Welcome Astronauts to the first 2020 edition of Cosmos biweekly! It’s time to check out ecosystem events, the progress of existing projects and community conversations!
How excited are you to start implementing CosmWasm-enabled blockchains and deploy custom — and highly secure — smart contracts? CosmWasm was designed with re-entrancy mitigation in mind! It is a new smart contracting platform built for the Сosmos ecosystem. CosmWasm was originally prototyped by Team Gaians at the Berlin Hackatom 2019. In particular, Aaron Craelius came up with the architecture, especially avoiding reentrancy, Jehan Tremback led the rust coding, and Ethan Frey led the go side of the implementation. After the successful prototype, the Interchain Foundation provided a grant to Confio to implement a robust version that would work in an adversarial environment. If you are a Rust developer, you can easily write smart contracts that can be uploaded to any Cosmos SDK based chain that includes the CosmWasm module. Developers, new video tutorials are up, courtesy of Ethan Frey from Confio and lead engineer at Regen Network to get started with your blockchain app.
As for the social side, the latest Interchain.FM podcast episode’s guest was Riad Wahby joining Chjango Unchained and Christopher Goes to discuss GooSig, a ZK-proof, to enable privacy-preserving airdrops. Tune in for this and more resources for verifiable computation from the vantage point of a cryptographer. Astronauts, kick off the New Year strong at the 1st GoDays meetup of the year. And if that’s not enough fun for you, join Billy Rennekamp for a “Digital Scarcity and Gaming in Golang” workshop.
Cosmos ecosystem moves fast. A lot has happened since the last issue! Coinbase Pro added support for Cosmos (ATOM). BitSong Demo is live. The team also announced the incentivized validator contest. KAVA sweepstakes rules and guidelines are out. Check out LikeCoin annual report. 2019 was a year of explosive growth for Terra. Check out their last community update of the year. Also, Luna can now be purchased with credit card through MoonPay. IRISHub reaches 4M Blockheight on January 12th, 2020! A new record in public blockchain of Cosmos family! Rainbow wallet airdrop of 10.000 Iris was announced. 50% of IRISnet tokens from the community pool will be burned. Forbole recap of the year and the first update of 2020 was published. Althea development update is out. The SENT Telegram Network Bot is now live. With the Sentinel Telegram Network Bot, users can search the Sentinel Tendermint testnet, view real-time dVPN statistics, and also see guides on how to host a validator or a dVPN node. New website soon. And many more!
Astronauts, thank you for being a part of the Cøsmos! Let’s make 2020 even more epic!
Development
Github metrics:
CosmWasm
A WASM-based Smart Contract Module for the Cosmos SDK
The Cosmos SDK is written in Golang based on certain design considerations to allow for the customization of modules, however, expanding across many programming languages is crucial to growing developer adoption. Ultimately supporting the greater goal of enabling an Internet of Blockchains — or The Interchain — to support a plethora of implementations and capabilities connected by the Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC).
June 2019 marked the first-ever Cosmos HackAtom Berlin and the beginnings of CosmWasm. The hackathon’s goal? Expanding tooling for developers interested in building on the Cosmos Network. CosmWasm, a project enabling WebAssembly (WASM) virtual machines (VMs) in the Cosmos SDK, was one of a number of projects to eventually receive a grant from the Interchain Foundation with regards to developer tooling.
The first implementation of a WASM virtual machine running on top of a Cosmos SDK application has been designed by Ethan Frey from Confio (he’s also the lead engineer at Regen Network). The team is excited to announce that it is now available for the Cosmos community! If you are a Rust developer, you can easily write smart contracts that can be uploaded to any Cosmos SDK based chain that includes the CosmWasm module. You can find more information on the technology at the links below:
Adding WebAssembly to the Cosmos SDK allows software written in many languages to run securely on a blockchain. WASM serves as an intermediate language that compiles the developer’s language of choice into a portable virtual machine. This means that you can have a simple, secure and fast virtual machine set up to sandbox or partition your application’s actions for better testing, security, performance and speed.
The entrance of a new programming language to the Cosmos Network has several benefits for the overall developer ecosystem. First, this product allows developers to write modules in Rust that integrate seamlessly with the Cosmos SDK, so they can take advantage of the mainnet-proven Cosmos-SDK modules and BPoS Tendermint consensus algorithm while developing a largely Rust-based custom application logic. Second, the ability to upload code in transactions, rather than restarting the chain, allows for a much quicker deployment of new features; the Cosmos Hub upgrade procedure is necessary only when making changes in the core logic. This enables application-specific zones to freeze the staking logic and iterate quickly on their core value proposition through custom smart contracts. Especially if they limit contract deployment to governance, this can provide an easy way for the chain to ship code quickly. If they launch a chain with the default permissionless uploading of smart contracts, you can build an Ethereum alternative on Tendermint.
An important consideration for performance when building smart contracts is the data packet size. Web Assembly code is naturally larger than Ethereum bytecode as it offers more generality. Rust has no garbage collector and the standard library can be excluded from builds, which means that a minified simple escrow contract requires around 50kB (16kB compressed). Golang or Haskell are alternatives, but would likely produce contracts of several hundred kB. This consideration, along with the popularity of Rust in the blockchain ecosystem, led the Tendermint team to use this as a first implementation language for Web Assembly contracts in the Cosmos SDK.
While the ecosystem is still nascent, the smart contract environment within CosmWasm is Turing complete. This means that you have the capability to perform any logic that could be implemented in Ethereum and execute it within the Cosmos SDK without modifying the underlying blockchain. The CosmWasm module includes a mature build and test environment and comes with an integrated development environment (IDE) thanks to Rust’s native programming features. For a more detailed guide on “Getting started with CosmWasm” visit the product’s documentation website.
If you are a Rust developer using CosmWasm with the Cosmos SDK means you:
- …only need a minimal knowledge of Golang.
- … can start building on the Cosmos SDK and integrate easily into the existing Cosmos Network.
- …can extend your existing chain or application to the Cosmos chain with minimal overhead.
If you are a Go developer using the Cosmos SDK with CosmWasm, the benefits include:
- Only a minimal knowledge of Rust is required thanks to the well-designed CosmWasm tool kit.
- Adding Rust programming logic to the Cosmos SDK allows for live upgrades or custom contracts enhancing the customization and execution of your application.
- You gain access to Rust’s type safety and testing and the encoding and crypto signatures relatively common in Rust — which are ideal for developing highly secure blockchain applications which could be used in DeFi.
CosmWasm enables WASM VMs to be built with Cosmos SDK
CosmWasm — Editing a Smart Contract Tutorial Part 1
In this talk Ethan Frey, lead developer of Regen Network, discusses CosmWasm, a Wasm smart contract engine for the Cosmos SDK.
CosmWasm — Editing a Smart Contract Tutorial Part 2
Awareness and social encounters
Interchain.fm podcast:
GooSig for Privacy-Preserving Airdrops:
Riad Wahby discusses a particular zero-knowledge proof called GooSig. Riad is a PhD student at Stanford University who works with Dan Boneh, Christopher Jeffrey, and Joseph Poon using GooSig to enable a privacy-preserving token distribution scheme for the Handshake Naming System. Most of Riad’s work is in ZK proofs and verifiable computation.
Happy New Years Cosmos Community:
In this video Jae Kwon, Ethan Buchman, Chjango Unchained, Zaki Manian, Sunny Aggarwal, Adriana Mihai, Hitesh Bhardwaj, Tushar Aggarwal, Abhitej Singh, Brian Crain, Fabian Webber, Irisnet team, E-Money / Validator Network, Aurel Iancu, Gavin Birch, David Park, POS Bakerz, StakeWithUs, Cyber_Devs, Cyber~Congress, Jun Soo Kim (JK), Mira Storm, Erica Kang, Ken Berey, Ken Trueba, Enrico Talin, Bez Menzalji, Shane Vitarana, Ruaridh O’Donnel, Chris Remus, Gregory Landua, Iulian Anghel, Alexey Bondar, Althea Network (Justin, Jehan, Deborah), Mission Bitcoin, Claudiu Nae, Dean Tribble, and the Forbole Team share their thoughts on 2019 and wish everyone a Cosmic 2020!
These weeks events:
January 11th, 2020: Join Federico Kunze, Software Developer at Tendermint attended BTChile event in Santiago, Chile.
Upcoming events:
January 21st, 2020: GoDays 2020 Pre-Conference Meetup
January 22nd, 2019: Cosmos Singapore Meetup: Demystifying Tendermint Core and Application Blockchain Interface (ABCI).
Finance
The Interchain Foundation (ICF) raised $17 million in April 2017 to shepherd the development of the Cosmos network.
“To date, we still have over 1,400 BTC, over 50,000 ETH and just over 20 million ATOMs in the treasury,” ICF director Arianne Flemming says.
At today’s prices, that’s worth over $104 million. And that’s even after the nonprofit deployed $25 million in capital to fund over 50 projects.
Cosmos validators
Information from Mintscan.io:
Cosmos Markets
Information from Coinmarketcap.com:
Information from Coinlib.io:
Roadmap
Cosmos Hub Roadmap:
Governance Milestones
The following milestones will require voting by on-chain governance.
Proposal: Atom Transfers
2019–04–10 An upgrade proposal may be created on the Cosmos Hub to allow ATOM to be transferred to other Cosmos addresses. Read more »
Proposal Passed: Atom Transfers
2019–04–17 Success! The proposal to allow ATOM to be transferred to other Cosmos addresses passes.
Proposal: IBC
future TBD
An upgrade proposal may be created on the Cosmos Hub to add support for IBC, the Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol. IBC will allow other Cosmos SDK-based blockchains to connect to the Hub. Read more »
Proposal Passed: IBC
future TBD
Success! The Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol is now supported by the Cosmos Hub. The IBC standard will allow blockchains that support it to connect.
Community Governance
future TBD
At this point, the critical features of the Cosmos Hub has been activated by the community of Atom holders. Further governance of the network and upgrades to the software or blockchain state are left to the community. Read more »
Ecosystem
Akash Network:
Six Trends Transforming Cloud Computing in 2020.
Althea:
Althea Development Update #80: Phone client networking, MCD upgrade.
BitSong:
Forbole:
Forbole’s Weekly Update (Jan 6 2020).
IRISnet:
10,000 IRIS & Airdrop for Rainbow New Users to Win for On-chain Governance!
How to Allocate Community Tax Pool? 10x Tx Fee Airdropped for Proposal Voting!
What You Need to Know about IRIS Community Tax Pool Allocation.
IRISnet Biweekly Report(2019.12.16–12.29).
Kava:
KAVA Sweepstakes Rules and Guidelines.
LikeCoin:
LikeCoin Annual Report 2019: Building the Infrastructure of Creative Contents for the Next Decade.
Regen Network:
Sentinel:
Launch of the ‘Sentinel Telegram (dVPN) Network Bot’.
Terra:
THORChain:
An update to ChaosNet and Milestones: An overview to the project progress so far, including expectations going forward.
RUNE Distribution Update: RUNE Distribution Analysis for December 2019.
Weekly Dev Update #25: THORChain Weekly Dev Update for Week 06–13 Jan 2020.
Other:
Launch of Euler-5, an incentivized testnet for validating CYBER, a decentralized Google for provable and relevant answers: launch of Euler 5 an incentivized testnet for regaining control over personal data by returning to a decentralized web.
Commercio.network DID Method Specification.
Chorus One:
28 Stake Capital DAO: Revenue-Sharing and Liquid Staking with Julien Bouteloup and Leopold Joy: This episode covers the Stake Capital DAO, an interesting project aiming to form a revenue-sharing staking and DeFi DAO that also issues tokenized staking positions called LTokens. The Stake Capital DAO is a project by Stake Capital, a staking service provider operating on various networks including the Cosmos Hub, Livepeer, Tezos, and Loom.
In this episode, Felix is joined by Stake Capital founders Julien and Leopold to discuss the recently revealed plans to launch a DAO. It dives into their backgrounds in the Ethereum community working on Flyingcarpeth and other projects leading up to the forming of Stake Capital and their decision to turn their business into a DAO. They explore the relationship between Stake Capital and the DAO, the DAO’s token SCT, the innovative way in which SCT tokens are issued to delegators of Stake Capital, as well as governance questions and other technicalities of the Stake Capital DAO approach. The second part dives into liquid staking tokens (LTokens) that the DAO plans to issue to enable stakers to circumvent locking periods and to enable a more efficient use of staked capital. Finally, the episode wraps up with a discussion of the next steps and long-term plans for the Stake Capital DAO.
27 Validator Business Model Discussion with the Decentralized Staking Defenders: This episode is a re-upload of recent roundtable hosted by Chris Remus of Chainflow that featured multiple validator team members to discuss the future of business models for operators of staking node infrastructure.
The roundtable discussion starts with introductions to the participants before going straight into the current state of the validator space and approaches to business models for node operators.
Make sure to check out Chris Remus’ conclusion post that features questions, key takeaways, as well as a video recording of the discussion: https://chainflow.io/validator-business-model-discussion/
Participants:
- Adrian Brink, Cryptium Labs
- Chris Remus, Chainflow and Staking Defense — Moderator
- Edouard Lavidalle, POS Bakerz
- Gleb Dudka, Staking Rewards
- JK, Stake.fish
- Konstantin Richter, Block Daemon
- Meher Roy, Chorus One
- Mira Storm, Ztake
Built with the Cosmos SDK
Projects that are actively building on the Cosmos ecosystem
Akash is the world’s first super cloud for serverless computing, empowering the architects and builders of the internet with greater access, freedom, and efficiency. Announcement » Infrastructure
Binance Chain is developed by Binance and its community as the basis for a decentralized exchange. Binance is considered the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the world in terms of trading volume. Announcement » DEX
e-Money is the leading European provider of currency-backed stablecoins. The stablecoins are interest bearing and protected by an insolvency fund, which makes them unique in today’s market. Infrastructure Enterprise Stablecoin
IOV a universal protocol between blockchains and wallet users, is making it possible to send, receive and exchange any cryptocurrency from a single address of value. Wallet Name Service
IRISnet is designed to be the foundation for next generation distributed business applications. It is a BPoS blockchain, built with Cosmos-SDK, that enables cross-chain interoperability through a unified service model. Announcement » Enterprise
Kava is the world’s first Interledger solutions provider bringing blockchains, wallets, and exchanges the interoperability and liquidity of the Interledger. Announcement » Infrastructure
Lino is a decentralized autonomous content economy to determine its value and incentivize contributors in a more direct and effective manner. Announcement » Social
Loom is a Layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum that includes a network of DPoS sidechains for highly-scalable games and user-facing DApps. Announcement » Games
Playlist is a project aimed at tokenizing the music industry with their PLAY Protocol. Social
Regen Network is a global community and platform focused on ecological monitoring and regeneration. Announcement » Agriculture
Sentinel Network is a network layer that enables a true p2p and decentralized Applications & Resources marketplace. Announcement » Infrastructure
A price-stable cryptocurrency designed for mass adoption. They are building financial infrastructure for the next generation of decentralized applications. Announcement » Stablecoin Infrastructure
TruStory is a building a social network for experts to identify what information is true and what isn’t in return for tokens. Announcement » Social
Check out the Full list of projects in Cosmos & Tendermint Ecosystem.
Partnerships and team members
Cosmos is hiring! See the latest job openings here.
Rumors
Twitter:
Reddit discussions:
Coinbase Pro to Add Support for Cosmos (ATOM) Beginning January 13th.
Introducing Persistence, the enterprise Hub of Cosmos.
Blockchain Explorer prior to Cosmos Hub 3 Upgrade.
cosmosvanity: CLI tool for generating Cosmos vanity addresses.
Is Binance using the Atom token?
Cosmos ⚛️ December 2019 Network Analysis:
Quick Takes
- Cosmos Hub 3 launched successfully on Dec 11, 2019
- Cosmos Governance Working Group seeks funding from the community
- Multi-chain smart contracts for Cosmos? What’s next?
- Potential parameter changes on the horizon
– 4x equivocation slash; 4x inflation speed; +20% validators; 5x tax rate
- Community fund has over 260k ATOMs
- 7.19% inflation and rewards rate ~9.42% (know the difference!)
- More stake decentralization
– the top 10 validators lost a further 2% voting power over the Hub
Check out the full article here.
Other:
Cosmos gaia-13007 Testnet: This Guide is about Atom the Blockchain for the Cosmos Hub-3 and how to build one node for gaia-13007 the actual testnet for Cosmos.
Introduction to Cosmos — Internet of Blockchains by Cosmos India.
What is the Cosmos Blockchain? Get up to speed on Cosmos, Tendermint, and the ATOM token in ShapeShift blog.
Cosmos Calls Community to fund them to lead a Governance Working Group for Q1 2020.
Social media metrics
Social media activity:
Social media dynamics:
Cosmos community continues to grow. There is a stable increase in the number of subscribers of Cosmos social media channels these weeks.
See also Cosmos forum and Matrix/Riot Chat.
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
There is strong stable growth in the Cosmos community over time. The graph above shows the dynamics of changes in the number of Cosmos Reddit subscribers and Twitter followers. The information is taken from Coingecko.com.
