Over the last month, ATOM cryptocurrency has risen in price by 89%, and for April 22 it has risen in price by 31%. This simultaneous growth of cryptocurrency was facilitated by the almost simultaneous listing of the ATOM coin on the four leading cryptocurrency exchanges:
First of all, ATOM became available for sale on Poloniex. It happened on March 14, 2019. On April 22, I / O and redemption of ATOM ICO tokens became available.
The almost simultaneous listing of ATOM on the four leading cryptocurrency exchanges raised investors' interest in this coin and contributed to the increase in its price. And although now, against the background of a general fall in cryptocurrency prices, prices rebounded, investors started talking about ATOM cryptocurrency, but traders also began to study its features.
In March 2019, representatives of the company Tendermint Inc. said they raised $ 9 million for the development of the Cosmos ecosystem. The main investor was Paradigm hedge fund, which is managed by Coinbase co-founder Fred Ersam.
In March, ATOM coins began to trade on BitForex and Hotbit. And on April 22, 2019 in the leading media publications devoted to cryptocurrency , information appeared about the listing of ATOM on four leading exchanges.
Currently ATOM is actively trading on cryptobirds. A complete list of shopping pairs and platforms can be found on the CoinMarketCap website.
Features Cryptocurrency Cosmos
The Cosmos project is a decentralized ecosystem of independent parallel blockchains . Each blockchain has its own settings and options. Blockchains can have different consensus algorithms based on the BFT consensus algorithm, the Byzantine consensus on resiliency, which solves the problem in which way trust can be achieved in an environment where no one trusts anyone.
A feature of the platform is the ability to make payments not only inside blockchains, as it happens in all cryptocurrencies, but also between blockchains. At the moment, direct payments between blockchains are only test character. The number of blockchains between which direct payments can be made is limited, primarily by the consensus used in mining cryptocurrency .
The Cosmos project offers a technology that allows you to make direct payments between blockchains of various cryptocurrencies without the participation of exchanges. Thus, the Cosmos platform itself is a decentralized exchange platform.
Thanks to Cosmos, interaction between blockchains within a single ecosystem has become possible. The technology used allows not only making payments between blockchains, but also sharing any information and content between different blockchains within the platform.
What problems does the Cosmos platform solve?
In the modern world, blockchain technology is developing. Thanks to the blockchain, it became possible to create various projects and decentralized applications on them. The number of cryptocurrency is constantly growing.
The increasing number of cryptocurrencies and tokens creates a problem of exchange between them. There is a huge number of exchanges. However, most decentralized exchanges suffer from a lack of liquidity, as well as the ability to work with a limited number of tokens, for example, decentralized exchanges can only support tokens on the Ethereum blockchain .
Centralized exchanges have big security and regulatory problems with state authorities. At any time, accounts of the exchange and traders can be frozen by the regulators, and the centralized exchanges themselves can be closed by the decision of the state authorities.
Decentralized exchange, in contrast to the centralized can not be closed. But the more cryptocurrency appears in the world, the more they have problems with the exchange. It turns out that a coin or a token can circulate only inside the project platform, and when entering the stock exchange there are problems with liquidity.
The thing is that in all cryptocurrencies, payments and information exchange can be made only inside the blockchain. Different blockchains cannot communicate with each other. Each blockchain is a closed ecosystem that is unable to communicate with other similar systems. The only means of interaction is the exchange. But exchanges can only exchange cryptocurrencies and tokens between themselves.
Blockchains can be used in a much wider way than just making payments. You can store any information on the blockchain and record a huge variety of transactions. The interaction between blockchains is necessary first of all to exchange information stored on each of these blockchains. In this case, the data exchange should be secure and in no way affect the integrity of each of the blockchains in order not to break the chain of blocks and ensure the safety and integrity of the transmitted information.
The Cosmos project plans to become “blockchain internet”. Just as the TCP / IP protocol suite provides Internet compatibility, Cosmos has developed mechanisms that allow different blockchains to interact within the Cosmos ecosystem.
The principle of the blockchain Cosmos
The Cosmos platform consists of autonomous independent blockchains called “Zones” and the main blockchain called “Hub”. Zones are built using the Tendermint protocol. To create a blockchain, you can use any programming language. Each of the existing blockchains has different flexible settings and capabilities.
To simplify the creation of your own blockchain, a modular system is used. Cosmos developers are planning to prepare a base of basic modules for creating a blockchain, so that creating your own blockchain is as simple as possible, using only the basic mechanisms, without special programming knowledge. This will allow startups in the Cosmos ecosystem, using base modules to independently create blocs and customize them to fit their needs.
Zones can interact with the central Hub, as well as with each other within the Cosmos holistic ecosystem. In the future, the possibility of interaction of Zones with third-party blockchains outside the Cosmos platform, such as Ethereum, Neo and other blockchains that can support smart contracts, is envisaged.
In the future, ways of interacting with Bitcoin and other blockchains that do not work with smart contracts are being worked out. But here the technology will be much more difficult. Therefore, at the moment this possibility is considered solely as a theoretical one.
Cosmos project history and key stages of development
- In 2014, Tendermint Inc. was created. Based on a study of the consensus capabilities of the Byzantine Fault-tolerance (BFT), the Tendermint consensus algorithm was created, which is a hybrid of the PoS algorithm using the principles of BFT.
- In 2015, the opportunity was developed to connect the Tendermint core to applications written in any language via the Application Blockchain interface (ABCI). Due to this, it became possible to create independent blockchains using any programming languages, as well as basic modules.
- In 2016, the Interchain Foundation (ICF) was created to develop the Cosmos ecosystem. An agreement was concluded with Tendermint Inc. on cooperation and further cooperation in the framework of the Cosmos project.
- In 2017, for 30 minutes of the sale of tokens, the necessary amount was collected to implement Cosmos ideas in the amount of $ 16.8 million. 2017 was characterized by large amounts of fees during the ICO, so the amount of funds raised is not something unusual or rare. In this case, the timing of the ICO is much more impressive. The first Cosmos SDK prototype was launched.
- In 2018, the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) concept was developed, which is a data transfer mechanism between blockchains within the Cosmos ecosystem. The development of the specification begins. More than 20 public test networks launched.
- In 2019, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, announces the Binance Chain, which is based on Tendermint Core and Cosmos SDK technologies.
Cosmos features – mining and transactions
Cosmos solves scalability problems by creating stand-alone blockchains and using the Tendermint hybrid mining algorithm. The operations processed inside blockchains do not affect the overall network load. Only information exchange operations and transactions between blockchains affect the total network load. Therefore, the issue of scalability is important for the Cosmos project and is achieved through the use of Tendermint hybrid mining.
The mining algorithm Tendermint is a kind of mining using the PoS consensus algorithm in combination with the Byzantine consensus on the pBFT fault tolerance (BFT protocol). The network is supported and processed by all transactions of 100 validators (network miners) with the largest deposits in ATOM. According to the principles of pBFT operation, as long as more than a quarter of the voting nodes are fair, the protocol will work without problems.
ATOM coins are a way to ensure fair transaction processing validators. If it detects that a node is acting with malicious intent, the validator will be removed from the system, and its broken-down ATOM coins will be burned.
This way of ensuring the smooth and fair operation of validators ensures that they have no malicious intent in the processing of transactions. Otherwise, they will lose all the ATOM coins in their wallets. It is assumed that such security is a reliable guarantee of the fair observance of the rules by the validators and the absence of abuse.
When performing transactions between blockchains, synchronization with the main blockchain occurs – the Hub. The transaction is frozen until confirmation is received. After that, the tokens are credited to the blockchain – the recipient of the coins and destroyed in the blockchain – the sender of the coins. This system avoids double spending.
The hub performs the role of a decentralized exchanger, controlling the entire movement of tokens between different blockchains.
ATOM Tokens
Mining ATOM is carried out using the Tendermint algorithm, which is a hybrid version of the PoS mining algorithm .
ATOM coins are required for transactions between blockchains and payment of commissions.
ATOM also serves as a means of ensuring the fulfillment of obligations by miners – validators. The more money in a validator’s accounts, the more bets he has and more chances to become a validator. For the duration of the validator’s duties, all ATOM tokens on his accounts are frozen.
Payment validators for maintaining the network operability and transactions are carried out with ATOM tokens.
Summing up
Cosmos offers a platform for making payments and exchanging information between blockchains.
The problem of interaction between blockchains is relevant. Its solution allows not only to make payments between blockchains, but also to exchange information in full.
However, there are problems:
- Low capitalization of ATOM cryptocurrency. According to the capitalization, ATOM takes 1805 place. This means that the cryptocurrency rate is extremely unstable and various course manipulations are possible.
- Lack of democracy. Validators can only be investors, on whose accounts most ATOM tokens have been frozen. And this means that in order to get the right to process transactions and pay for maintaining the network operability, the validator must constantly increase the amount of funds in the accounts. Otherwise, it may lose the right to perform the functions of a validator. This will lead to the fact that large sums will be concentrated on the wallets of 100 validators.
- There is a lot of competition among projects that are trying to find a solution for the interaction between blockchains. Among the competitors of Cosmos, there are such startups as Polkadot, AION, Penta.
- In the early stages of development, it will be necessary to integrate existing projects into the Cosmos infrastructure in order to be able to make payments between blockchains within the framework of the existing Cosmos infrastructure.
- The success of the Cosmos platform, as well as the success of any other crypto startup, will depend on the number of applications located on the platform, their size and the activity of users of these applications.
Publication date 04/30/2019
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