Cøsmos Network: The Internet of Blockchains is here, Demystifying Ethermint, Althea testnet #1 launched, SecretSwap is live, CRO mainnet on Mar 25, KIRA and BSC integration, Injective is integrating with Avalanche, IRISnet mainnet 1.0 upgrade in 2 days, and more!

Paradigm

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Paradigm

12 min readFeb 23, 2021

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Biweekly update on Cosmos ecosystem vol. 42, 10th February — 23rd February

Dear Astronauts, welcome to our regular report on the Cosmos ecosystem!
As many of you know, the central and incredibly huge event of these two weeks was the Stargate launch! The upgrade on the Cosmos hub is live now, bringing with it full interoperability between Cosmos SDK chains. It gives birth to the Internet of Blockchains and the start of a new paradigm in the cryptospace. The upgrade comes with many great features, with the main one being Inter-Blockchain communication, which enables blockchains to talk to each other. Beyond doubt еhe launch will be one for the history books!
As for the Cosmos ecosystem updates: The eleventh edition of the Interchain Foundation’s biweekly update is here. Althea testnet is live and running, with the Gravity Bridge, sending test Ethereum to Cosmos. CRO mainnet is launching on March 25th 2021 as Crypto.org chain. Secret DeFi is here. Now you can trade secret tokens with front-running resistance, improved privacy protections, and low cost. The Injective team introduces the reward mechanisms that will govern Injective’s Equinox Staking testnet. Moreover, Injective will integrate with the newly released Avalanche-Ethereum Bridge (AEB) to create a two-way transfer zone between the Injective Chain and Avalanche. e-Money’s, stablecoins will be launched on Avalanche’s Contract Chain (C-Chain). Terra Station Mobile is here. Oracle Analytics is named a Visionary in 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for analytics and business intelligence platforms. Idena is launching a series of hackathons to build Dapp websites on top of predefined Idena smart contracts. The Graph expands to Layer 2 Blockchains and adds Indexing and Querying Support for Polygon, formerly Matic Network, who have over 200k users and 90 applications. Learn how Persistence is providing the infrastructure for the creation of a suite of bleeding edge financial products. KIRA testnet milestone 2 is out. Also, KIRA and Binance Smart Chain (BSC) integration was announced. Polkacover integrates and partners with Band Protocol secure DeFi & wider crypto insurance. DSLA Protocol is integrating with the Oasis Network. Regular Binance Smart Chain recap is here. Akash DeCloud: mainnet 2 teaser is out. Bytom Grant Project — Hashed TimeLock Contract (HTLC) has been completed. Sentinel’s new Cosmos based v3 wallet application will allow for users to simulate the experience of making transactions and staking on Sentinel’s mainnet. IRISnet Mainnet 1.0 Upgrade is about to happen on February 25th. And more!
That’s all for today! See you next month with more exciting Cosmos news!

Development

Github metrics:

Cosmos launches Stargate!

After months of development, the Cosmos team has launched the Stargate update, which includes the highly anticipated Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol, or IBC.

Announced on February 18th, the Stargate upgrade includes a series of improvements to the Cosmos protocol and its Software Development Kit.

The most important of Stargate’s features is IBC, the interoperability layer for Cosmos blockchains. The protocol is one of the key elements of the Cosmos vision, allowing for effortless interoperability between Cosmos SDK blockchains and other blockchain protocols. IBC allows bridging tokens and arbitrary data between all blockchains it supports, primarily those built with the Cosmos SDK. Other blockchains can also be supported, but they require case-by-case implementations.

Stargate Upgrade Launch Party:

In the 3 hour event, the teams were performing a live upgrade of the Cosmos Hub blockchain to the Stargate release. Over 10 teams were talking about their journey in Cosmos, sharing experiences and important announcements about the project, as well as what’s coming next.

Stargate: Architecting the Cosmos SDK v0.40+ by Gregory Landua

The Cosmos SDK had an overhaul to enter the IBC world. This is the story of the architecture and engineering approach to this overhaul.

Setup your frontend application / NodeJS Application with Gaia v4.0.0

Tendermint

Demystifying Ethermint

What is Ethermint?

It is a portmanteau word blending Ethereum and Tendermint together. But for most people, their grasp on the project — the what, the why, and the how — stops there. In order to truly understand how Ethermint works, it’s important to also understand Cosmos SDK & Tendermint. The team explains them both throughout the article, and dives into what Ethermint offers.

Towards Tendermint Core 1.0

Tendermint roadmap for the next 18 months

Tendermint Core 1.0’s chief concern is stability. It must be stable enough that people can (continue) to build production software on it confidently. This requires an increased level of clarity and rigidity around all the interfaces exposed by Tendermint Core. It also requires us to build confidence in Tendermint Core’s performance and correctness through investments in performance-oriented refactors and increased, more sophisticated testing.

This post outlines the things the team considers necessary for a 1.0 release.

The team thinks of new features and improvements as a kind of Maslow’s hierarchy combined with a food pyramid, with the most substantial and most boring goals at the bottom, and the shinier and smaller changes at the top.

If you have questions, ideas, or would like to contribute, please open an issue or join Tendermint developer forum.

Cosmos Governance

Proposals:

#37 Stargate Upgrade- Second time is a charm! passed

Proposal completed the Stargate upgrade, halted `cosmoshub-3` at 06:00 UTC on Feb 18th, exported the state and started `cosmoshub-4` based on gaia 4.0.

#36 Delay of Hub Stargate Upgrade for approximately 2 weeks passed

The Stargate team recommended that the Cosmos Hub reschedule the next upgrade to a new commit hash.

[Governance] Proposal to Adopt the Liquidity Module onto the Cosmos Hub:

[Governance] Proposal to Adopt the Liquidity Module onto the Cosmos Hub

Hi Cosmonauts! This document is the draft signal proposal to adopt the Liquidity Module(DeX) onto the Cosmos Hub…

forum.cosmos.network

Awareness and social encounters

UnifiDAO DemoDay

Videos from the event are available on Cosmos YouTube channel.

Upcoming events:

Code with Us:

HackAtom RU 2021 — buckle up Cosmonauts, we have no problems and are ready for takeoff

Schedule:

Registration opened now
Hacking starts: March 15th, 19:00 pm MSC
Submissions Due: March 26th, 23:45 pm MSC
Voting for Community Choice Award: March 27th — 30th, voting closes 17:00 pm MSC
Winners Announced: March 31st 15:00 pm MSC

HackAtom RU 2021 — buckle up Cosmonauts, we have no problems and are ready for takeoff!

HackAtom RU 2021 is awaiting your hacks! Register now at: https://hackatom-ru.devpost.com/

blog.cosmos.network

Finance

Information from Mintscan.io:

Top 10 validators:

Cosmos Markets

Information from Coinlib.io:

Cosmos Roadmap:

100% complete

Releases:

Interchain Foundation

ICF bi-weekly updates

ICF Update — Feb 11th

EthDenver Interoperability Panel; WenChang launched by Bianjie on BSN; Confio begins work on TypeScript Relayer; UX Working Group Updates;

The eleventh edition of the Interchain Foundation’s biweekly update! They are using this space to highlight some of the more exciting activities that took place at the Interchain Foundation over the last two weeks. This includes some check-in meetings that occurred with various funding recipients as well as general meetings and goings-on that members of the Interchain ecosystem might find interesting and informative. If any of the updates are especially relevant to what you are working on feel free to drop them a line at hello@interchain.io.

If you missed previous updates, check it out at ICF Update — Jan 28th ICF Update — Jan 14th ICF Update — Dec 15th ICF Update — Dec 1st ICF Update — Nov 17th ICF Update — Nov 3rd ICF Update — Oct 20th ICF Update — Oct 6th, ICF Update — Sept 7, ICF Update — Sept 22.

ICF UX Working Group Meeting Recap

Meeting 1 — Meeting 6

The ICF UX Working Group’s goal is to highlight the emerging challenges that must be addressed to ensure high-quality user experiences (UX) and developer experiences (DX) on an IBC connected Internet of Blockchains. They want to build standards and applications to improve UX/DX through a collaborative, open dialogue.

Ecosystem updates

Akash Network:

Althea Network:

Althea Testnet #1 Launched: The first testnet of the Althea blockchain and the Gravity Bridge happened on February 13th 8am PDT. Althea testnet is live and running, with the Gravity Bridge, sending test Ethereum to Cosmos:

Agoric:

Band Protocol:

Binance:

Bluzelle:

Bytom:

Cyber:

Citizen Cosmos news:

Crypto.com:

e-Money:

e-Money Announces Appointment of Chief Marketing Officer
e-Money Monthly Blog: January in review
Avalanche Expanding Stablecoin Diversity in DeFi Ecosystem with e-Money’s European Stablecoins: e-Money’s, stablecoins will be launched on Avalanche’s Contract Chain (C-Chain)
e-Money partners with Royale Finance
e-Money and RAMP Partners To Power Fiat-To-DeFi Liquidity Bridge For Crypto Users
MANTRA DAO & e-Money Announce Strategic Partnership

Idena Network:

Idena smart contracts hackathons: Another step towards decentralized governance: Idena is launching a series of hackathons to build Dapp websites on top of predefined Idena smart contracts.

Injective

Injective is Integrating with Avalanche to Launch a Diverse Array of Interoperable Derivatives: Injective will integrate with the newly released Avalanche-Ethereum Bridge (AEB) to create a two-way transfer zone between the Injective Chain and Avalanche.
Introducing the Injective Equinox Staking Rewards: The Injective team introduces the reward mechanisms that will govern Injective’s Equinox Staking testnet. This includes an overview of the reward design process as well as explanations behind the various ways to earn rewards.
Leading Validators Globally Officially Join Equinox Staking
Equinox Staking: Public Validator Onboarding Begins

IRIS Network:

IRISnet Mainnet 1.0 Upgrade Announcement: IRISnet Mainnet 1.0 Upgrade is about to happen on February 25th, 2020.
IRISnet Mainnet 1.0 Upgrade On-chain Governance Proposal has been submitted

Kadena:

Kava:

HARD “Money Market Madness” Competition Tutorial: Learn how to earn HARD and win $25,000

KIRA Network:

KIRA Testnet Phase 0 | Milestone 2: KIRA testnet milestone 2 is out!
KIRA & Binance Smart Chain (BSC) Integration: By integrating KIRA with BSC, users will have the ability to stake BNB on the KIRA Network and stake farm with BNB or any tokens issued on or deposited to BSC, without need for any intermediary custodial or even non-custodial “bridge” solutions.

Oasis:

Oracle:

Brazil’s Cabana Burger Increases Delivery Orders by 400% with Oracle: Oracle MICROS Simphony POS helps Brazilian food chain streamline orders and cut delivery time by 10 minutes.
Oracle Analytics is named a Visionary in 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms: Here’s why
Leading Healthcare Organizations Deploy Oracle Cloud to Support Essential Workers: Oracle Cloud HCM deployed by healthcare organizations caring for more than 26 million Americans annually.
Bed Bath & Beyond Selects Oracle to Modernize Enterprise Resource Planning and Accelerate Technology Transformation: Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. today announced it has selected Oracle as its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) technology provider.

Persistence:

How Persistence is Ushering in a New Era of Next-Gen Financial Products: Learn how Persistence is providing the infrastructure for the creation of a suite of bleeding edge financial products.

Polygon (previously Matic)

The Graph expands to Layer 2 Blockchains and Brings Indexed Open Data to Polygon: The Graph expands to Layer 2 Blockchains and adds Indexing and Querying Support for Polygon, formerly Matic Network, who have over 200k users and 90 applications.

Regen Network:

With Microsoft’s recent purchase — Regen Network’s “CarbonPlus” credit drew special attention for its holistic focus on the health of soil, grasslands, & animal welfare.

Secret Network:

SecretSwap is live on Mainnet: Secret DeFi is here. Now you can trade secret tokens with front-running resistance, improved privacy protections, and low cost. Start using SecretSwap now.
SecretSwap Update: AMM Rewards + Governance Token: Secret’s first AMM, SecretSwap, launched on mainnet February 17th. Learn more about rewards, a new native bridged governance token, and other details.
Get Secrets: Bridge Mining Extended, SushiSwap Rewards, and SecretSwap

Sentinel:

Sentinel’s new Cosmos based v3 wallet application will allow for users to simulate the experience of making transactions and staking on Sentinel’s mainnet.
SENT will also be onboarding a centralized VPN company with over 5000 actively paying users onto Sentinel’s dVPN framework:

Starname:

Starname IOV: Now Validated by Tendermint

Terra:

THORChain:

Projects that are actively building on the Cosmos ecosystem

MISC

Social media metrics

Social media activity:

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

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