Andromeda Macro Theses
The ‘BetterFuture of the Cosmos’ poses several questions concerning (1) the total positive impact of blockchain technologies and BPIs (Blockchain Protocol Institutions) on global GDP, (2) additions required to the Cosmos SDK to achieve that result, and (3) what impediments must be overcome to ensure the results. The answers crucially depend upon an epic convergence of many interrelated technical and economic possibilities within reach because of the Cosmos technical stack. These possibilities are presented here as a series of twenty-five theses. Each thesis can be realized with the creation of a single comprehensively imagined solution.
Andromeda is an entirely new class of software made possible because of the best technical stack available in the Web 3 space. It fully leverages the vision of the ecosystem’s core technology, ethos and value propositions to create the Andromeda suite of products, tools and utilities. Using Andromeda means all users, creators and developers in the Cosmos Ecosystem are ideally situated to fully exploit these emergent possibilities. Explosive growth throughout the ecosystem is achievable because Andromeda’s application development tools enable rapid development and incentivizes software developers and creators to build applications, sell them, or retain a carried financial interest in the application’s value creation.
Consider how the following theses are braided together and satisfied with Andromeda’s new infrastructure layer, that we call an Operating System, across the Cosmos ecosystem:
1. The Operating System Thesis — Public blockchains lack an operating system.
All decentralized permissionless infrastructure is missing a critical software layer that manages the complexity of interacting with, and building on, public blockchain infrastructure. History is being repeated. All early mainframe computers had individually developed programs and applications for each computer. The same thing happened for PCs and Smartphones. Adoption skyrocketed once an operating system was built that could be shared by everyone to build new applications. Public blockchains need an operating system for the same reasons.
The Andromeda Operating System, (aOS for short), operates across the Cosmos Ecosystem. It has a place for everyone — users, creators and developers. It delivers an integrated user experience, and powerful tools for creators and developers. Solutions are rapidly developed and published for local chain, cross-chain and multi-chain applications. The aOS application development tools are a quantum leap forward in Web 3 application development.
2. Intentionality on Chain Thesis — Intentions and logic stored on-chain are better.
Decentralized applications that carry intentions and logic on-chain are categorically better than those that do so off-chain. It provides better security, avoids vendor lock-in, has no single point of failure, and is more composable, flexible, scalable, resilient, and extensible. It eliminates hidden dependencies, deploys faster and has a larger design space. The merging of currency, capital, and markets creates new possibilities when intention, logic, automation, identity and authentication, storage, and computation are on-chain.
Andromeda is a fully on-chain Web 3-native operating system engineered from the bottom up to live and execute on-chain, across chains, and on multiple chains. Andromeda supports Oracle and Enterprise connections to merge and transition the old to the new.
3. The Multi-Chain Future Thesis — Many purpose-built chains are better.
The history of computing is the production of a continuum of computing platforms from generalized computing to purpose-built computing. Decentralized blockchain infrastructures already demonstrate that they are created with different cost/performance/capability tradeoffs. For example, Ethereum is a generalized computer network and is not optimized for cost or speed. The Solana network is optimized for speed. The Secret Network is optimized for privacy and has higher compute costs to support scaled encryption. Injective and dYdX are built for highly optimized order-book transactions. Individually, purpose-built chains have application specific and protocol specific capabilities that can’t be matched by a single monolithic L1. Collectively, they provide unmatched capabilities and unlimited blockspace.
Andromeda operates across many different blockchains making their unique capabilities seamlessly and simultaneously accessible for users, creators, and developers.
4. Modularity Thesis — Modular smart contracts are better.
Modular smart contracts are superior to monolithic smart contracts across many measurable dimensions. The modular, composable design pattern is widely used because it is easier to maintain, secure; easier to use and integrate; faster to audit; and delivers robust capability and composability. Historically, early technologies emerge monolithically and transition to modularity — L1s are evolving this way. Monolithic smart contract design is not the future of trustless, decentralized computing infrastructure or applications.
The Andromeda Operating System (aOS) is built on modular, composable smart contracts called ADOs (Andromeda Digital Objects) and uses them to build applications from a distributed library.
5. Application Development Thesis — Software application development and app dev tools will increasingly dominate value creation on blockchains.
The fat protocol thesis is dead. Value accrual will continue to move to the application and user experience layer as it has done for decades in all other computing environments.
Secure, fast smart contract development has not been available to create complex systems and capabilities on Web 3. It has not been available to integrate into real world or enterprise solutions. This has throttled innovation and is easily observed by the endless parade of copy and paste projects. New application development tools are needed for performant composable solutions that make use of the best chains: DeFi, NFT, cryptocurrency, fiat payment rails, tokenomic models, enterprise integration, and global market and global trade, possible in Web 3.
It is extremely difficult to build solutions on Web 3. Andromeda has a complete set of tools to build Web 3 solutions that are: multi-chain, cross-chain, single chain, synchronous, asynchronous, secure, private, highly scalable, fast to build, off-the-shelf in an app store, and much much more.
6. The Dynamic Protocol Thesis — Protocols eat all the software.
Marc Andreessen correctly predicted software will eat the world. In the same way, protocols will eat software. Protocols are emerging of increasing sophistication, security, and reliability (hardness) such that their operation encompasses and replaces public institutions, digital services, markets, and more.
Protocols are a defined set of rules for data communications and transactions. A protocol is a technical achievement that is recognized by a consensus of participants to be stable, reliable, performant, and trustworthy. TCP/IP is a widely recognized protocol for the internet. Cryptocurrencies have further expanded the definition of what a protocol can be. Modular, stable, hardened, audited, massively re-used smart contracts (specifically ADOs) will expand the definition even farther until large swaths of the economy plug into these new protocols like a utility. These protocols will provide seamless integration to financial infrastructure, eCommerce, social media, supply chains and increasingly replace Software as a Service, proprietary software, and captured networks from the legacy Web 2 era.
The evolution of complex Web 3 protocols involves the emergence of new layers and separation of concerns, similar to the emergence of the OSI model for TCP/IP.
Applications of extraordinary power and capability can be built with Andromeda.
7. Hyperlocal Price Signal Thesis — Token price is a market signal that optimally allocates resources.
Project tokenomics creates a hyper-local price signal within a market. That signal drives efficient resource allocation and solution engineering. Token value drives the evolution of stable, highly performant protocols. They are the primary economic signal that drives The Dynamic Protocol Thesis and the Margin Compression Thesis.
Open-market supply and demand determine price,and the price is very specific to the project or protocol value creation. Under the current global financial regime, local price signals of value-added services are lost. This is because they are denominated in fiat currencies that are typically temporally stable and insensitive to any particular value creation network. Combining low price signals and closed-source licensing models enables vendor lock-in, excess economic rent seeking, captured distribution, system switching punishment/ exit penalties, regulatory abuses, restricted market access, and gated capital availability. Project or protocol-specific token prices enforce discipline within the network to deliver value equal to the rent extraction. Any excess economic rents are readily visible and can be compared to alternative network / project / protocol rents. In Web 3 it is easy to discover over-pricing and vote with your feet or demand better pricing. Web 3 services and resources can be paid using any of the rapidly emerging stable coins and redeployed to preserve the network / project / protocol’s token price signal to meet stakeholder objectives.
Andromeda supports developer/project-created tokens, easily configurable tokenomic modules and bespoke tokenomic models. The Andromeda Protocol itself is powered by a tokenomic model to support rapid adoption: lightweight, transparent, easily paid (price inelastic) transaction fees, and staking for access.
8. Tokenize Everything Thesis — Trillions of assets can be usefully tokenized, digital and physical.
The tokenization of the world’s digital and physical assets and resources unleashes trillions in value. It brings the world’s assets into stable, performant Web 3 protocols where network effects, captured distribution, gatekeeping, and excess rents are eliminated. It is the foundation for protocol-based economic incentive design.
Andromeda provides the tools to connect tokenized assets to everything in Web 3, Web 2, enterprise solutions, complex workflows, logic, DeFi integrations, and more. Andromeda provides embeddable, rapidly configurable marketplaces for accessing global markets through a branded experience.
9. Converged Currency, DeFi & Markets Thesis — The convergence creates unprecedented efficiencies.
Web3 harnesses the power of new technologies to build revolutionary dynamic protocols and applications on global public blockchain networks. This is possible through the programmatic integration of cryptocurrencies, decentralized global markets, DeFi (Decentralized Financial services), high availability computing infrastructure, and cryptographically secured transactions. This combination instantly grants access to new global capital, financial services, markets of every kind, digital distribution, and new business models. The solutions are highly capital efficient because all the resources are delivered at a low variable cost with zero capital investment. Resources are sourced globally, scaled and cost-optimized using crypto-economic incentives.
Andromeda enables any enterprise to integrate existing systems and processes to DeFi instruments, and instantly gain access to global markets and global trade. Andromeda provides flexible, modular, and autonomous integrations to the best DeFi instruments and branded configurable marketplaces.
10. Coordination Games Thesis — Human wealth is maximized and the environment is secured.
A growing consensus is emerging that open systems and stable, cryptographically private transactions, computation, and storage make heretofore unwinnable coordination games winnable. This includes winning new coordination games for commercial industry and services, resource contention, problems of regulatory arbitrage, KYC/KYB, and resources in the public commons at the local, national, and global levels. Web 3 solves for, or is solving, gatekeeping of data, capital controls, de-platforming communication and payment networks, excess transaction costs, infeasible micropayments, and other impediments. Wonderfully, these emergent capabilities of the multi-chain ecosystem can be applied to environmental resources by tokenizing them, opening a new frontier in human stewardship of the planet’s resources.
Andromeda powers Web 3 solutions that make coordination games winnable. This is achieved with new multi-chain application development tooling, marketplaces, a decentralized operating system, community, and standards.
11. Automation Thesis — Continuous operation, AI/ML optimization.
Most smart contracts can only be executed with a user’s keys. This requires users to open their wallet and sign transactions to change state on-chain. Delegation to bots and third parties, as practiced today, breaks the integrity of decentralized systems. A Web 3-native operating system enables a new layer of abstraction whereby a user’s intentions is captured on chain. These intentions are then delegated to execution agents. These agents can be defined by very precise, on-chain parameters, or AI/ML models. Validators are incentivized to perform the automation (as a form of Miner Extracted Value MEV). They can only execute according to the contract owners’ specification.
Andromeda automates smart contract execution. The tooling enables asset tokenization, DeFi integrations with complex rules, workflows, logic, and models that can be automated for highly prescribed, rule-driven actions on-chain without user intervention.
12. Code and Law Thesis — Code and law must cooperate, coordinate, and co-exist
Web 3 enterprise adoption is, and will continue to be, impeded until enterprise can observe their customary legal forms in contract law, property law, copyright law, etc. This creates unresolvable conflicts between the immutability of the blockchain and business conduct under the law. The code and law must successfully coexist.
Andromeda has the tools to provide enterprise control of commercial activities on-chain that are connected to online legal instruments, legal execution service providers (like DocuSign), process controls, and role-based delegation of authority.
13. Technical Standards Thesis — Standards make the future easier, better, and faster for everyone.
Standards make the world work. Those people, projects, and protocols closest to the standards will benefit from earliest access, fastest to market, earliest insights, and fastest innovation that flows from those insights. Teams that can identify the standards, write the standards, deploy the standards, and have a higher probability of generating returns from those standards. The Cosmos Ecosystem is building technologies upon which industry standards are already emerging.
Standards enable the future and Andromeda is positioned to collaborate across the ecosystem to develop standards. It is already doing so for IBC, NFT, and Metaverse standards.
14. Branded Experiences Thesis — Branded experiences on public blockchain infrastructure facilitates Web 3 adoption and investment.
It is very difficult to create a controlled, branded experience on public blockchain infrastructure. Brands don’t want their assets adjacent to competing or lower quality brands. And they only want their products in the discovery/search space that is germane to their product or service.
Andromeda provides the name spaces, configurable marketplaces, and whitelisting tools to control branded experiences on public blockchain infrastructure.
15. Local and Aggregated Markets Thesis — Many kinds of decentralized marketplaces will emerge for Web 3.
A Cambrian Explosion of assets on decentralized infrastructure requires brand-specific marketplaces, and marketplaces to aggregate tokenized assets.
Andromeda provides an off-the-shelf, configurable marketplace for deployment with any tokenized assets, aggregated by class and types, or controlled by a brand-specific whitelist.
16. The Namespace Thesis — The internet has URL’s and the multi-chain future will have a profusion of namespaces.
Namespaces are essential to product, project, enterprise brand, and service discovery in the same way that these are connected to world wide web URLs/domain names and trademarked brands. Web 3 will need similar capabilities and functionality. ENS, or Ethereum Names Services, is an early good example deployed on a monolithic L1.
Andromeda provides namespaces that operate across the entire Cosmos and different layers of abstraction.
17. The Privacy Thesis — Privacy is essential to the future of Web3 and all solutions will need to solve for it.
Humans have inalienable rights to privacy, transacting, and commerce. Having all accounts and transactions on public blockchains, to be analyzed and reviewed by the world, is not always desirable. Trusted payment networks have already proven they are willing to sentence a person to economic death by deplatforming them. This is not the future of Web 3.
Andromeda connects to the best privacy capabilities operating in Web 3 today, like the Secret Network or Penumbra, with speed and simplicity unmatched by any other project or ecosystem in the world.
18. Margin Compression Thesis — Automation and autonomous agents will equilibrate all economic rents across L1s, L2, and ecosystems.
Automation and multi-agent systems will continuously perform arbitrage strategies across all assets and ecosystems. These activities will discipline pricing and effective operating margins of all projects, protocols, services, L1s and L2s. This includes gas fees for blockspace, security, computation, etc. The results enforce the application development thesis. History will repeat past technological progressions from high-margins to low-margins, as each layer of infrastructure matures. For example, progressive margin compression occurred during the PC revolution from chips to hard drives, memory, operating systems, applications, content.
The Andromeda chain has the automation features required to power highly-sophisticated autonomous ADOs to execute logic, threshold, AI/ML-driven actions. Andromeda has the application development tooling to create Web 3-native applications.
19. Post-API Architecture Thesis — Trustless permissionless on-chain solutions are better.
API architectures require creation and scaling of separate, enterprise-dependent servers and systems. Licensing models and ‘switching costs’ result in excessive economic rent seeking, vendor lock-in, and intermediary agent risks. Using APIs means each new application and functional extension begets another long test and integration cycle, with an ever expanding set of dependencies. Web3 native architectures, that is to say decentralized on-chain smart contract architectures, have already solved security, scaling, contention, and resource issues through incentivized validator/node networks.
Andromeda uses chain-native architecture, tools, and smart contracts, in addition to off-chain support for enterprise connections.
20. Synchrony Thesis — Asynchronous execution is the future.
Synchronous execution is for traders, credit card transaction processing, and airline reservation systems. Asynchronous execution is the most versatile possible design pattern. It is the most widely used pattern in computer science for scaled commercial and consumer applications(for example, mobile micro-service architecture and most enterprise software). Asynchronous cross-chain contract composability means many different blockchain-specific capabilities can be integrated into a single unified application. The tradeoffs between synchronous and asynchronous composability are between cost, performance, functionality, and security.
Andromeda can operate synchronously or asynchronously to make the best possible trade-offs between cost, performance, functionality, and security guarantees.
21. Mobile On-boarding Thesis — The future of computing is mobile.
Mobile experiences are the future of humans and computers. They enjoy the widest global availability.
Andromeda’s architecture enables Web3 experiences on mobile devices.
22. Separation of Identity and Authentication Thesis — Identity and Authentication should be abstracted.
Identity and authentication should not be welded together, as practiced today. Combining them is simplistic and naive with respect to the multiple Identities, overlapping and exclusive spheres of privacy, and degrees of control and security demanded by modern digital life. Combining identity and authentication burdens the user with unacceptable risks and unnecessarily limits solutions. Authentication is a separate and distinct concept and should be implemented in ways that support human failings of memory, accidents, crime, etc.
Andromeda User ADOs separate user identification and user authentication. This unlocks powerful capabilities, such as better and faster key recovery, redundancy, delegated automation, reduced threat attack surface, and much more.
23. Network Effect Thesis — Applications using a common framework will interoperate and connect pervasively to scale faster.
Projects, protocols, dApps, applications, and services that interoperate using a common framework can achieve seamless and pervasive connectivity throughout the ecosystem. Connecting, bundling, and integrating project capabilities expands the solution design space, to add more value and access more users. Technical standards and a common decentralized operating system with rapid connection frameworks enable rapid scaling. New projects gain instant access to established projects’ capabilities, users, and developers through composable, interoperable solutions.
Andromeda provides the application framework that enables projects to rapidly compose complex applications that connect to other projects and achieve scale. New app chains or consumer chains gain instant access throughout the Cosmos.
24. CoFi Thesis — Collaborative finance is the next major innovation in human transaction.
Public blockchains carry an immutable record of all account transactions and balances. The current state of the accounts represents a transaction graph of enormous potential. New decentralized applications that support transaction models can be built to include obligation clearing, mutual credit, clearing houses, and others. For example, obligation clearing can be used to achieve account settlement without a currency. This is accomplished by netting out balances automatically. In a simple example, Alice owes Bob $100 and Bob owes Carlos $100 and Carlos owes Alice $100. Using cash these obligations are settled sequentially. Modern systems use central intermediaries, like banks, to settle these accounts. This increases transaction costs, float, and opportunity costs. Public blockchains introduce the possibility of settlement across vast transaction graphs. These can be organized by trade groups, consortia, geography, civic and community organizations, etc. The efficiency, liquidity, and wealth creation unleashed is a tremendous opportunity.
Andromeda has the application tools to realize the CoFi vision: Separate identity and authentication, automation, contract owner delegation, opt-in mechanisms, user-specified account threshold controls, vaults, time-locks, splitter, and many other composable primitives to build an on-chain trustless solution.
25. Societal Trust Thesis — Protocols emerge to redefine governance and the foundations of society.
Blockchain technologies create protocols that redefine many of the institutions of society. These protocols ensure conditions of trust that do not exist today and substantially advance the efficacy of the global commons. The future we want is to build protocols where a sovereign individual, network, or entity, in all of their endeavors, public or private, with or without future governance bodies, is endowed with rights and freedoms provided by an accountable, immutable, private, and readily provable record of past and current actions.
Redefining society, based on verifiable trust, provides a future of hope for the people, the planet, and prosperity.
Andromeda is capable of building these kinds of protocols now, so they can evolve towards the future we want for humankind.
The realization of these, and other theses, unlocks massive global adoption and value creation for all of Web 3. A new infrastructure layer, a decentralized operating system, has emerged to satisfy them.
This essay is a response to three big-picture questions posed by ‘BetterFuture of the Cosmos’ on Twitter:
A) “How big” can/will this wedge of prosperity be by 2040 as measured in GDP terms?
In 2020, the services sector accounted for ~65% of global GDP. The services sector grew by 5% in the last decade. This rate will increase AND the percentage of digital services will continue to accelerate. Civilization will be increasingly mediated by these technologies. We predict the services sector will account for 80% of global GDP by 2040.
B) What SDK modules are most needed to get there?
- Installed default operating system
- Push button SDK for blockchain-in-a-box
- Validator pool activation
- Performance monitoring tooling
- Tooling to analyze tradeoffs and separation of concerns between the SDK and smart contract layer
C) What are the biggest roadblocks to this vision becoming real?
The following are essential to the realization of the vision:
- A decentralized multi/cross-chain Operating System and Dev Tooling
- Favorable regulatory environment
- Formally recognized co-existence of law and code
- A fully-imagined wallet experience that separates identity and authentication, and supports multiple identities and custody models
- Insurance for on-chain value
- Mature DAO governance models
- Intact Moore’s Law
- Continued soundness/hardness of cryptography
- Viable taxation method
