Cøsmos Network: October Codefest is here, Prepare yourself for a new level of privacy thanks to the Cosmos Derivation Path upgrade by Confio, Ethermint is now Evmos, Juno launches mainnet, e-Money mainnet upgrade is complete, BandChain Phase 2 on the mainnet, Terra’s Columbus-5 launches, Kava is launching the $185M Ignition Fund, and more!

Paradigm
Paradigm
Published in
14 min readOct 5, 2021

Biweekly update on the Cosmos ecosystem vol. 56, 20th September — 5th October

Astronauts, the last two weeks have been extremely fruitful for the Cosmos ecosystem, and we can’t wait to share some of the most exciting news with you!

First, Evmos was introduced, the EVM hub of Cosmos, making it easy for Smart Contracts to deploy and communicate within the Cosmos. By the end of the year, the team will have full EVM-compatibility in the Cosmos.

Regular engineering updates were published. Check out news and updates on Cosmos tools and tech via the link in our report!

Considering the Cosmos governance updates, Proposal 56 to add IBC router to Hub is in the voting period has been passed successfully. Proposal 57 ‘Lowering Liquidity Pool Creation Fee’ is in the voting period. Don’t forget to vote!

Also, Confio proposes an important upgrade that allows the convenience of using just one seed phrase to manage all your keys, yet keeps their identities separate, even on Cosmos chains. It’s called the Cosmos Derivation Path Spec Proposal. Confio’s proposal changes the way that keys are generated within the Cosmos ecosystem.

Cosmos recently hosted an event titled ‘Updated Cosmos Roadmap and Interchain Security’ featuring Billy Rennekamp, the new Cosmos Hub Lead. Check out the transcript in the Cosmos blog. Furthermore, Interchain.fm new episodes are out featuring Sifchain and IRISNet. Tendermint presented October Codefest, a month-long virtual event to celebrate open-source software development and expand the Cosmos community. October Codefest Opening Ceremony has already taken place. Don’t miss your chance to participate!

As for the Cosmos ecosystem news: Juno launches mainnet. Juno is an interoperable smart contract network built using Cosmos and Starport. Following the successful migration of Columbus-4 to Columbus-5, Terra’s boldest and most significant mainnet upgrade since the inception of the Terra protocol is now officially live. e-Money Mainnet upgrade is now complete, enabling Inter-Blockchain. Communication IBC protocol Bridging e-Money network to Cosmos Hub & Osmosis. Kava is launching the $185M Ignition Fund to drive the development of the Kava Ecosystem — a safe, truly scalable home for the next wave of DeFi users. Binance Smart Chain’s $100M Accelerator Fund will support Decentral Games. Band Protocol has successfully launched BandChain Phase 2 on the Mainnet, upgrading from GuanYu to Laozi which supports streamed revenue for data providers and IBC integrations. BandChain Phase 2 Proposal 4 is now live to enable one of the key features of Phase 2 upgrade: IBC Oracle. Polygon’s number of unique daily active addresses has surpassed Ethereum’s for the first time on record. The Althea team began preparations for the Althea blockchain launch. Check out Althea’s revamped logo, website, and refreshed FAQ. Incentivized bitsong-testnet-6 is now live. The Cronos Mainnet with EVM smart contracts is launching on October 19. The Idena Chronicles issue #75 is out. Learn how new account protocols on the Kadena blockchain make the multi-chain operation safer and easier. Hear how Oracle and IBM are utilizing Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to help with enterprise cloud migrations. Equinox Staking rewards have been distributed. Over $1.2 Million were sent to Injective Mainnet wallets. Persistence Community Newsletter #12 was published. Sif’s Harvest introduced.

That’s all for today! Stay tuned!

Development

Github metrics:

Engineering Updates: News and updates on Cosmos tools and tech:

Introducing Evmos, the EVM Compatible Hub on Cosmos

Evmos is the Ethermint ecosystem. Evmos, “EVM-on-Cosmos” pronounced “Ev-mos”, is only the beginning. Evmos will be an application-agnostic chain that will be interoperable with the Ethereum Mainnet, EVM-compatible environments, and other BFT chains via IBC, making it easy for users and developers to easily move value between chains. But the vision for Ethermint expands beyond Evmos as the team plans to support the development of application-specific chains that leverage the Ethermint library, which they will continue to maintain.

Evmos is the Ethermint hub that will aim to connect application specific Ethermint chains, Cosmos chains (IBC), Ethereum (Gravity Bridge), and other EVM environments.

Manage All Your Keys with One Seed Phrase and Keep Their Identities Separate

Currently, the way that keys are generated within the Cosmos ecosystem means that if a user wants to use several blockchains with just one seed phrase and one set of keys, they can. However, because most chains in the Cosmos ecosystem are using the same identifying number, the public and private keys generated for each chain end up being the same, making it hard to maintain privacy between these chains.

So, say you didn’t want anyone to connect your identity on Cosmos Hub with your identity on Terra. You would need to have an extra mnemonic phrase for one of those chains. Clearly, this quickly becomes inconvenient as you transact across further chains.

Confio, therefore, proposes an important upgrade that allows the convenience of using just one seed phrase to manage all your keys, yet keeps their identities separate, even on Cosmos chains. It’s called the Cosmos Derivation Path Spec Proposal. Confio’s proposal changes the way that keys are generated within the Cosmos ecosystem.

Without getting too deep in the weeds, that means making some adjustments to Hierarchical Deterministic (HD) wallets. HD wallets allow users to generate public and private keys for multiple blockchains with one single mnemonic seed phrase, and they follow a specification called BIP44 spec.

As mentioned, currently, Cosmos Hub and many other chains in the Cosmos ecosystem are using the same identifier which allows for the simplification of other operations, such as the seamless use of tools built for the Cosmos Hub (like the Cosmos Ledger app) by Cosmos chains without any modifications. However, it also means that most chains using the Cosmos SDK use the same key pair, so users cannot keep their identities on all chains separated.

Confio’s proposal will still allow Cosmos chains to easily share important tools and functionality yet will keep users’ activity separate across all chains in the ecosystem. One unique key and one mnemonic phrase to manage all your cross-chain activity, yet separate identities.

Read a more technical summary on the Interchain blog here and the full Confio proposal on Github here.

Cosmos Governance

Proposals:

  • Cosmos Proposal #57 is in the voting period [Lowering Liquidity Pool Creation Fee]
  • Cosmos Proposal #56 passed [Add IBC Router to Hub]: The ‘Port City’ Era is coming: The IBC Middleware module will allow the hub to play the role of IBC Router that was always envisioned for it.

Find the latest governance proposals here.

Awareness and Events

What’s Coming to Cosmos Hub — AMA Recap with Billy Rennekamp

Cosmos recently hosted an event titled “Updated Cosmos Roadmap and Interchain Security” featuring Billy Rennekamp, the new Cosmos Hub Lead.

🎙DeFi By Design EP #50: What is Cosmos?

Andy and Rob interview Peng Zhong, the CEO of Tendermint, a core contributor to the Cosmos Network to hear his thoughts on how big the Cosmos ecosystem really is, how IBC is going to push the multi-chain frontier, and some developments to look out for in the near future.

October Codefest is here!

Tendermint presented October Codefest, a month-long virtual event to celebrate open-source software development and expand the Cosmos community.

How to Participate:

To participate, you need to create and merge at least one pull request between Oct. 1 and Oct. 31, 2021. The pull requests can be made to any GitHub repo in the Tendermint or Cosmos organization or one of the qualifying repos in Featured Projects. Only PRs that align with our project’s Code of Conduct are eligible. Be sure to review the Code of Conduct before starting on your contributions. If a project maintainer reports your pull request as spam or inappropriate behavior you are not eligible to participate.

Interchain.fm new episodes:

  • Sifchain: Launching Peggy & Enabling Multichain DeFi with Deep Margin: Jazear Brooks, the founder of Sifchain, discusses two products: Peggy and Sifchain. Sifchain is a Cosmos ecosystem DEX that just enables Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) to open up a multichain decentralized exchange. Sifchain introduces a novel feature that no other DEX provides, which is deep margin trading for its users. The Sifchain development team was previously part of a blockchain development firm called Swish Labs, which had been commissioned in the past to deliver an Ethereum to Cosmos bridge, dubbed “Peggy”. They continue their work on Peggy today and plan to write the software to be launched as the Cosmos SDK-based Peggy blockchain.
  • IRISNet: Cosmos China to Build China’s Blockchain-based Smart Network: Jeffrey Hu, Head of Research at Bianjie, the company behind the IRIS Network, discusses coin swaps, NFTs, and BSN, China’s upcoming blockchain-based smart network. IRISnet was the earliest Cosmos SDK blockchain that enabled swapping tokens in a module called “coin swap”. They were also early on in building out NFT tokens in the Cosmos ecosystem. We also get into how Bianjie, a Chinese AI and cryptocurrency company, is being commissioned to help support the development of China’s new blockchain initiative, the open permissioned blockchain (OPB), which could set the tone for how the 1.4 billion people living in China will interact with blockchain technology in the future.

Finance

Information from Mintscan.io:

Top 10 validators:

Cosmos Markets

Information from Coinmarketcap.com:

Top Cosmos Ecosystem Coins by Market Capitalization:

Cosmos Roadmap:

The Cosmos Hub Roadmap 2.0

Earlier this year, Cosmos completed its whitepaper, fulfilling its founding vision of blockchain interoperability, scalability & usability that was laid out in the original 2016 roadmap. Today the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol, enabling the transfer of digital assets & messages between Cosmos chains & more, lifts the Cosmos Hub to new levels of scalability & utility. Discover those key developments that are bringing the cross chain and DeFi future to the Cosmos Hub:

  • Liquidity Protocols
  • Staking Derivatives
  • Interchain Staking & Accounts
  • NFTs

Ecosystem updates

Akash Network:

Althea Network:

  • The Althea team began preparations for the Althea blockchain launch.
  • Althea FAQ: Check out Althea’s revamped logo, website, and refreshed FAQ.

Agoric:

Band Protocol:

Binance (BSC):

BitSong:

  • Incentivized bitsong-testnet-6 is now live:

Idena Network:

Injective

Juno Network:

Kadena:

Kava:

Oracle:

Secret Network:

Terra:

  • Columbus-5 Launches — Welcome to the Future of Terra: Following the successful migration of Columbus-4 to Columbus-5, Terra’s boldest and most significant mainnet upgrade since the inception of the Terra protocol is now officially live. Col-5 unlocks numerous dimensions for the Terra ecosystem to better capture value, port assets across chains, and set the foundation for a vibrant TeFi economy. Below, we walk through some of the major highlights of Columbus-5, including the plans for executing IBC via an on-chain governance vote.

Columbus brings:

  1. The Economic Changes
  2. The Community Pool + Ozone
  3. IBC & Stargate

Projects that are actively building on the Cosmos ecosystem

MISC

Social media metrics

Social media activity:

The Cosmos community continues to grow! There is a stable increase in the number of subscribers of Cosmos social media channels these weeks.

Medium

Twitter

Telegram

Reddit

Youtube

Cosmos forum

Join Cosmos official Discord channel here.

Check out Tendermint and Interchain Foundation Twitter pages.

There are also Community-managed Channels. These channels are managed entirely by members of the Cosmos community and do not represent official Cosmos or ICF announcements.

Cosmos Validator Working Group

Twitter Cosmos China

Twitter Cosmos Korea

Twitter Cosmos Japan

Cosmos India Telegram

Cosmos Singapore Telegram

This is not financial advice.

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Medium. Twitter. Telegram. Telegram Chat. Reddit. LinkedIn.

Main sources

Cosmos blog

Cosmos Twitter page

Cosmos subreddit

Cosmos Youtube channel

Tendermint media

Interchain Foundation media

Ecosystem projects’ social media

🪐Crypto Twitter in general

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