Meet the teams: Binary Builders — Building the Cosmos SDK and helping chains adopt the Interchain Stack
As stewards of the interchain, the Interchain Foundation (ICF) advances the creation of an interoperable, sustainable, and community-owned decentralized ecosystem. We do this by building basic protocols and funding teams working on developing and furthering the adoption of the Interchain Stack.
Binary Builders is one of these Distributed Development Teams that the ICF works with. Founded in late 2022, Binary Builders are the primary maintainers of the Cosmos SDK, and operate the Interchain Builders Program.
In this series, written by the teams that the ICF works with, we explore the work they do and how it benefits the interchain.
Binary Builders is a relatively new entity in the interchain and we’ve been fortunate to take up such an important role in the space in this short period of time. As the primary maintainers of the Cosmos SDK and the team responsible for the Interchain Builders Program, we ensure that Cosmos SDK chains are well-equipped to succeed and that the Interchain Stack is able to thrive in a rapidly changing industry.
Founded by Marko Baricevic and Onur Akpolat in 2022, Binary spun out of Interchain GmbH when Marko was leading the Cosmos SDK team and Onur was leading the Interchain Builders Program. This restructuring allowed us to be more flexible and agile, to efficiently respond to the ever-changing web3 landscape.
The Cosmos SDK
Binary is currently an organization of 17 people and we focus a significant amount of our resources on the development of the Cosmos SDK.
The Cosmos SDK is a powerful toolkit designed for building blockchains. Originally developed in 2017, the project has undergone significant development with contributions from various teams, shaping its direction over time. Over the years, the team has worked to address technical debt, resulting in a refined design with a strong emphasis on composability. Unlike its previous focus on dictating how applications should be written, the SDK now provides greater flexibility and freedom to developers.
The vision for the Cosmos SDK has evolved as well. It is no longer a maintenance project, but rather a versatile toolkit for constructing state machines that can be utilized by rollups, blockchains, and other future innovations. This adaptability is not limited to CometBFT or any singular consensus protocol, storage/commitment layer, or application type.
In the current landscape, where rollups are gaining prominence and highly performant tech stacks are emerging, the Cosmos SDK team is well-prepared to handle the evolving demands and changes within the ecosystem. The SDK’s adaptability and focus on composability make it a valuable asset for developers seeking to create innovative blockchain solutions that can seamlessly integrate with emerging technologies and frameworks.
The Interchain Builders Program
The Interchain Builders Program was developed and launched under the ICF’s umbrella in June 2022 and is led by Stef Sprinz today. We have since gotten a significant demand coming from Cosmos SDK projects for the support we provide around legal, fundraising, token economics, GTM strategies and technical support. Under Binary Builders, we’ve been able to expand our network and direct a lot of the feedback from the teams, VCs and other ecosystem participants into further professionalizing and improving the program. The Builders Program aims to support teams beyond its quarterly cohorts of participants as well through our open-source Knowledge Hub making our research and best practices available to the public and any project looking to get help getting from proof-of-concept to mainnet launch.
In 2024, the Builders Program team aims to receive continued support from the ICF in order to dedicate more resources toward outbound business development. We’re currently developing a compelling Interchain Stack adoption narrative that’s aligned with the rollup and multi-chain future currently taking shape and hope to actively start reaching out to businesses and institutions outside of Cosmos in both Web3 and more traditional industries.
Numia
But there’s more than the work we do for the Interchain Foundation. We’re very proud to see our team at Numia reaching milestone after milestone and taking the interchain by storm. Numia’s mission is to make on-chain data and knowledge available for everyone to make better financial and product decisions. Data is key for transparency and decision-making but that’s only the first layer of the pyramid. Data is also helpful to personalize the user journey, and analytics is just the start.
Currently it’s really hard to answer product and business questions with on-chain data. The data schema in the interchain is really complicated for regular people. For example, if you look at the transaction data on Mintscan, you’ll find that you need to know the tech really well to understand what’s going on there. Similarly, we’ve encountered very few teams that know how to answer simple business questions like — what is my retention rate? Why are users not coming back? What does the user journey look like?
We aim to help teams solve these problems and have recently launched Data Lenses which also helps users answer their own questions about the platforms they’re using. We’re proud to be working with teams like Osmosis, Stride, Evmos, Mekatek, Skip, Quasar and others to help them make better product decisions!
The ATOM Economic Zone
Binary has been fortunate enough to have received several grants from the ATOM Accelerator DAO to contribute to the success of the ATOM Economic Zone (AEZ). Some of our team members are working on a Cosmos SDK Module Registry, a Data Lenses dashboard for the Cosmos Hub, and a general-purpose Auction Module for the SDK. More recently, Binary received funding to contribute to a new vision for the Cosmos Hub together with Blockworks Research and design several features and modules that would contribute to this vision.
Validator
Being long-term members of the interchain community, we have run validators for several years. With up to 10 million USD worth of assets staked to our nodes and having received delegations from over 300,000 individual wallets so far, we’re proud to be validating on the Cosmos Hub and its consumer chains, Osmosis, Evmos, Archway, Quasar, Noble, Chihuahua & Stride. And of course, we’re happy to receive your delegations!
Just a little over a half year has passed, and so much has been achieved. We’re incredibly excited for the years to come! Follow us on Twitter and feel free to reach out to us at any time!
