What is Cosmos Blockchain?

The Cosmos Blockchain or Cosmos Hub was designed by the Interchain Foundation, a Swiss non-profit, to connect blockchains together and launched onto markets in early 2019.

The Cosmos Hub would become the first blockchain in the Cosmos Network.
All the blockchains connected to this hub make up what is known as the Cosmos Network.

The Cosmos Network is a decentralized network of independent, scalable, and interoperable blockchains. And the Cosmos Hub is the blockchain that people typically think of when talking about the Cosmos blockchain.

The blockchain’s native token, ATOM, is used to secure the Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism and can be used to earn rewards or vote in the governance protocol, but I’ll come back to the Tokenomics later in this article.

As it’s a Proof-of-Stake network, it is cheap and fast to use relative to Bitcoin. Cosmos has a fixed transaction cost of $0.01 and a transaction completion time of only a few seconds, which means that even among Proof-of-Stake blockchains, Cosmos is fast.

The company behind Cosmos also created the Cosmos Software Development Kit, or SDK, to bring apps together across blockchains.
The Cosmos SDK is currently the most popular framework for building blockchains, with over $46 billion in assets managed by blockchains built from the Cosmos SDK.

In addition to being used to secure the Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism, the ATOM token
can also be used to:

1) vote in the governance protocol.
2) pay transaction fees when using apps or transferring assets on or across the network.
3) earn rewards through staking and delegating.

But, perhaps most importantly, it plays a role in allowing the interoperability to occur on the Cosmos network by giving all the IBC and SDK platforms the ability to process ATOM tokens, which leads us nicely to our next point.

Apart from the SDK we mentioned above, the IBC protocol and Tendermint are also critical to what makes Cosmos unique as a blockchain.

What is the Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol – IBC ?

The Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol, or IBC, allows messages to be relayed between separated blockchains.
Typically, individual blockchains are unable to talk with each other, with each network instead preferring to create its own isolated ecosystem.

However, through the IBC, information can be shared between all blockchains created with the
SDK that has IBC enabled.

What is Tendermint Core ?

Tendermint is the Cosmos solution to any compatibility issue by creating ready-made generic engines that allow developers to focus on building higher quality apps.

Though, the real magic of Tendermint is its ability to allow developers to use whatever coding language they want while building on top of it.

The Tendermint Core acts as a web server, database, and supporting libraries for apps to be built in any programming language.

This plug-in-and-play approach to software development has led to an overall greener network thanks to its pre-built Tendermint engines SDK, and IBC.
Coupled with proof-of-Stake naturally creating less carbon emissions, you end up with one of the most sustainable blockchains.
As if being one of the cheapest and the quickest wasn’t even, it’s also one of the most environmentally friendly.

What problems does Cosmos solve?

Cosmos has created an inclusive ecosystem of individual blockchains that can all share information and exchange tokens in a decentralized way without the need for any third party.

To achieve this, Cosmos goes through a three-layer approach. These layers are combined in an open source way that allows developers to build apps that can function across many networks.

The first layer is the application layer, where transactions are processed for the network.
Secondly is the networking layer, and it is here that allows for communication among the individual blockchains.
Lastly is the consensus layer, and it is here where the nodes verify and update the network, ensuring accuracy and honesty.
Between all this, Cosmos has created a network of separate blockchains that all have cross-platform functionality.

Initially, $17 million was raised during an ICO hosted in 2017.
In total, 5% of ATOM went to initial contributors through fundraisers, 10% went to Tendermint Inc, which is responsible for most of the software development, and the Interchain Foundation took 10% too.

The remaining 75% was distributed according to the results of private and public fundraisers before eventually making their way onto exchanges.

However, there’s no limit to how many ATOM tokens there can be. Unlike Bitcoin, which has a hard limit of 21 million BTC, ATOM increases its supply by an estimated 7-20% each year, with the exact figure being dependent on how much ATOM is currently being staked to the network.

In summary, the Cosmos Hub exists to serve other blockchains rather than steal them away for their own isolated network.

This has led to a network of independent data-sharing blockchains that forms the Cosmos Network.
Thanks to the SDK, any blockchain built using their development tools, which have IBC enabled, can communicate and receive data from the entire network.

Lastly, Tendermint’s ready-made setups and ability to read any programming language have allowed developers to focus on creating high-quality applications, as developers no longer need to re-learn or re-hire for a specific programming language.

Ultimately, this allows app information, tokens, and data to be transferred between many blockchains rather than just one.
It can be seen as an attempt at evolving how we interact with blockchain technology. Instead of being taken into our own areas, Cosmos wants to make an inclusive future by ensuring as many blockchains and apps can communicate with each other as possible.

Watch the full Cosmos video here.