Thousands of blockchain projects with their corresponding crypto token have popped up since the birth of bitcoin in 2008, raising the question of interoperability between independent blockchains. Cosmos, a highly anticipated blockchain project, aims to provide a solution to improve the interoperability between any number of other blockchains.

Calling itself the “ Internet of Blockchains”, Cosmos launched the Cosmos Hub in March, the first in a series of proof-of-stake(PoS) blockchain that will be created within the Cosmos Network,

Sunny Aggarwal, research scientist with Tendermint/Cosmos, and Chjango Unchained, Head of Strategic Communications for the project shared their insights into features of Cosmos’ cross-chain technology on 8BTC Boost’s latest episode of Geekhub Global Online, a global blockchain event featuring online courses and dialogues.

Here are highlights from their presentations:

Tendermint

Tendermint, the underlying algorithm of Cosmos, refers to two different things : one is the BFT protocol , and the other is Tendermint Core.

Invented by Jae Kwon in 2014, Tendermint is essentially a simplified and improved version of  Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT). The important thing about it is it has partial synchrony and 1-block finality, which allows us to make the block time as low as possible.

In short, Tendermint is a BFT protocol that gives us scalability and the fault tolerance.

Tendermint Core

Tendermint Core is the implementation of Tendermint BFT. It is written in Go and is able to   handle all peer-to-peer and consensus logic. It can handle hundreds of validators at sub-5 second block time. This is the first production grade BFT consensus engine.

Tendermint Core gives users a level of vertical scalability, which means it improves tps a single blockchain can achieve. However, vertical scalability is not enough. The horizontal scalability— several separate and specialized chains that interact efficiently—is also needed to build the entire blockchain ecosystem.

The cool thing about Tendermint Core is it allows users to write their state machine in any programming language and users can run any state machine on top of Tendermint BFT.

Some of the state machines that have been moved on to Tendermint Core include EVM ,and Chain.com VM.

The other cool thing about Tendermint Core is it allows you to use whatever validator you want,  so you can decide your validator using proof of authority or proof of stake or or even proof of work.

Allowing you to have your own validator set gives your application some level of sovereignty, so  if you can use this to do both private blockchains or public blockchains, you can have a validator set that is based on your blockchain community.

So Tendermint Core helps from the aspect of sovereignty,customization and you can use any language and it helps some scalability.

Bonded Proof of Stake(BPOS)

In Cosmos, you must bond your token as resource limiter for determining voting power. It eliminates wasteful energy consumption of proof of work. This is a public permissionless system. With slashing mechanism and unbonding period, Cosmos can solve nothing at stake problem.

Delegation

Cosmos allows any token holder to be a staker by delegating to a validator, to participate in and to secure the network. It has an algorithm called F1 to distribute block rewards efficiently to stake holders. It can also solve stickiness issues through features such as instant redelegation and validator commitments.

Multi Token Model

COSMOS has multi token model which allows fees to be paid in any token to massively improve user experience.

COSMOS SDK

COSMOS SDK is the novel application framework for building blockchains, which allows developers to build customized applications. COSMOS SDK is modula , secure and developer friendly.

It is written in Go. In the future, there will be many different clients of COSMOS SDK written in various languages. It is completely open source and available on GitHub.

Some blockchain projects such as IRISnet,LINO,KAVA have used COSMOS SDK.

Inter Blockchain Communication (IBC)

IBC pack is analogous to TCP/IP pack. The innovation with IBC is that it is able to achieve horizontal scalability.

The biggest problem the blockchain industry is facing now is gaining mainstream adoption, which is caused by the lack of good enough decentralized tech to allow us build solutions that are faster and more user friendly than the centralized solution. So the horizontal scalability which can be achieved by inter-blockchain communication mechanism can help solve the problem.

COSMOS HUB

COSMOS Hub is specifically the application-specific blockchain that the Tendermint team has launched. It was just the first blockchain being launched on the Cosmos network, which refers to the wider ecosystem that contains all of these interoperable chains that are independent of each other but are able to communicate.

COSMOS HUBS can be thought of as ISPs in the Internet of Blockchains, and it can act as a secure medium to prevent chains from double spending each other.

Geekhub Global Online,a global blockchain event featuring online courses and dialogues, is developed by 8BTC Boost. The event regularly invite experienced technology companies around the world to deconstruct blockchain technology online to deliver cutting-edge, high-quality blockchain technology content to the Geekhub technology community. Community members can also participate in live interactions to explore the emerging technology.