Welcome, Cosmonauts, to the May edition of Cøsmos biweekly! There was a ton of big stuff over the past two weeks for you!
Good news is, Phase 1 of Game of Zones will launch tomorrow, on Wednesday, May 6th pending a period of 24 hours of testnet stability. A new official starting time will be shared with participants as soon as it becomes available. Read more about this update below. Watch AMA recording with Zaki Manian, Jack Zampolin, and Jessy Irwin below to find out more. And if you’re interested and need help, Jack Zampolin has made himself available! You can also join the related channel on the Cosmos Discord server to chat with other people willing to help you get used to IBC and prepared for GoZ.
For those of you looking for something exciting to buidl while staying home, there is a week left in the Cross Chain Hackathon. Getting involved is as easy as ABC — that is, Agoric, Band Protocol, and Cosmos. For this hackathon, they’d like to see what real-world applications developers can build using the Cosmos SDK, Agoric’s SDK, and Band chain. The team would also love to see what you can do with IBC, the protocol used to connect all these blockchains together. As they want to make sure everyone has ample time to finish and submit their best work, the team has extended the Hackathon with one week. New end date is May 18th. If you missed Cross-Chain Hackathon IBC Workshop with Chris Goes (Interchain GmbH), check out the recording in our report.
Using creative treasury management, the team has already started several ecosystem-bolstering initiatives aimed directly at supporting Cosmos Network’s most prolific contributors. Recent initiatives that were publicly announced were that of the Community Contributor Grants program and the Tendermint Inc ATOM Rebonding. This year, the team is hosting an hour to hour and a half long video conference event at Consensus:Distributed this year in its “Foundations” segment on May 12th, the second day of the online conference. If you aren’t registered, you can find the registration link below, entirely for free, which is a steal compared to past conferences.
Moreover, the team is launching “Code with us,” a live, interactive workshop program designed to educate and provide real-time practice to developers in the community. This program aims to provide everyone with access to the information and resources they need to become familiar with the Cosmos stack. These seminars are small workshops led by expert mentors from Tendermint Inc, Interchain GmbH, Agoric, Band Protocol and others that will use their expertise to guide the community of developers from deploying a simple “Hello World” blockchain, to getting familiar with the Cosmos SDK architecture, running an IBC relayer, and much more. Participants have the opportunity to access hands-on live lessons to code together in real-time with some of the community’s most respected contributors. Most of the workshops are structured in two-hour sessions with associated online materials or tutorials, and will take place roughly every two weeks. If you are looking for a quick and fun introduction to Cosmos’ tech, this is the perfect way to get started! The first workshop in this program is “Scavenger Hunt Tutorial” held by Billy Rennekamp scheduled for 11th May. In this workshop, you will learn to build a working game with its own internal economy using the Cosmos SDK, a framework to build scalable and interoperable application-specific blockchains in Go.
A lot has happened in Cosmos ecosystem since our last issue! IRISnet announced an integration with Chainlink, the market-leading decentralized oracle network, through the addition of a Chainlink “oracle” module to the IRIS Hub. Furthermore, IRISnet Enterprise IRITA has been chosen by China’s Blockchain-based Service Network BSN to support Cosmos ecosystem. Registration has opened for the Akashian Challenge Incentivized Testnet: build the future of the cloud, with 3,000,000 AKT tokens in rewards, and other prizes. Regen Network published Q2 2020 update. IOV stared an exclusive auction for premium starnames. All proceeds will go to fight #COVID19 for aphp hospitals. Phase 4 of Desmos Network’s incentivized testnet is coming. The Terra team shared their March and April 2020 Community updates. They celebrates the 2 year anniversary of Terraform Labs and the 1 year anniversary of Terra mainnet launch! More exciting news to relay from the CHAI payments app on integrations with Happy Money and Toomics in the latest Terra Ecosystem Update. Moreover, Terra and Persistence announce partnership to drive adoption via a Token Swap and Community collaboration: the objective of this partnership is to drive network expansion efforts in key geographic areas and collaborate on community initiatives. A new version of the Idena node available. CyberMiles Monthly Newsletter is here for you to review. Commercio.network launched the mainnet yesterday, on May 4th. Certik completed a full code-analysis of THORChain with no major issues found. Band Protocol April 2020 Community Update covers successful Testnet#2 launch, Cosmos Hackathon, wallet and validator partnerships, KyberSwap listing and more. Also, Atomic Wallet integrates full wallet and staking support for Band Protocol. In the latest Chorus One podcast episode, Brendan and Felix were joined by Soravis Srinawakoon, Co-Founder and CEO of Band Protocol. They cover what the oracle problem is, how Band is able to provide off-chain data to blockchain applications in a single transaction, what the team imagines the role of Band Chain to be within the ecosystem and take a look at the parties involved in Band’s ecosystem. Tune it on!
See you in two weeks!
Development
Github metrics:
The IBC demo is up-and-running with real light clients, real proofs, end-to-end handshakes and working token transfers.
Check out the code and try it out yourself here.
IBC working group call — April 23rd, 2020
IBC working group call open to teams and developers interested in the progress and contributing to the protocol.
Dynamic IBC livestream
In this livestream Dean, Mark, Jack, Zaki, and Jessy discuss dynamic IBC and its impact for Game of Zones
Engineering Updates: Cosmos Network Engineering Newsletter.
Cosmos Governance
Awareness and social encounters
Blockchain Interoperability — Sofia Crypto Meetup
Billy Rennekamp, Grants Manager for the Interchain Foundation & Developer Relations Manager for Interchain GmbH, discusses blockchain interoperability at the Sofia Crypto Meetup
Cross Chain Hackathon with Cosmos, Agoric, and Band Protocol has started
📅 Dates: 20 April — 18 May
Cross-Chain Hackathon IBC Workshop: In this video, Chris Goes (Interchain GmbH) provides a workshop on the Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC) for the Cross-Chain Hackathon hosted by Gitcoin
Here Are the Tools:
- Cosmos SDK: The world’s most popular blockchain framework. It’s modular, uses Tendermint BFT consensus, has staking and slashing, is built for IBC, and maximizes security for your application.
- Agoric’s SDK: A platform that supports the development of smart contracts and market institutions across many different scales, from large public blockchains to small two-party contracts.
- Band Protocol: A data oracle platform to integrate off-chain information to your dApps using an open API.
- IBC: The standard for blockchain interoperability. IBC is a reliable, ordered, and authenticated protocol for relaying arbitrary messages between independent distributed ledgers.
The Prizes: Over $24k in total prizes! (ATOMs & BANDs)
Cosmos — build fast, secure blockchains & connect them over IBC. Four challenges, $15k in total ATOMs
Agoric — secure smart contracts. Five challenges, $4k in total ATOMs
Band — trusted on-chain data for Apps. Five challenges, $4.5k in total $BAND + 3 Ledger Nano X’s as a joint prize
Note — challenges will appear on Gitcoin’s prize explorer, stay tuned!
The number of ATOMs rewarded is based on the closing price of ATOM listed on Coincap on May 15th.
Judging Criteria: The best submissions, as voted on by the judges at the end of the hackathon, will be chosen as the winners!
Judges: Experienced leaders from Cosmos, Agoric, and Band will be judging the participants for this hackathon.
Join the Cosmos Community Discord: The conversation about this virtual hackathon is happening in the Cosmos Community Discord. Join using this link and then go to “General” -> “Virtual Hackathon” to get started.
Upcoming events:
Cosmos Network is Coming to Consensus: Distributed
Using creative treasury management, the team has already started several ecosystem-bolstering initiatives aimed directly at supporting Cosmos Network’s most prolific contributors. Recent initiatives that were publicly announced were that of the Community Contributor Grants program and the Tendermint Inc ATOM Rebonding.
Other ways they are continuing to grow the Cosmos community is by rolling out a series of online events in order to get you access to the same quality of workshops and content you’ve been accustomed to when you hear the name ‘Cosmos’.
As May approaches, this not only means springtime, warmer weather, and hope, but in the cryptoverse, it means New York Blockchain Week. And with NYBW comes the annual CoinDesk Consensus:Distributed conference, the biggest token holder conference of the year that attracts crypto enthusiasts from over the world. Cosmos has been a mainstay at Consensus. In fact, it was in New York, this time two years ago, where one of the most memorable moments and viral memes in the history of the Cosmos-Ethereum friendship was birthed.
This year, they’re hosting an hour to hour and a half long video conference event at Consensus:Distributed this year in its “Foundations” segment on May 12th, the second day of the online conference.
If you aren’t registered, you can register here, entirely for free, which is a steal compared to past conferences.
The Cosmos portion of the conference will have a (tentative) agenda broken down below over a 1–1.5 hour long period:
If you haven’t registered, do it here 👇
Website: https://www.coindesk.com/events/consensus-2020
Registration Link: https://next.brella.io/events/consensusdistributed
Introducing: Code With Us
Live online workshops by Cosmos
The team is launching “Code with us,” a live, interactive workshop program designed to educate and provide real-time practice to developers in the community.
The Cosmos ‘Code with Us’ program brings workshops from the home offices to yours. There couldn’t be a better time to invest in online learning, especially with so many people working from home.
This program aims to provide everyone with access to the information and resources they need to become familiar with the Cosmos stack. These seminars are small workshops led by expert mentors from Tendermint Inc, Interchain GmbH, Agoric, Band Protocol and others that will use their expertise to guide the community of developers from deploying a simple “Hello World” blockchain, to getting familiar with the Cosmos SDK architecture, running an IBC relayer, and much more.
Participants have the opportunity to access hands-on live lessons to code together in real-time with some of the community’s most respected contributors. Most of the workshops are structured in two-hour sessions with associated online materials or tutorials, and will take place roughly every two weeks. If you are looking for a quick and fun introduction to Cosmos’ tech, this is the perfect way to get started. To get started, make sure you sign up for “Code with Us” workshops.
The team has put together a list of future workshops designed to educate, guide and inspire the next generation of innovators. Bear in mind that this list is subject to change as more community members express their enthusiasm to participate in the program.
New to Cosmos? No worries! Come and join the workshops and pick up a new skill in just 2 hours! With so many interesting themes to choose from, you can pick your favorites and you’re all set to begin your journey into the vast universe of the Cosmos ecosystem
Sign up for the “Code with Us” workshop program. The team will send you a link to add the calendar, email reminders of the upcoming workshops and a list of documentation for each session.
What they expect participants to get out of this program:
- Get your hands dirty with Cosmos tech, and have fun while coding
- Master the basics of programming your own blockchain application and get answers to your questions in real-time
- Understand the common, high-level concepts of Cosmos SDK technology
- Develop basic skills in the Go programming language
Requirements:
- Participants of this course need to have basic programming skills as this is a course aimed at developers
- To complete the interactive challenges of the course, you’ll need a desktop or laptop computer with an internet connection
- Before the course, you’ll need to install Go onto your computer. You can download it here
- Please make sure to have google calendar so that you can log in and confirm your participation for the workshop
- The workshops will be held in English and will be based on the existing @cosmos resources and documentation.
The first workshop in this program is “Scavenger Hunt Tutorial” held by Billy Rennekamp scheduled for 11th May. (Billy is currently Interchain Foundation’s Grant Manager, Developer Relations at Interchain Gmbh and Founder of Clovers Network.)
In this workshop, you will learn to build a working game with its own internal economy using the Cosmos SDK, a framework to build scalable and interoperable application-specific blockchains in Go. The workshop will use the ‘scavenger hunt’ tutorial led and designed by Billy Rennekamp. If you’d like to get a head start and check out what you’ll be getting into, take a look at https://tutorials.cosmos.network/ (Scavenge).
If you’d like to participate in the first workshop from this program, please sign up for “Code with Us” and the team will send you a calendar invite. No registration fee is required.
Future workshops will be announced two weeks in advance and they will onboard future participants through the same registration process to make sure your virtual seat is covered.
IBC and Game of Zones
Phase 1 of Game of Zones will launch on Wednesday, May 6th pending a period of 24 hours of testnet stability.
You can also join the related channel on the Cosmos Discord server to chat with other people willing to help you get used to IBC and prepared for GoZ.
Game of Zones AMA: In this video Zaki Manian, Jack Zampolin, & Jessy Irwin host an evening AMA about all things Game of Zones
Finance
Cosmos validators
POS Bakers has made the Google sheet public if you’d like to take a deeper look at the data.
Information from Mintscan.io:
Cosmos Markets
Information from Coinmarketcap.com:
Information from Coinlib.io:
Roadmap
Tendermint 2020 Roadmap:
The Tendermint Core team has decided to share their goals and roadmap for 2020. What follows is a list of their objectives for the year, organized around four high-level goals, which are themselves ordered by approximate priority. However, the team plans to tackle pieces of each of these goals concurrently.
This list is ambitious: It is possible, even likely, that there’s more outlined here than they can achieve in a year. If you are interested in helping the team reach these goals, they’ll be opening up a few new positions soon.
Goal 1: Increase the number of people who can make substantive contributions to Tendermint Core
Goal 2: Ship features and fixes which help Tendermint Core retain its market-leading position
Goal 3: Improve the developer- and user-experience for projects that use Tendermint Core
Goal 4: Expand and curate the number of technologies that can be integrated with Tendermint Core
If you have questions, ideas, or would like to contribute, please open an issue or join Tendermint developer forum.
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 »
Past due by 3 days 74% complete
IBC v1.0.0 issues left to be implemented (on ibc-alpha branch).
Ecosystem updates
Akash Network:
Registration has opened for The Akashian Challenge Incentivized Testnet. Build the future of the cloud, with 3,000,000 AKT tokens in rewards, and other prizes:
Oracle:
Dawn Protocol:
IRIS Network:
IRISnet Integrating with Chainlink to Support Interchain Interoperability Using Real-World Data: IRISnet announced an integration with Chainlink, the market-leading decentralized oracle network, through the addition of a Chainlink “oracle” module to the IRIS Hub. By making Chainlink easily accessible on the IRIS Hub, developers can build next-generation decentralized applications that span across multiple blockchains and incorporate secure and reliable data feeds from trusted off-chain sources. Many Cosmos SDK based chains don’t support smart contracts right now, and this integration enables them to use reliable Chainlink-powered smart contracts that interoperate between blockchains and connect to traditional non-blockchain infrastructure. IRISnet dev team also plans to upstream this Chainlink “oracle” module to the Cosmos SDK to benefit all the Cosmos SDK based blockchains .
IRISnet Enterprise IRITA has been chosen by BSN to support Cosmos Ecosystem: China’s Blockchain-based Service Network BSN officially kicked off in Beijing on April 25, 2020. The BSN initiative, a joint effort led by the State Information Center of China, China Mobile, China UnionPay, and Red Date Technology, is a standardized, nationwide public infrastructure network across different regions and business sectors to support faster and cheaper blockchain development and deployment.
IRISnet Team updated a new version of Goz Network State Visualizer.
IRISnet Biweekly Report(2020.4.6~4.19):
- IRIS Foundation Rolled Out a Community-Centric Delegation Campaign & the Second One-Year Token Burn Plan: All delegators will receive double reward earnings monthly; validators who meet certain criteria will receive a direct deposit; the burn plan maintains zero percent inflation rate
- A new version of irishub was released to support the security patch announced by Cosmos core dev team; Rainbow wallet is going to develop the new version to support GoZ; Many functions were improved and added to IRISplorer
- IRISnet core dev team works on multiple work streams to support GoZ
- The research director of IRISnet, Jeffrey Hu, was invited to attend an online AMA of 8btc to discuss the future of DeFi
Regen Network:
From “Less Harm” to “Active Regeneration” This Earth Day. By Christian Shearer, CEO of Regen Network.
IOV:
Are you funny as *doge, brave as *link, or just a proud *nerd?
Bluzelle:
Desmos Network:
Phase 4 of Desmos Network’s incentivized testnet is coming:
Kava:
Mint USDX with your BNB using Cosmostation Wallet: A Step-by-step tutorial on how to mint USDX from your iOS or Android device.
BNB Holders: Earn High Yield and 2,504,800 USD in KAVA Rewards
Earn The Highest BNB Yields With USDX Minting Rewards: Exceptionally Rich Yields, Exclusively for BNB Holders.
Just How Much Yield Does Binance.com Offer You For Being A BNB Holder? A breakdown of yield products available to BNB holders.
Terra:
March, April 2020 Community Update and Terra’s 2 Year Anniversary! This edition marks a special moment in Terra history: the 2 year anniversary of Terraform Labs and the 1 year anniversary of its mainnet launch.
Terra Ecosystem Update: CHAI’s Expansion — Integration into Toomics & Happy Money.
Persistence One:
Terra and Persistence announce partnership to drive adoption via a Token Swap and Community collaboration: The objective of this partnership is to drive network expansion efforts in key geographic areas and collaborate on community initiatives.
Band Protocol:
Band Protocol April 2020 Community Update covers successful Testnet#2 launch, Cosmos Hackathon, Wallet & Validator partnerships, KyberSwap listing and more.
The Industry-Leading Atomic Wallet Strategically Partners With Band Protocol.
One of Asia’s Largest Staking Service Provider HashQuark Partners With Band Protocol.
Starchain Capital Backed Validator Castlenode Strategically Partners with Band Protocol.
BandChain Wenchang Testnet #2: How to Join as a Validator.
KardiaChain & Band Protocol Partner Up to Power Government & Enterprise Applications.
Top South Korea-Based Validator WeStaking Partners With Band Protocol.
Guide to Building DeFi using Band Protocol Oracle and Cosmos IBC.
Bytom:
CyberMiles:
CyberMiles Monthly Newsletter is here for you to review: Going the Extra Mile (Apr. 2020)
Althea Network:
Althea Network is growing fast!
Althea in Nigeria: Written by Yakubu Yakubu, Nigerian Network Operator/Coordinator Diplomats Park Nigeria has the largest population in Africa at about 200million citizens. However, only 46% of the population have internet access via cellular carriers.
Agoric:
Agoric ‘s weekly updates:
Oasis Labs:
e-Money:
Recently, mainnet has launched. The first block was produced on March 25th, 2020 at 12:00 UTC with more than 30 validators joining in the first few hours. All of the 40 validators slots are now occupied.
What’s next?
- More web- and mobile wallet integrations in addition to Lunie, SyncNode Wallet and e-Money explorer.
- IBC integration with the Cosmos Hub and participation in Game of Zones.
- Seamless bank and credit card integration through the website.
Longer term:
- Support for on-chain trading algorithms on DEX using WebAssembly (CosmWasm). This includes automated market makers similar to UniSwap or custom strategies.
- Offer connectors to the DEX in software packages for automated trading, such as HummingBot.
- Integrations and partnerships in the retail payments space.
- Support for additional currencies, such as GBP, JPY and USD.
Cyber_Congress:
Commercio.network:
Commercio.network launched the mainnet yesterday, on May 4th:
Idena Network:
A new version of the Idena node available: 0.19.6
Kadena:
LikeCoin:
Lunie:
Sentinel:
THORChain:
Weekly Dev Update #40: THORChain Weekly Dev Update for Week 21–29 Apr 2020
Certik Completes THORChain Audit: Certik.io has complete a full code-analysis of THORChain with no major issues found.
Monthly Treasury Report: THORChain Monthly Expenses, Budget and Runway Report for April 2020.
RUNE Distribution Update: RUNE Distribution Analysis for April 2020.
Chorus One:
Band Protocol: Off-Chain Data for the Internet of Blockchains with Soravis Srinawakoon: In this episode, Brendan and Felix are joined by Soravis Srinawakoon, Co-Founder and CEO of Band Protocol, a data governance framework for Web3. They cover what the oracle problem is, how Band is able to provide off-chain data to blockchain applications in a single transaction, what the team imagines the role of Band Chain to be within the ecosystem and take a look at the parties involved in Band’s ecosystem. The second part of the conversation focuses on decentralized finance and the need for reliable oracle solutions, as well as a discussion of recent events following the “Black Thursday” crash that shook the Ethereum DeFi ecosystem.
Cosmos India:
IBC Protocol and Game of Zones — Cosmos India Meetup:
Built with the Cosmos SDK
Projects that are actively building on the Cosmos ecosystem
Akash Network — 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 — 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 — 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 — 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 — 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 — Kava is the world’s first Interledger solutions provider bringing blockchains, wallets, and exchanges the interoperability and liquidity of the Interledger. Announcement » Infrastructure
Lino Network — Lino is a decentralized autonomous content economy to determine its value and incentivize contributors in a more direct and effective manner. Announcement » Social
Loom — 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 — Playlist is a project aimed at tokenizing the music industry with their PLAY Protocol. Social
Regen Network — Regen Network is a global community and platform focused on ecological monitoring and regeneration. Announcement » Agriculture
Sentinel — Sentinel Network is a network layer that enables a true p2p and decentralized Applications & Resources marketplace. Announcement » Infrastructure
Terra — A price-stable cryptocurrency designed for mass adoption. They are building financial infrastructure for the next generation of decentralized applications. Announcement » Stablecoin Infrastructure
TruStory — 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.
Other
Today in Cosmos Turns One: Today in Cosmos is a comprehensive daily roundup of news around the Cosmos ecosystem. It is translated to 15 languages by a team of community contributors, with the number of contributors growing.
Social media metrics
Social media activity:
Social media dynamics:
Cosmos community continues to grow. There is a slight increase in the number of subscribers of Cosmos social media channels these weeks.
See also Cosmos forum.
Check out Interchain Foundation Twitter.
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
RIOT channels moved to Discord:
There is strong stable growth in 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.
This is not financial advice.
Subscribe to detailed companies’ updates by Paradigm!
Medium. Twitter. Telegram. Reddit.
Main sources
Ecosystem projects’ social media
Today in Cosmos by Adriana | KalpaTech
