Many chains, many tokens, one ecosystem

Presented at Sinteza conference (http://sinteza.singidunum.ac.rs/) in Belgrade, Serbia

1. Many Chains, Many Tokens, One Ecosystem
2. About me • Software Developer at Cosmos Tendermint • Work on BFT algorithm and p2p networking • Traveler (been to 22 23 countries) • Avid reader • http://homeonrails.com/ Anton Kaliaev
3. Goals for the Internet ✓ Ability to connect multiple separate networks of servers into a single network of networks. ✓ Ability to scale in terms of throughput and geography ✓ Ability to tolerate and recover from failures
5. Goals for Cosmos ✓ Ability to connect multiple separate networks of servers blockchains into a single network of networks blockchains. ✓ Ability to scale in terms of throughput and geography ✓ Ability to tolerate and recover from failures
6. Cosmos Hub • Multi-asset PoS blockchain • Communication to other independent blockchains (zones) via an IBC protocol • IBC Protocol: Packets of information transferred from one zone to another • Tokens can be moved from one zone to another • Any of the zones can become a hub IBC IBC
7. Diversity Security Sovereignty Privacy Scalability
8. Scalability • Vertical scalability: How much tps can a single blockchain archive. Has a cap • Horizontal scalability: Several separate and specialized chains that interact efficiently through a network
9. Tendermint Vertical Scaling
10. Blockchain Stack Consensus Layer Application Layer Networking Layer Application Layer Networking Layer Consensus Layer ABCI Tendermint Core
11. Networking Layer Consensus Layer ABCI Ethermint Networking Layer Consensus Layer ABCI Chainmint
12. Application Layer Networking Layer Consensus Layer ABCI Tendermint Core • Provable liveness in partially synchronous network • Safety threshold: ⅓ of validators’ power • Public/private chain compatible • Instant finality: 1–3 seconds depending on number of validators. • Consistency-prioritizing
13. Tendermint BFT Consensus
14. Tendermint BFT Consensus Polka
15. Tendermint BFT Consensus Commit Polka
16. Maximum throughput (tps) Bitcoin 3.2 Ethereum 15 Ethermint 200 Tendermint ~14,000* Visa 56,000 * Depends on the number of validators and block size Throughput
17. Horizontal Scaling IBC IBC
18. Peg Zones • Bitcoin and Ethereum have no finality guarantees • Pegzone: account-based blockchain which bridges zones by imposing a finality threshold at some arbitrary number of blocks to achieve pseudo-finality • EVM is not IBC-compatible Peggy IBC
19. +2/3 validators have signed secp256k1 signature Mint ERC20 Photons waits for 100 blocks Logs events
20. Diversity • Application implementations in over 12 programming languages • Optimization for each use case • Connect existing platforms to ABCI • Cosmos SDK for IBC support Cosmos SDK
21. Cosmos SDK Networking Layer Consensus Layer ABCI module BaseApp Framework includes: ✓ Token ✓ Governance ✓ Staking ✓ Handlers for messages and txs ✓ REST and CLI interactions module module
22. Sovereignty • Maintain sovereignty of each zone according to their values and interests • Each zone has its own validator set • Higher security than pure economic incentives alone • Private chains can interoperate with Public Chains
23. Governance • Each zone has its own constitution and governance mechanism • Validators and delegators vote on proposals • Vote on amendments to the constitution that governs policies of the Cosmos Hub
24. Security • BFT: Tolerate up to ⅓ malicious/faulty nodes • Pooled security: validator gets slashed in all the zones he belongs • Slashing conditions: double signing, unavailability, non-voting. • Freezing deposits: for long range attacks • Hack bounties: incentive to hack validators
25. Security • Economic utility of a PoS token is twofold: staking and transactional ◦ Less incentive to stake • Weaker network security • Solution: two different tokens for staking and fees • Atoms: staking token • Photons: fee token
27. Developer tools Ethermint lotion
28. https://cosmos.network/ https://tendermint.com/
29. Cosmos use cases • DEX • Existing DApps (read CryptoKitties) • (future) Sending any data (e.g. smart contracts) between blockchains • Scaling Ethereum using Ethermint Zones
30. Future of Cosmos • Improvements to Tendermint (BLS or Shnorr signatures, consensus visualisation tool, distributed tracing, pluggable consensus algorithms) • Improvements to Cosmos SDK (more modules, implementations in other languages, future IBC development) https://github.com/cosmos/research
31. ABCI Tendermint Core ABCI Tendermint Core Peggy IBC ABCI Tendermint Core ABCI Tendermint Core IBC IBC Cosmos Hub Cosmos Ecosystem