While the endless stream of new
blockchain projects we saw during 2017 and 2018 has slowed down, the blockchain
scene is nowhere near a standstill.
Rather, instead of getting lots of
ill-fated projects trying to make the news every other day, the buzz is
reserved these days for larger projects that actually stand a chance at
changing the environment.
Cosmos is one of those projects.
Although it follows what is now a trend of creating a blockchain with the specific intent of fixing the problems of other blockchains, it’s nonetheless a
promising project.
Tackling
the main problems with crypto
There are two big issues
cryptocurrencies have run into on their way to mass adoption. These issues are
scalability and interoperability. Both have been written about and described in
length, but the gist of them is simple.
Scalability refers to the difficulty
blockchains, particularly first-gen ones, have with processing large amounts of
transactions.
Bitcoin, the first and most famous blockchain, is said to have
the ability to process less than a dozen transactions per second – something
that goes against its original goal of becoming a worldwide, common use
currency.
Interoperability refers to how
blockchains can’t really contact or trade with each other. It’s impossible to
seamlessly exchange BTC into ETH, or pay with Ripple for a merchant that accepts DASH.
While the global financial system allows you to use your USD card to
pay in EUR, with currency exchange being seamless, that’s not so for
cryptocurrencies.
How
Cosmos proposes a fix
Cosmos’ main proposal is to create an
internet of blockchain. This would be attained by having a central, hub-like
blockchain and many parallel blockchains around it, known as Zones.
By cosmos’whitepaper, the zones would be where users interact, with the Cosmos ecosystem
having as many zones as necessary. In other words, Cosmos won’t be a single
blockchain, but a set of many such structures.
The hub, rather than being where all
transactions take place, would serve as a centralized ledger where the
ecosystem keeps track of what’s going on in all of its zones.
Since the hub is
the most important part of the ecosystem, it in itself works as a decentralized
blockchain – that is, a distributed set of nodes that activate or deactivate as
needed, preventing data corruption or network outages due to attacks.
Tackling
scalability, one transaction at a time
Cosmos’ main take on scalability comes
from its consensus protocol, called Tendermint.
This consensus protocol aims at
making transactions validate faster and requiring less power by assigning
weights to each existing node. These weights are based on the amount of
cryptocurrency staked and node trustability as per the blockchain’s records.
While this is hardly the first such
blockchain – neural network-like blockchains have been proposed before – Cosmos
uses its own set of weights and stakes that allow it to process thousands of
transactions at a time.
A
blockchain designed for interoperability
As for the interoperability problem,
Cosmos’ basic design was made thinking of it. The structure of a hub and
several zones lends itself to having different blockchains connect through it –
after all, each zone is said to be a blockchain of its own.
The Cosmos hub goes further, though,
allowing for one blockchain to avail the services of another one, or even for
blockchains to request processing power from each other.
This type of
implementation, where blockchains can exchange processing power, is a lot like
the one proposed by the BAW network, and it’s quite likely to be close to the
final blockchain interoperability model the market settles for.
A
bright future
Cosmos, although already live, is yet to have its planned features implemented. Its team expects to have
it feature-complete by 2021 – and until then, features will be slowly rolling
out as needed. This means we’re still some time away from knowing whether
Cosmos’ promises will pay off.
Still, Cosmos is a promising proposalfor a blockchain and, while it might or not be the one blockchain project to
finally solve the interoperability problem, it’s certainly another step towards
that goal. That alone makes it a project to look out for.
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