Tag: zaki manian

Podcast notes – Atom 2.0 with Zaki Manian and Sam Hart on Blockcrunch – “Pluralism is the way of Cosmos”

Guests: Zaki, Sam
Host: Jason Choi

Kyle Samani tweet: Solana = fat protocol thesis, while Cosmos = appchain thesis

Zaki – Cosmos origin is pluralistic view, a language / set of components to build a network of blockchains

Sam – architecture gives you a lot of control as an app designer, a next-gen platform, very customizable

2019 – Cosmos Hub launches, go to market – first production PoS; Binance uses SDK to build Binance chain; Akash, Kava launch

2020 – IBC ready and launches; then Osmosis launches; a giant forest of blockchains begins to grow

2021 – protocol controlled value / liquidity, MEV, shared security – can incorporate these primitives into ATOM and build a great value accrual story

Jason: initially didn’t think people would pay for Polkadot’s parachains (DOT), and that Cosmos ATOM didn’t have a great value accrual story

New monetary policy
-Existing target is 2/3 of tokens staked (when issuance rate changes)
-Now introducing liquid staking – remove the adaptive issuance model
–Extra initial issuance to kickstart process, but lower tail emissions – lots of community debate about this
-ATOM should capture real revenue

Will not nominate a single liquid staking protocol as the default – let the market choose among staking solutions

“Pluralism is the way of Cosmos”

Interchain security
-Appchains can rely on Cosmos validators to secure their own chain (similar to rollups on Ethereum)
–ATOM validators will also validate consumer chains (the appchains)
-Help align communities between appchains and ATOM holders

Interchain scheduler
-buy / sell NFT for block space at a specified future time
–marketplace for block space futures
-protocol can guarantee delivery of these NFTs

What reason for an app chain to integrate scheduler?
-it’s purely elective, no requirement for use
-eg, for Osmosis, gives them way to consolidate management of multi-chain MEV

Cosmos new chains will ask, how to align with builders / community
-right now it’s only info sharing
-but there’s demand for economic integration
–

Interchain allocator
-tool for Cosmos hub to hold and delegate assets
-new governance features to allocate funds across community
–

Cosmos shared security philosophy
-Cosmos rejects random committee based security – eg, sharding, Polkadot, Near
-converging on shared security that’s robust – mesh security, interchain security (different use cases for each)

Cosmos chains are generally all heading toward economic and political integration

Jason – Atom 2.0 – creating a more unified economy and more value flow back to $Atom

Timelines
1. Liquid staking developed by Iqlusion – ready to be merged into Cosmos SDK
2. Interchain security – live by January / Q1 2023
3. Allocator – R&D for 3 months, still a lot of open questions
4. Governance – groups module has been written

Podcast notes – Cosmos App Chain Thesis – Blockworks (Zaki Manian, Jack Zampolin)

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