (SDK), which allows developers to build blockchains using the Tendermint consensus algorithm.
The SDK minimizes complexity by providing the most common functionality included in a blockchain (i.e. staking, governance, tokens). Developers can create plugins to add any additional functionality they want.