The Cosmos ecosystem has seen rapid growth in recent months since the launch of Cosmos Hub — the first blockchain in the Cosmos ecosystem — in 2019.
Over 20 blockchains, including Cosmos Hub, Osmosis, Crypto.Org and Terra, are now connected in the Cosmos ecosystem by the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol that allows independent blockchains to talk to each other and transfer data and assets. Over 1.6 million IBC transfers took place across the blockchains in the last 30-days, according to Map of Zones data.
The Cosmos ecosystem currently secures over US$178.4 billion in digital assets including Binance Coin (BNB), Crypto.com Coin (CRO), Terra (LUNA) and Cosmos Hub (ATOM) — making it the second-largest blockchain ecosystem after Ethereum in terms of value, according to Cosmos. Ethereum, Binance, Solana and Avalanche currently have US$181 billion, US$19.5 billion, US$14.6 billion and US$13.7 billion respectively in total value locked, according to DeFi Llama.
Although Ethereum is currently the most widely used smart contract platform, its popularity has led to scalability issues, and competitors such as Solana, Cardano and Avalanche blockchains have emerged to challenge Ethereum’s dominance. Aside from its large size, the Cosmos ecosystem is unique in how it enables independent blockchains in the network to communicate with each other.
This Forcast.News explainer will explore:
- What is Cosmos?
- Cosmos’ roots
- The vision behind Cosmos
- Cosmos’ core features
- Cosmos’ native token — $ATOM
- Key projects on Cosmos
- What does the future hold for Cosmos?
1. What is Cosmos?
Cosmos, which bills itself as the internet of blockchains, is a decentralized network of independent yet interoperable blockchains that are able to exchange information and tokens between each other permissionlessly.
Cosmos aims to address some of the issues faced by other blockchains — such as scalability, usability and governance — by providing the tools to help developers…
