Cosmos Validators Brief #6: Cryptium Labs

Cryptium Labs

This Brief comes from Adrian Brink, Co-Founder of Cryptium Labs.

Most in the Cosmos community first got to know, and recognize, Adrian when he was with Tendermint/Cosmos early on via the Developer Chat Videos. Adrian was a Core Developer and Head of Community/Partnerships but recently left just a couple months ago.

Adrian and fellow Cryptium Labs Co-Founders Hao Hua (“Awa”) Sun Yin, former Cosmos researcher, and Christopher Goes, current Cosmos core developer, continue to make great contributions to the Cosmos ecosystem.

In this Brief, Adrian is the first Validator (at least among these 6 Briefs so far here) to bring up the idea of Proof of Stake projects enabling the creation of derivatives on top of coins/tokens. In addition he makes a valid point, which many in the community overlook, that Cosmos won’t be all that interesting upon launching.

Builders will need to buidl (or rather do whatever the Cosmos equivalent is to Ethereum’s “buidl”).

Tell me a bit about yourselves…as much/ little as you guys would like to share.

Adrian Brink (Adrian):
I’m Adrian. Co-Founder of Cryptium Labs. I first got involved with Ethereum, since I wrote my graduate thesis on secure e-voting on the blockchain.

Outside of Cosmos/Tendermint, how have you been involved with blockchain so far? What projects have you participated in? What projects do you find particularly intriguing?

Adrian:
We are running the 2nd largest public Tezos validator in the world with over 13 million XTZ at stake [Jesse: worth nearly $6 million at time of posting]. I’ve been helping the Iris network in China to come to fruition. I’ve also worked on Polkadot and we will of course run a validator once it goes live. I worked on Cosmos and Tendermint Core for the better part of 2 years, right from the fundraiser up until October 2018. Overall I have contributed to Cosmos, Iris, Tezos and Polkadot.

How did you get into blockchain space initially and what keeps you interested?

Adrian:
I wrote my graduate thesis on secure e-voting on Ethereum. The goal was to build a system that allowed a subgroup of people (ie people of Catalonia, Spain) to have the ability to hold provable democratic elections that were uncensorable by a central government. Radical decentralisation has been the driving force for my involvement in the blockchain space. Our current systems are extremely brittle against hostile influences and decentralisation can greatly improve our odds as a species to survive.

Where do you see the blockchain space evolving in the next 1–3 years?

Adrian:
In the next 1–3 years we will see a massive shift towards PoS and see validators evolving into something more than simply secure hardware. We will most likely see derivatives being built on top of PoS tokens. Furthermore I expect that validators will take a much more active role in the networks they are validating.

With regards to Cosmos, what do you think will be the biggest challenges faced by the project overall?

Adrian:
The biggest challenge will be the speed of meaningful protocol evolution. Cosmos won’t be particularly interesting at launch and it will need continuous development in order to make it very appealing. I think as a community we have to focus on growing the amount of developers that are looking at the core protocol.

With regards to being a validator in Cosmos, what do you think will be the biggest challenges you will face?

Adrian:
I don’t foresee major challenges for our validator, but I would expect that upgrades and software stability will cause some sleepless nights.

For more information on Cryptium Labs check out their website at: https://cryptium.ch

You can also find them on Twitter at:
https://twitter.com/cryptiumlabs

2/21/19 Edit: I accidentally left out the 3rd question/answer here.