Podcast: Blockworks Empire
Guests: Zaki Manian, Jack Zampolin
2015 in crypto – no one cared, maybe a bit of enterprise blockchain stuff
An email list – Google Group – crypto economic research, “Discord for old men” – Vitalik was on it, CEOs of early crypto cos
*Hosted one of most important events in crypto history – Vitalik didn’t take PoS seriously until he saw Jae’s Tendermint presentation, Nakamoto PoS
Ethan Buchman liked it, began to collab with Jae
Cosmos isn’t Ethereum killer, just as old
Jae’s mission was to make PoS be taken seriously
In 2016 – Jae and Ethan wanted to do public chain
Slashing was Vitalik’s idea – Jae helped solve it in a simpler way
Lots of what’s hot now were Cosmos early ideas – liquid staking, PoS
Introduced Atom in 2019
Early 2020 – Jae wasn’t easy to work with (eventually stepped down), Ethan wanted to quit, Zaki tried to keep things together
2019/2020 – once Cosmos went live, Binance adopted Cosmos SDK; didn’t need Tendermint anymore – Jack and Zaki quit, tired of working with Jae
Santi – Tendermint is battle tested consensus mechanism; Binance, Terra used it; Facebook re-wrote it in Rust for Novi / Libra
*Strong culture of testnets in Cosmos – influenced rest of crypto culture
Single smart contracting blockchain is a lot like a super computer – but there’s a max speed to it, can’t put all of the world’s apps on it
*App chain thesis – to meet demands of 8B people, need lots of chains that talk to each other, that’s Cosmos IBC
It’s about full stack optimization
Every app doesn’t need its own validator set – in shared security, Cosmos validators will validate your chain for you – use Cosmos toolkit, put up a proposal, and validators start running the software, earn rewards to do it
Cosmos believes in ship and iterate – get v1 out, get users, build on it
V1 – can support 10-20 chains – full validator set
V2 – will do partial security / partial validator set
Each chain has different incentive model to reward validators and early token holders
Cosmos top of everyone’s minds now – because of last 2-3 years in crypto, builders understand full-stack optimization and what’s needed
Iteration cycles are slower – 6-9 months for each
DYDX migrating over to Cosmos
Initially built on top of StarkX – similar to IBC; doing $1B of daily volume
But running centralized orderbook – tenuous regulatory position, not censorship resistant
Moving to Cosmos now – can integrate token, censorship resistance, Tendermint + IBC
Once app reaches product-market fit – can easily leave Cosmos Hub – don’t want to build barriers to prevent their departure, but hopefully shared security model is worth it to stay
Currently every Cosmos chain runs own validator set – doesn’t have true shared security yet
Every Cosmos Hub proposal gets 60-70K votes – very high participation
Cosmos is going to kill fat protocol thesis – popular meme
As Cosmos grows, app layer will accrue most value
Original whitepaper barely says anything about Atom token – in 12 days they’ll present Atom 2.0 tokenomics
Hate Polkadot parachain mechanism
Olympus Dao, Liquid Lido, flashbots – from these pieces they’ll construct Atom 2.0
Atom 2.0 will benefit from the growing value of the shared security – but there’s no requirement to use Atom token at all
Built a lot of public goods infrastructure
Will share Atom 2.0 at Cosmoverse in 12 days
Will make EIP-1559 look like a joke
Something like parachain auctions but aligning with new tokens appearing in ecosystem – something better than airdrop mechanism
If not working on Cosmos, what would they work on
Jack – individual chain scaling – thought what Solana was doing was cool, DB optimization / consensus optimization
Zaki – privacy, MEV, wants to see ETH rollup layers become peers to Cosmos Hub – feel like doing Cosmos again, wants to build awesome infrastructure
Jack – wants to see non-Cosmos chains using IBC
You don’t have to use Cosmos SDK to build Cosmos chains – examples include Penumbra, Anoma (sp?)
Every step of Tendermint consensus algorithm is programmable (ABC++?)
Unleash app chains to innovate, solve MEV
Jason – “All roads in blockchain lead back to MEV”
Zaki – wants to speak native IBC to Ethereum – instead of Gravity Bridge (related to Sommelier?)
Most misunderstood about Cosmos – like Ethereum, more of a developer collective, fractal relationships
Strange and wonderful characters
Every validator runs its own influencer biz
Funds ask him how to get onboard – it’s quite confusing – no agreed / simple way
Santi: Starbucks partnership with Polygon – Ryan Watt has been very good at bringing enterprises onboard; Like VHS vs Betamax debate – best tech doesn’t necessarily win
Zaki: would kill himself if he had to run the BD deal to bring Starbucks onboard – “existential crisis every day”
Polygon is fork of pre-Cosmos Hub launch of Tendermint
“If Atom 2.0 is not fire, you can bring me on and just yell at me” – Zaki