Cosmos Hub powered by Tendermint is now Live

After five years of work, Cosmos which calls itself the internet of Blockchains, a novel blockchain network architecture that addresses the problems of interoperability scalability, and usability has launched its Cosmos Hub Zone. The Cosmos Hub is the first public blockchain in the Cosmos Network, powered by Tendermint’s BFT consensus algorithm. The Tendermint open-source project was born in 2014 to address the speed, scalability, and environmental issues of Bitcoin’s proof-of-work consensus algorithm. By using and improving upon proven BFT algorithms developed at MIT in 1988 [20], the Tendermint team was the first to conceptually demonstrate a proof-of-stake cryptocurrency that addresses the nothing-at-stake problem suffered by first-generation proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies such as NXT and BitShares1.0.

Unlike other blockchain consensus systems, Tendermint offers instant and provably secure mobile-client payment verification. Since the Tendermint is designed to never fork at all, mobile wallets can receive instant transaction confirmation, which makes trustless and practical payments a reality on smartphones. This has significant ramifications for Internet of Things applications as well.

Cosmos is a network of many independent blockchains, called zones. The zones are powered by Tendermint Core [8], which provides a high-performance, consistent, secure PBFT-like consensus engine, where strict fork-accountability guarantees hold over the behavior of malicious actors. Tendermint Core’s BFT consensus algorithm is well suited for scaling public proof-of-stake blockchains.

Today Cosmos has launched the Cosmos Hub which is a multi-asset proof-of-stake cryptocurrency with a simple governance mechanism which enables the network to adapt and upgrade. In addition, the Cosmos Hub can be extended by connecting other zones.

In a coindesk interview Tendermint Inc director Zaki Manian stated, “We want to take the blockchain development cycle from idea to implementation down from years to months. This is how we’re trying to transform the blockchain space. The Cosmos Software Development Kit (SDK), which debuted back in February 2018, is already being used by high-profile crypto companies such as the Binance exchange.”

In addition, Tendermint Core – the blockchain networking and consensus mechanism underlying the Cosmos Hub – is another key tool that Manian envisions will help “fundamentally remove barriers to innovation” in the blockchain space and ultimately help “compose an entirely new system of finance.”

He added in the interview, “Out of all these building blocks, [you’ll be able to compose] an entire … open system of finance that operates to scale and can be composed of individual, specialized chains that do different things.”

The Cosmos Hub is the first public BFT blockchain powered by proof-of-stake, and the first BFT system deployed at scale in almost 40 years of Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) research history. The mainnet is set to be rolled out in three phases: network gains stability, transfers enabled, and IBC enabled.

Previously Cosmos raised its Series A in a round led by Paradigm’s USD $400 million blockchain fund. Other prominent investors like Bain Capital and 1confirmation also participated. Part of the funds will be used by Tendermint Inc to support the continued development of the Cosmos Network and its ecosystem.