Introduction to Cosmos — Internet of Blockchains
Introduction to Cosmos Network
Blockchain, ever since introduced by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 has evolved manyfolds; actually threefolds to be precise. Cosmos is on the blockchain 3.0 — a decentralised network of independent, scalable and interoperable blockchains.
Cosmos is powered by Tendermint, a BFT (Byzantine Fault Tolerant) consensus algorithm.
Analogically speaking, you can think of Tendermint as an Operating System in your computer — Windows, Linux etc. whereas Cosmos is the World Wide Web — a network of computers running on various operating systems.
Cosmos is developed to omit all discrepancies which developers faced with earlier blockchains.
This blog will discuss those problems along with how cosmos simplified them.
Tendermint- An evolutionary necessity
A blockchain has three layers -
- Application: Responsible for updating the state given a set of transactions, i.e. processing transactions.
- Networking: Responsible for the propagation of transactions and consensus-related messages.
- Consensus: Enables nodes to agree on the current state of the system.
Bitcoin: Earlier, the above mentioned layers were bundled together and the architecture was completely monolithic. If anybody wanted to build their own blockchain application, they would fork the Bitcoin codebase and modify it according to their requirements. But, it was not that easy. It lacked interoperability.
Ethereum: Then came in Ethereum in 2014. Ethereum developed its own application, EVM to interact with the consensus and networking layer. You can write your application as a building block on top of it. But the problem was, you still don’t have fine-grain control on your application.
Tendermint: Finally came along Tendermint which allows you to create your own application. It could be any deterministic state machine which can be run on Tendermint Core. Tendermint Core is a software that handles the consensus and the networking layer by interacting with your application using a layer called ABCI (Application BlockChain Interface).
How Does Cosmos Work?
Cosmos is a network of blockchains organised into zones and hubs. The zones can plug into the Hub and each zone maintains its own governance.
At the base, lies the Hub. The Hub manages many independent blockchains called “Zones”. The Hub keeps up with the state of each Zone and the Zones are responsible for constantly communicating new blocks being produced in their Zone back to the Hub. Likewise, each Zone keeps up with the state of the Hub. The image below should give you a good idea:
Hubs communicate with Zones and Zones communicate with each other indirectly through IBC. When a Zone creates an IBC connection with a Hub, it can automatically access every other Zone that is connected to the Hub. This means a Zone only needs to connect with Hubs, not other Zones.
Hubs also prevent double spending among Zones by preserving the global invariance of each token’s total amount across the Zones. These tokens can be moved from one Zone to another in a special IBC packet called a coin packet.
When a Zone receives a token from another Zone through the Hub, it only needs to trust the Hub and the Zone where the token originated; it doesn’t need to trust all the other Zones in the network.
More than anything, Cosmos is not a product but an ecosystem built on a set of modular, adaptable and interchangeable tools. Developers are encouraged to join the effort to improve existing tools and create new ones in order to make the promise of blockchain technology a reality. These tools are the foundation needed to create the decentralized internet and global financial system of tomorrow.
To read the whitepaper, click here.
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