Note: The original interview is from Forkast News, compiled by Baize Research Institute.

Cosmos, which aspires to become the "Internet of Blockchains", has already generated huge growth in 2021, with more than 260 blockchain projects, and well-known projects such as Binance Smart Chain, Terra and Crypto com all use the Cosmos SDK software development kit constructed. According to the data, the Cosmos ecosystem already has more than $170 billion in funds.

Cosmos, an ecosystem of interoperable but autonomous blockchains, received a major upgrade in March with the launch of IBC, an interchain communication protocol. The IBC protocol allows independent blockchains to connect to each other to exchange data and assets. Over the past month, more than 1.7 million cross-chain transactions have occurred between more than 20 IBC-enabled blockchains such as Osmosis, Cosmos Hub, and Terra.

Peng Zhong, CEO of Tendermint, a core contributor to the Cosmos ecosystem, said in an interview that IBC will create a new cross-chain industry. “By the end of 2021, we should see about 30 IBC-enabled partitions (independent blockchains in Cosmos), and I predict over 200 by the end of 2022. This is where the innovation will happen.”

Ethereum, the smart contract platform that hosts most stablecoins, decentralized finance (DeFi) and NFT protocols, currently has a total value locked of $170 billion, according to DeFi Llama.

Zhong Peng believes: "This is a dazzling complexity, even beyond the smart contract framework of Ethereum. There are tens of thousands of smart contracts in Ethereum, but in Cosmos, there may be tens of thousands of Ethereum, And each has tens of thousands of smart contracts.”

Zhong Peng, a former web developer, joined Tendermint in late 2015 as the company's Chief Design Officer. Since then, Tendermint has continued to develop Cosmos infrastructure and tools, such as the Tendermint core engine, Cosmos SDK, and IBC protocol, to help developers and projects quickly build their own blockchains and realize data and asset exchanges across blockchains.

The following is an edited transcript of the interview:

Why is Cosmos called the "Internet of Blockchains"?

Cosmos began as an idea in 2016 by founders Jae Kwon and Ethan Buchman, outlining what the "Internet of Blockchains" would be in a white paper. The 2017 ICO was initiated by the Interchain Foundation, and the Cosmos Hub, the first blockchain in the Cosmos ecosystem, was launched in early 2019.

By 2021, the framework for building Cosmos blockchains has become very popular, with more than 250 blockchains built using the Cosmos Software Development Kit (SDK). Although many valuable blockchains have been built using the Cosmos SDK, the Cosmos ecosystem has been unable to transfer assets to each other since the 2016 white paper was written.

Only now, five years later, is Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) enabled. This was launched in March this year on the Cosmos Hub, the first blockchain in Cosmos. There are already more than 20 Cosmos blockchains enabled with IBC, and these blockchains already have considerable traffic.

How does Cosmos compare to Polkadot? Do you think Polkadot is a Cosmos competitor?

Currently, there is no competition between Cosmos and Polkadot, and I don't think "projects aimed at improving interoperability between blockchains" will really compete.

The main difference between Polkadot and Cosmos is the initial direction. Cosmos focuses on permissionless cross-chain data exchange, which allows any Cosmos blockchain to send data to any other Cosmos chain. It allows developers to build a new chain and send their Tokens to the Cosmos Hub, and the Cosmos Hub sends Tokens such as ATOMs to this newly created new chain, which is all possible in Cosmos today.

Polkadot started building out shared security first, meaning it wasn't a permissionless ecosystem where anyone could build new chains and send assets back and forth between those chains. Instead it is a system with more order, it does allow a relay chain, able to connect to up to 100 other parachains, but to be a parachain you will need a lot of DOT Token and be able to win the auction to become a parachain . This means that in the Polkadot ecosystem, as a DOT holder, you have a lot of power over which projects you want to allow to become parachains and which projects will bring value to Polkadot.

In Cosmos, holders such as ATOMs currently have no say in which chains can be connected to Cosmos. Therefore, the moment a new chain is launched, they will be able to connect to Cosmos.

Of course, for Polkadot, being a DOT holder is more valuable because you secure all parachains. But in Cosmos, we believe that developers are free to build anything they imagine and connect it to the Cosmos network, which will bring more innovation and growth to Cosmos.

How is security managed in the Cosmos ecosystem?

Now, each Cosmos blockchain chain has its own security and has its own validating nodes. On the Cosmos Hub, there are 150 validating nodes, which are typically small and medium-sized businesses running the infrastructure for a particular blockchain. Each validator runs the exact same software to ensure that the blocks created are valid.

Now we are innovating and building technologies that will allow for shared security similar to Polkadot, but not quite the same. For Cosmos Hub, we are working on cross-chain security, which will allow Cosmos Hub validators to simultaneously validate another chain or multiple chains.

What is Tendermint and how does it fit into the Cosmos ecosystem?

Tendermint is essentially the oldest company in the Cosmos ecosystem. Cosmos co-founders Jae Kwon and Ethan Buchman are also co-founders of Tendermint Inc., which was founded in 2014, even before Cosmos existed.

I joined Tendermint as the first employee at the end of 2015, when I joined we were focusing on the Tendermint consensus protocol for enterprise blockchains. But after we decided to focus on Cosmos, our mission changed to build the network, create as many sovereign blockchains as possible, and allow people to control their own network through online, that is, blockchain governance, but at the same time allow these blockchains Transfer assets between each other. Blockchain has the potential to truly reshape global collaboration, connectivity and decision-making.

Cosmos was an idea created by the founders of Tendermint, but at the same time, Cosmos is a much bigger idea than any other company, and because of the license-free nature of our tools and the open source licenses these tools have, there are now many Companies build using Cosmos technology and contribute to Cosmos.

What are some key features of the Cosmos ecosystem?

At a high level, Cosmos is about autonomy, sovereignty, and scalability.

The ability for developers to launch a blockchain in Cosmos and be able to send tokens permissionlessly is truly unique. This means that underfunded developers and teams can use Cosmos to build for free. I'm very passionate about maintaining this core value because I'm a former web developer and generally developing stuff on the web, you can do almost anything for free. This completely free and permissionless nature of Cosmos will be where Web 3.0 is headed.

Whether within an ecosystem or across chains, DeFi has risks, as hackers exploit bugs in smart contracts or manipulate oracles. And Cosmos has been developed on IBC for 5 years, and our technology is known in the industry for its high standards. Many top blockchain projects are built using Cosmos technology, including Cryptocom, Terra, and Binance Smart Chain. Everything we do is fully audited for extra security.

IBC is intended to be a framework similar to TCP/IP, the traditional Internet's messaging protocol. So just like today, there are many different web development frameworks, and the Cosmos SDK may not be the ultimate solution. But as long as other blockchain frameworks adopt the IBC protocol, all blockchains connected to IBC can be interconnected.

There is a lot of development and research going on in other blockchain ecosystems looking to adopt IBC. So you can imagine what the future will look like if Polkadot adopts IBC. Polkadot uses the Substrate framework. If Substrate adopts IBC, it means that each Polkadot's parachain or even the relay chain will transfer tokens to and from Cosmos without permission. You can even see a future where the Polkadot chain can talk to the Kusama chain via IBC.

As more and more blockchains decide to adopt the IBC protocol, this will be a very powerful network effect. The next network may not just need to connect to the Cosmos chain, but: "Oh, if I adopt IBC, then I can connect to Cosmos and Polkadot", and the next network may be: "Oh, I can connect to Cosmos , Polkadot and Avalanche".

Adopting the IBC protocol can make multi-chaining a breeze.

What do you think are some of the factors driving the growth of Cosmos?

The main reason Cosmos is gaining more popularity is that this year is the year of the rise of "multi-chain interoperability" - the idea that cross-chain bridges need to exist between popular blockchain ecosystems. We predicted this future back in 2016, when there would be many valuable blockchains that would be able to send assets to each other. Today, we have seen the rise of DEXs and the decline of centralized exchanges, all thanks to the development of cross-chain bridges.

With so many blockchains out there already, are you seeing industry consolidation?

From a Web3.0 perspective, Cosmos and the Cosmos SDK make it very easy for small teams to create new projects and make them directly accessible to all other blockchains in the Cosmos ecosystem.

On a technical level, many people want to be able to use multiple protocols in different Cosmos blockchains and connect them together in one way. If they want to do some sort of automated investing, multiple Cosmos chains can act on your assets and send them back to you in a similar way to Ethereum smart contracts.

But at the user level, I expect many users to be troubled by the idea of ​​managing assets on thousands of blockchains. How do they track their assets? So we'll have some integration, but maybe it's happening on the UI or on the wallet. Wallets are a great way to hide the blockchain backend and completely abstract away from the blockchain.

What are your thoughts on the highlights of 2021 and the forecast for 2022?

The Cosmos ecosystem has completed enabling the IBC protocol, which will create a brand new cross-chain industry. Cross-chain DEXs such as Gravity DEX and Osmosis let people understand the value of the multi-chain world, and have really brought a large number of users to Cosmos.

According to the "Notice on Further Preventing and Dealing with the Risk of Hype in Virtual Currency Transactions" issued by the central bank and other departments, the content of this article is only for information sharing, and does not promote or endorse any operation and investment behavior. Participate in any illegal financial practice.

risk warning:

According to the "Notice on Further Preventing and Dealing with the Risk of Hype in Virtual Currency Transactions" issued by the central bank and other departments, the content of this article is only for information sharing, and does not promote or endorse any operation and investment behavior. Participate in any illegal financial practice.