Effective today, All in Bits, Inc. DBA “Tendermint”, which rebranded to ‘Ignite” in February 2022, announces the creation of two independent entities — Ignite Inc. and NewTendermint Inc.

The first entity, NewTendermint Inc., sees the return of co-founder of the original Tendermint, Jae Kwon, holding the position of CEO. NewTendermint will focus on contribution to the Cosmos ecosystem core technology. The team will work on Kwon’s existing project, Gno.land, Tendermint2 project and Cosmos SDK. Gno.land is a smart contracting platform, designed especially for wide scale developer adoption, with the ambition to ultimately compete with Ethereum.

The second entity, Ignite Inc., is led by current CEO Peng Zhong and will continue on the growth path positioned since the official rebranding. Product development will remain the focus of this entity, with Ignite CLI and Emeris as flagship products, for developers and end users respectively.

Jae Kwon, CEO of NewTendermint states, “NewTendermint will lead the development of Tendermint2 and Gno.land, which is the best contender to Ethereum. Ultimately, we want to provide this technology to the world, for everyone to benefit from publicly accountable DAOs and censorship resistant communication.”

Peng Zhong, CEO of Ignite asserts, “We recognise the necessity for independence so that shipping our products can be prioritized. With an independent company, we are now in the best position to be fully dedicated to product development and capital raising, which will accelerate our growth.”

With Ignite rapidly scaling in the past year, this split is aimed to ensure that all projects on the roadmap are given the right focus needed to progress for the benefit of the crypto industry.

Both two entities hold complete independence from each other, with their own team, equity and funds.

About NewTendermint Inc.

NewTendermint holds the legacy as founders of Cosmos, the world’s largest cross-chain ecosystem. The mission of NewTendermint is to create and provide the best infrastructure for global-scale intelligent human coordination based on core principles of human liberty and public accountability.

About Ignite Inc.

Ignite is leading the way in accelerating the world’s transition to a decentralized future. Our solutions are developed for individuals, organizations, and global communities to easily build innovative ideas and use decentralized services in their everyday lives. Together with Ignite, everyone can create meaningful impact for a more transparent and equitable world. For more information, visit ignite.com

This article is intended to provide a very high-level overview of Tendermint’s proposal for the new versioning of Cosmos SDK. If you would like further information, please follow the extensive developer documentation on Github.

The Cosmos SDK

As the world’s most popular blockchain framework, more than $100 billion in digital assets are managed by public blockchains built with the Cosmos SDK. These include some of the largest names in the blockchain ecosystem from Binance Chain and Crypto.org chain to THORChain and Terra.

As a highly robust, respectable, and customizable protocol, Cosmos SDK has grown in popularity allowing developers to fast-track their projects, skip past weeks of writing additional code, and customize their blockchains for specific user requirements — among many other advantages.

However, as Tendermint continues to iterate and improve on our latest cutting-edge offering Emeris, a cross-chain portal for all crypto apps currently in Beta, the team has identified the need for a new way forward when it comes to Cosmos SDK versioning.

The Problem

Despite years of being battle-hardened, tested, and adopted by multiple major blockchain entities, Cosmos SDK versioning still reflects that of a product in beta, where each version begins with “0.” It’s high time this versioning strategy is upgraded to reflect the true value and status that Cosmos SDK has achieved over the years. In addition, the current system is actually hampering progress for some developers.

For example, during the development iteration of a vital component for Emeris, the team found a stumbling block due to the way the Cosmos SDK codebase is written. In order to meet the dynamic functionalities of a cross-chain portal, the component being iterated must be able to depend on multiple Cosmos SDK versions.

However, the current structure of the Cosmos SDK prevents development that depends on more than one version due to the interactions between Go mod and the Cosmos SDK versioning scheme.

Cosmos SDK’s custom versioning scheme has worked well so far and made perfect sense to the many development teams working on Cosmos SDK. However, now that the Cosmos SDK is being integrated with different apps and protocols, its versioning is a problem.

Developers who want to write software that works with multiple versions of the SDK, for example, will find themselves blocked because of its custom versioning scheme. Since Go mod also enforces strict requirements on each package, different Cosmos SDK versions cannot be imported at the same time by the same package.

This restriction hampers rapid development and causes increased code maintenance to upgrade to each new Cosmos SDK version which, needless to say, leads to frustration, delays, and ultimately, a poor user experience.

New Versioning Proposal

Tendermint, therefore, proposes to move Cosmos SDK versioning to a semver-compliant (Semantic Versioning compliant) scheme in order to enable the rapid iteration of Emeris and other such applications and protocols. Rather than start the version numbering from 1.0, the proposed versioning scheme can start from the latest minor release in the current versioning scheme. This means that ‘v0.43.0’ becomes ‘v43.0.0’, and ‘v0.42.8’ becomes ‘v42.8.0’.

This proposed versioning scheme is in complete agreement with Go module versioning and will guarantee compatibility with the Go ecosystem and developers.

Being semver-compliant nowadays means being a good open-source community citizen, and since the growth of the Cosmos SDK is directly tied to how much the community around it is engaged with the development process, moving to a versioning scheme accepted industry-wide will communicate clearly that the Cosmos SDK is ready for prime-time, just like the Hub and IBC are.

Clear software release strategies have been key for the success and stability of the Cosmos SDK over the years. We believe it’s time to stabilize the Cosmos SDK interface on the versioning side of things, too. For more information and details on this proposal please visit:
https://github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk/discussions/10162

Stay in touch

• We’re hiring! Join the Tendermint Inc team
• Tendermint Inc on Twitter
• Tendermint Inc on LinkedIn
• Sign up for Tendermint Inc news, products, events and development
• Information on the Cosmos Network project

For press inquiries, contact press@tendermint.com

Tendermint’s Proposal for a New Versioning of Cosmos SDK was originally published in Tendermint Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In the interests of full transparency to the Cosmos community, Tendermint will be unbonding a significant number of vested ATOM and IRIS tokens and allocating them among our common shareholders. The unbonding will take place in the coming days, involving 5 million ATOM tokens and 30 million IRIS tokens.

This reallocation of resources will help decentralize the Cosmos Hub further, reward the talented contributors that built Tendermint Inc., and grow the Cosmos ecosystem by empowering shareholders to build more Cosmos chains.

The token release also fulfills a promise that Tendermint made upon the successful launch of the Cosmos Hub in March 2019 when Tendermint was granted two years of vested ATOM tokens. The leadership has always planned to release a portion of these ATOM tokens among shareholders.

Part of our founding philosophy is to reward and empower long-term contributors to the Cosmos ecosystem. After all, this is the visionary team that has been critical in building the essential software and services that secure over $110 billion of digital assets today.

Expanding the Cosmos Ecosystem

A lot has changed since the Cosmos Hub launched in March 2019. The Cosmos ecosystem has continued to expand and flourish, with more than 250 blockchain apps and services in our network today. Many important ecosystem projects and team members in Cosmos started as Tendermint and have gone on to cultivate their own innovative and exciting endeavors.

These blockchain projects are built by some of the brightest talents in Cosmos, and we expect them to contribute incredible amounts of value to the ecosystem as they grow, gain traction, and amass user bases. We also expect many of these projects to benefit from additional capital that will accelerate their growth and benefit the entire Cosmos community.

Reducing Centralization Risk

The Cosmos Hub only becomes more resilient to centralization risk as more ATOM is released to a larger number of individuals. We can’t think of a better group of people to share in the ownership of the Cosmos Hub than the people who built Tendermint Inc. They have contributed so much skill and knowledge to the expansion of Cosmos, helping us build the Internet of Blockchains.

Finally, at Tendermint, we value long-term relationships with the Cosmos community. We appreciate the efforts of many ex-Tendermint teams who decided to give out stakedrops to ATOM holders. We look forward to seeing more of this, and this token release is another step towards creating long-term alignment with the Cosmos Hub.

Tendermint to Release ATOM and IRIS to Shareholders was originally published in Tendermint Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Update from July’s Tendermint Board of Directors meeting: The final two members to join Tendermint Inc’s five-person Board of Directors are Claire Hough, CTO at Lyte and Nick Tomaino, Founder and General Partner at 1confirmation.

Tendermint Inc’s primary focus over the past three years has been about building software and community for the Cosmos Network. Today’s vibrant, talented and committed community of ATOM holders, software developers, and distributed applications is a significant milestone towards fulfilling the vision of Cosmos, the Internet of Blockchains. With the formation of a new Board of Directors and the election of a new CEO, Tendermint Inc is on its way to refocus and hone in on building out the Cosmos ecosystem.

New Board & CEO

The company’s newly aligned mission comes after the distribution of leadership, which includes the creation of a five-person Board of Directors and the appointment of the new CEO, Peng Zhong. Tendermint Inc’s newly formed Board of Directors includes Heng (Harriet) Cao, CEO of Bianjie and Co-Founder of IRISnet, Jae Kwon, Founder of Tendermint Inc and currently its Chief Architect, Co-Founder of Cosmos, and President of the Interchain Foundation (ICF), Peng Zhong, CEO and President of Tendermint Inc, Claire Hough, CTO at Lyte and Nick Tomaino, Founder and General Partner at 1confirmation.

Tendermint Inc’s Board of Directors and CEO have an aligned objective to structure and execute a viable long-term vision and strategy for the organization. The CEO’s role is responsible for the development and execution of the company’s vision and is held accountable by the board and Tendermint Inc’s shareholders. The CEO reports directly to the Board of Directors about the company’s progress and any significant organizational changes. Tendermint Inc’s Board of Directors is actively responsible for financial resource allocation, budgeting, and executive compensation in addition to advising the CEO.

Company Mission

The company’s high-level mission is and will remain about building more utility, usability, and ultimately value into the Cosmos Network. In the short term, Tendermint Inc is actively supporting the greater decentralization of the Cosmos Network with initiatives such as:

• Re-delegating Tendermint Inc’s ATOMs to Cosmos validators who have demonstrated a pedigree of significant contributions to the Cosmos ecosystem.
• Renewing service contracts with the Interchain Foundation to support the Cosmos mission towards a decentralized token economy built for a global network of developers.
• Ongoing coordination with the Interchain Foundation to create a coherent software delivery lifecycle through improved governance by actively distributing the maintainership of the Cosmos code repositories.

Long-Term Strategy

As Tendermint Inc enters a new phase, our long-term strategy and roadmap to support the growth of the Cosmos ecosystem will focus primarily on:

• Enhancing the Cosmos developer experience through better tooling, tutorials, and onboarding.
• Hosting community events, educational resources, and programs to support Cosmos development.
• Lowering the barrier to entry for Cosmos technology adoption by new developers.
• Developing innovative, easy-to-use, and community-centric Web 3.0 products and applications to improve people’s everyday lives.

As the Tendermint Inc team continues to build and execute on these initiatives, we’ll keep the community informed on updates like:

• New Tendermint Inc board members.
• Board meeting summaries on a quarterly basis.
• Announcements on Tendermint Inc’s long-term strategy, company, product roadmaps, and development updates.

Board of Directors

Peng Zhong has a long history in the Tendermint and the Cosmos ecosystem joining co-founders Ethan Buchman and Jae Kwon as Tendermint Inc’s first employee in 2015. Peng’s deep understanding of the ecosystem and its value proposition stems from spearheading the digital presence and brand of Cosmos and Tendermint, building the first Cosmos wallet, Voyager (now known as Lunie) and leading the company’s focus on improving the Cosmos developer experience.

Heng (Harriet) Cao has been a long-time contributor to the Cosmos ecosystem, co-founding the non-profit IRIS Foundation in 2017, to promote the development of IRISnet, an open-source software platform. IRISnet is designed to be the infrastructure for the next-generation of distributed business applications. IRISHub is a self-evolutionary Bonded Proof-of-Stake (BPoS) blockchain, built with Cosmos-SDK, that enables cross-chain interoperability through a unified service model. Harriet previously worked at IBM Research in various capacities including Director of IBM Research Shanghai Lab and Big Data Analytics Leader for IBM Global Labs. Ms. Cao is an award-winning practitioner of advanced technologies and was the recipient of the 2010 INFORMS Daniel H. Wagner Prize.

Jae Kwon is the co-founder of Tendermint and currently the organization’s Chief Architect. He is the creator of the Tendermint Core, a blockchain engine to create provably secure proof-of-stake algorithms, and co-creator of the Cosmos Network, a decentralized network of independent parallel blockchains powered by classical Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus algorithms. He is also President of the Interchain Foundation (ICF), whose mission is to promote the vision of Cosmos to enable public blockchain interoperability and scalability. Mr. Kwon was previously the co-founder of iDoneThis, an email-based productivity service.

Nick Tomaino is Founder and General Partner at 1confirmation, an early stage crypto fund focused on the decentralization of the web and society. 1confirmation is backed by prominent investors including Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Mark Cuban, as well as institutions like Horlsey Bridge and Runa Capital. Founded in 2017, 1confirmation is currently invested in 11 companies and 7 cryptonetworks. Previously, Mr. Tomaino worked as Principal at Runa Capital and led East Coast business development for Coinbase, which now brokers exchanges of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, and Litecoin with fiat currencies in approximately 32 countries, and bitcoin transactions and storage in 190 countries worldwide. Mr. Tomaino attended the Yale School of Management in 2014.

Claire Hough is CTO at Lyte and previously held the position of VP of Engineering at Apollo GraphQL. Before joining Lyte and Apollo, Claire led all of Udemy’s engineering functions for the company’s geographically distributed team. Prior to joining Udemy, she held senior executive positions at Citrus Lane, NexTag, Napster, and Netscape. Claire has spearheaded the delivery of innovative software platforms, infrastructure middleware, tools and applications, and has a proven track record of building and growing strong, global teams focused on innovation, quality, and customer care. Claire received her BS in industrial engineering and operations research as well as her MS in operations research from the University of California, Berkeley.

About Tendermint Inc

At Tendermint Inc., we empower people to create a transparent and accountable world through open, distributed, and interoperable networks.

Tendermint Inc. is the gateway to the Cosmos ecosystem. We build critical infrastructure for open networks, like the Cosmos SDK, Tendermint Core, and Gaia. We lead the developer experience by providing best-in-class tools to peer into an ever-expanding Cosmos.

Stay in touch

• We’re hiring! Join the Tendermint Inc team
• Tendermint Inc on Twitter
• Tendermint Inc on LinkedIn
• Sign up for Tendermint Inc news, products, events and development
• Information on the Cosmos Network project

For press inquiries, contact press@tendermint.com

The newly formed Tendermint Inc Board of Directors appoints Peng Zhong as CEO was originally published in Tendermint Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Decentralization, permissionless computing, and trustless systems are keystone to the global cryptocurrency movement. In the same vein, those core tenets are keystone to Tendermint Inc’s (as in, All in Bits) organizational policy. Adopting such policy paves the way towards resilient, redundant, and more productive ecosystems as the network evolves into an Interchain. To better enable the Cosmos Network to proliferate and make progress without risk of running into bottlenecks (halting), we at Tendermint Inc must necessarily undergo needed restructuring. The following update outlines the high-level details of what will be restructured:

A Refocus on Engineering

Because we recognize the extraordinary talent of the protocol engineers and researchers at Tendermint Inc, autonomy and free agency will serve to empower them to continue to ship and improve the infrastructure that powers Cosmos. To this aim, Tendermint Inc will part ways with its IBC and Tendermint Core teams as they start a new, independent Berlin-based GmbH, with the support and sponsorship from the Interchain Foundation (ICF).

What does this mean for IBC?

We’re incredibly proud of what our engineers have accomplished in the past year in specifying, prototyping, and implementing IBC.

Christopher Goes and his work as the lead IBC researcher and spec deployer has been an invaluable contributor to the Cosmos ecosystem. We want to thank Federico Kunze for his work as one of the core implementers of the IBC protocol, Callum Waters for his work on the relayer algorithm, and Joon who contributed to the first MVP of IBC as well as to the the Interchain Standards.

It is with bittersweetness to say that this team will be parting ways with Tendermint Inc to work on IBC under the new GmbH entity.

We’re looking forward to seeing this engineering-focused team deliver the IBC implementation and we are more than excited to support them in launching it on the Cosmos Hub. We will continue to coordinate with the new team and communicate updates to the greater Cosmos community.

What does this mean for Tendermint Core?

Tendermint Core is the realization of a vision that Jae Kwon had in 2014. By the time Tendermint Inc hired its 4th employee, a soft-spoken p2p engineer from Russia, Tendermint Core hit the ground running on its way to becoming the gold standard of Proof-of-Stake. It is with bittersweetness to say goodbye to the unsung hero of Tendermint Core, Anton Kaliaev, who, along with Tess Rinearson and Erik Grinaker, who will continue to maintain Tendermint Core under the new GmbH entity.

Other longstanding Tendermint Inc employees who have been core contributors to the ecosystem who will be operating under the newly established GmbH entity include: billy rennekamp, developer relations extraordinaire and our “human peg” to the Ethereum ecosystem and Anna Harbaum, German logistics & accounting maestro.

Tendermint Inc Alumni

The following is a chronology of historical departures and startups created by former Tendermint Inc employees who have gone on to generate industry-wide value for not only Cosmos but the greater blockchain sector as a whole.

Chorus One (2018)

Brian Fabian Crain departed Tendermint Inc to cofound Chorus One, a prominent validator for Proof-of-Stake-based blockchains. He also successfully co-hosted Epicenter, a popular podcast about cryptocurrency.

Nomic (2018)

Matt Bell and Judd Keppel departed Tendermint Inc to start Nomic Inc, a Seattle-based startup aimed to build a performant Bitcoin sidechain powered by Lotion.js, a JavaScript-based alternative client of Tendermint.

Lunie Software Systems (2019)

Jordan Bibla and Fabian Weber worked on Voyager, which was ultimately rebranded to Lunie, within Tendermint Inc before they created an independent entity. In 2019, Lunie Software Systems received funding from the ICF and is today a popular open-source in-browser wallet for the Cosmos Hub.

2020

Jessy Irwin, Zaki Manian, and Jack Zampolin have recently resigned from their positions at Tendermint Inc. We wish them the best of luck on their future ventures in the Cosmos ecosystem.

Tendermint Inc’s Current Verticals

Tendermint Inc is currently home to two verticals, and in 2020, we are considering kickstarting business opportunities that build on those verticals. The current teams consist of 1) the Cosmos Community & SDK Team and 2) the Virgo Bootstrapping Team.

Cosmos Community & SDK Team

Tendermint Inc, as a contractor to the ICF, is responsible for supporting the growth of the Cosmos ecosystem and the ongoing development and improvement of the Cosmos SDK. As such, the Cosmos Community & SDK Team will operate business-as-usual.

Virgo Bootstrapping Team

A new, experimental vertical that was recently spun up is the Virgo Bootstrapping Team. Virgo is a community and a movement aimed at solving world issues with better org tech (powered by Cosmos-based blockchains). The Interchain Foundation is funding this team under a separate budget from the Cosmos Community & SDK Team.

In the near future, the Board will become diversified to enable Tendermint Inc to pursue new business opportunities. This enables Jae Kwon (previously the sole board member and CEO) to focus on building out Virgo.

The Future of Tendermint Inc

Going forward, Tendermint Inc seeks to prioritize business opportunities that leverage our level of sophistication with the tooling that’s been developed in the Cosmos stack. In collaboration with our ecosystem partners and affiliates, we are forming plans around the possible creation of the following business opportunities:

Ecosystem Adoption

This prioritizes onboarding affiliates and business partners including, but not limited to, enterprise solutions, other open-source projects, blockchain applications, and large-scale institutions that may find Cosmos technology a fit for their needs.

Tendermint Certification

This potentially leverages our team to vet and certify the technicality and viability of Cosmos ecosystem projects that leverage any of our core products like Cosmos SDK, Tendermint Core, and IBC.

In Closing

Though the size and shape of Tendermint Inc will be changing in the near future, the team is dedicated to the vision of an Interchain ecosystem and is continuing to prioritize the launch of IBC.

We are truly grateful to the open-source contributors of this project within an ecosystem which has taken on a life of its own. Without this vibrant, understanding, and collaborative community, we would just be another technology company. We look forward to continuing to work with the best and brightest minds in the blockchain space.

At times, interpersonal work relationships and social dynamics ultimately get the better of organizations. It occurs so commonly that it’s almost a rite of passage for burgeoning startups. But because we operate in an open-source, decentralized setting, where permission need not to be granted, this kind of flexibility is largely what makes the blockchain ecosystem resilient to these kinds of risks. As long as incentives are aligned, different entities can still collaborate effectively together to work toward a common goal.

That common goal is the Cosmos.

Please follow @tendermint_team, @virgoudv, and @allinbitsinc on Twitter for live updates as they arise.

An Update About the State of All in Bits Inc (DBA Tendermint Inc) was originally published in Tendermint Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Tendermint Inc. is joining other key ecosystem stakeholders in running a node on the Torus Network. Together with Binance, ENS, Etherscan, Matic Network, Skale, Zilliqa, and Ontology, we will be running a validator node that operates Torus’ Distributed Key Generation, Proactive Secret Sharing and Key Assignment protocol.

Why Torus?

Torus is a distributed key management system that lets users log into dApps in a single step through their Google, Facebook, Reddit, Discord, or Twitch accounts. Users are also able to resolve public keys/addresses from ENS Domains, Google (Gmail or GSuite) emails, Reddit usernames, and Discord IDs, regardless of whether the user has logged into Torus.

On the backend, the keys are generated in a distributed manner via Distributed Key Generation, built on Shamir’s Secret Sharing, amongst the network of the selected node operators and reconstructed when successfully authenticated on an integrity checked front-end javascript session, the key is erased once the tab is closed.

Mainstream Blockchain Adoption

Collectively, the Torus Network strives to establish a key management platform that will empower billions of people to leverage the benefits of blockchain technology without struggling with the usability associated with it. With seamless onboarding processes that users are familiar with, we’re excited to be onboard and contribute efforts to increase adoption within this space.

In tandem, Torus is actively working towards integrations with the account model in Cosmos SDK which will allow other ABCI apps using Tendermint to leverage the system. Find out more here.

Where to Find Us

Website: https://tendermint.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tendermint_Team

Learn More About Torus Labs

Website: https://tor.us

Twitter: https://twitter.com/toruslabs

Torus — Seamless Key Management Built on Tendermint BFT was originally published in Tendermint Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Ethereum is moving towards a sharded Blockchain architecture, which is a bit like a Local Area Network (LAN) of Blockchains. Everyone loves a good LAN party but sometimes you need to access remote systems. In terms of traditional computers this activity manifests as “The Internet” which utilizes TCP/IP as a communication protocol between remote machines. On a network of Blockchains you need IBC (Inter-Blockchain Communication) which manifeste as “The Interchain”. IBC enables a massive variety of networks to co-exist, each with their own features and purpose, communicating with a trustless protocol. Ethereum is obviously a massive part of this Interchain and aspects of its architecture will show up in many different places in many different ways.

One of the ways Ethereum will show up across the Interchain is with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). This is a time tested secure execution environment with properties that make it ideal for smart contracts. If you are building a network outside of Ethereum and you want to utilize the EVM, one easy way to do so is to use the Cosmos SDK and the included Ethermint Module being developed by ChainSafe. Aragon has recently decided to run their own network that utilizes this architecture in order to make protocol level decisions for their users. This enables them to modify gas costs, increase throughput and design their own token economics from the ground up.

If you are interested in learning about building application-specific and interconnected Blockchains before EthDenver, join our workshop on Wednesday, February 12th during BUIDL Week. This session will be a hands on instructional course that uses the Cosmos SDK to build an NFT Blockchain. We will also go over the process of deploying your own EVM Blockchain that you can interact with via Metamask and utilizing all your favorite Ethereum developer tools. The workshop will be taught by Billy Rennekamp, founder of Clovers Network and developer relations engineer at Tendermint, Inc.

Connect with Cosmos on the forum to learn more!

The views and details expressed in this blog post are those of All In Bits Inc (dba Tendermint Inc), and do not necessarily represent the opinions or actions of the Interchain Foundation.

Ethermint & NFTs at EthDenver was originally published in Cosmos Community Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Month of October, by All in Bits (Tendermint Inc)

Note: The Cosmos ecosystem is constantly growing and expanding. This article’s content is now outdated. For the latest content, see https://cosmos.network/.

The decentralized feature of the Cosmos ecosystem means that community engagement plays a significant part in the project’s growth. The role of each participant shifts from a simple observer to an active contributor, which is why we added a new section to the newsletter, Community Conversations, to highlight these active contributors.

This month, community conversations focuses on security solutions and proposals related to improving the decentralization of validator staking power. Scroll down to read more about Cosmos events and news as well as in-depth development updates on the Cosmos SDK, IBC, Tendermint Core, CosmWasm, Ethermint and Peggy!

Cosmos Hub-3 Post-Mortem

The Cosmos community worked together to achieve the Cosmos Hub-2 upgrade. For more details on what was proposed, have a look at the passed governance proposal.

Unfortunately, the plans for a smooth Cosmos Hub 3 launch were foiled. Here are the top 3 post-mortems that explain what happened and what to watch out for next:

• Cosmos Hub 3 Upgrade Post-Mortem on the forum, Jack Zampolin
• Cosmos September 2019 Network Analysis, Gavin Birch
• Cosmos Hub 3 Upgrade Post-Mortem & Takeaways, Leopold Joy

Follow the Cosmos Forum discussion by B-Harvest on testnet participants for mainnet upgrades.

Time is running out! Apply now for the DeFi Hackathon at SFBW

Spots are filling up for the DeFi hackathon taking place November 1st through 3rd during San Francisco Blockchain Week. Don’t miss your chance to win part of a $50k ATOM prize pool and a free ticket to SFBW. Apply here!

Community Conversations

• Consensus key rotation by B-Harvest validator

The idea around this proposal is mainly focused on the principle that users should rotate the consensus key every time they restart the validator node. A prevention measure against double signing by mistake. WIth this, validators could run a second server and avoid a double signing event thanks to this new “dynamic” mapping of the operator address and consensus key,

• Eliminating the proposer inflation reward for leveling the playing field for smaller validators and as to avoid centralization

This feature has been continuously flagged as a centralization vector, since it gives a validator with a high voting power a slight advantage over those with low voting power. Removing the proposer inflation reward would more evenly spread inflation over the entire validator set.

• Diversification reward bonus for stake diversification by Jesse Livermore

Currently, the design around the Cosmos Hub does not offer real incentives for delegators to diversify their stake across several validators. This proposal aims to solve the problem of validator centralization. Essentially, it would incentivize delegators to diversify their staked accounts in return for more ATOMs per block.

Cosmos Events, News & Meetups

Recent coverage:

• Listen to the recording from the recent Berlin Cosmos Meetup: NFTs: have they grown up yet?
• Listen to the new Crypto 101 podcast with Jack Zampolin discussing all things Cosmos

October 19th-20th: Cosmos at Diffusion in Berlin, Germany

• Cosmos SDK tutorial
• Tendermint Core informational session
• Inter-blockchain Communication workshop

October 31st -November 1st: Cosmos at San Francisco Blockchain Week

• Apply now to participate in the SFBW DeFi hackathon and get a free ticket to SFBW

Tweets of the Month

Erik Voorhees on Twitter

When I speak supportively of ETH, the BTC maximalists hate me. When I speak supportively of EOS, the ETH and BTC maximalists hate me. Soon, when I speak supportively of Cosmos, I predict all three groups will find me quite distasteful.

Tushar Aggarwal on Twitter

@cosmos is hands down the most +ve community I have seen Bug identified No drama All community members informing each other Talks about - Lessons learnt - Resilience of network - Improvements to governance Is Cosmos even doing #crypto right? 😂😂 https://t.co/ErqnZ6LEnh

David Hoffman🧢 on Twitter

Q: aside from Ethereum, what's your favorite blockchain? V: zcash. Also @cosmos. Done a good job building tendermint and getting people to use it

Development Updates

Cosmos SDK: Check out the new Cosmos SDK two week sprint project board plus other updates that include:

• Adding unique digital assets to your Cosmos applications (like Pokemon cards) can be tested out by users via the recently merged NFT module. Check the complete blog post here.
• The new “Hellochain” tutorial is quick and simple way to start building on the Cosmos SDK.
• IBC integration and implementation underway. Check out the milestone for progress and issues.
• State accessors ADR and implementation. This improves developer UX with regards to reading and writing to module state and will be integral for IBC functionality.
• Keyring support has been introduced to the SDK that will replace the less secure DB-based keystore. Users will be provided with a command to migrate their keys.
• Implementation of transaction decoding CLI command and REST endpoint.
• Genesis accounts have now been modularized. Applications no longer have to rely on a static type.

Tendermint Core: An important update: Tendermint validators and service providers on Tendermint-powered networks to prepare to update their software to the latest, most secure version as quickly as possible as this update becomes available (Patch release October 2nd). Recent development updates to Tendermint Core also include:

• The IAVL Spec — join the discussion and help improve the design of the IAVL tree. If you have ideas, open an issue.
• Check out the newly recorded Tendermint Developer Session discussing IAVL for more details on the topic.
• If you have recommendations on improvements for the Tendermint protocol, we recommend submitting an RFC, you can find out more here.

Inter-blockchain Communication: IBC will serve as an open standard for interchain communication. For a list of IBC implementations, IBC-supporting blockchains, and special IBC bridges, see here. The main updates include:

• Newly updated IBC 1.0.0-rc4.
• IBC Gaia integration is in progress.
• The team is working on the 2chainz (2chainz = the ability to send a message between 2 chains) tutorial right now so that users can try out IBC for themselves.
• Resolving this issue will enable testnets and in turn a concrete timeline for Game of Zones.

Ethermint: Ethermint is designed to be a Proof of Stake implementation of the Ethereum Virtual Machine built on top of Tendermint Core. For more details on the product, check out our blog post “A Beginner’s Guide to Ethermint.”

Ethermint is currently under active development by ChainSafe, an Interchain Foundation grant recipient. The main upcoming development include:

• Completion of RPC API endpoints to be Web3 compatible.
• Implementation of queries through the EVM module to interact with Ethereum state.
• Inclusion of state updates at the start and end of blocks to capture and replicate Ethereum state transition more accurately.
• Storing transaction receipts and implement filters to give adequate information for dapp developers.
• Repo can be found here.

CosmWasm: CosmWasm will bring the WebAssembly (Wasm) virtual machine (VM) to the Cosmos SDK. WebAssembly potentially enables software written in arbitrary languages to run safely and fast on arbitrary hardware. Wasm is like an intermediary language between the developers programming language of choice and the user’s hardware, therefore allowing developers to use any programming language in addition to the initial GOlang limitation.

We are beginning development work on WebAssembly integration with the Cosmos-SDK (CosmWasm). The main updates include:

• An initial proposal provides an outline of how the wasmer engine/Cosmos-SDK integration connects to the rest of the SDK framework and all modules building upon it.
• Library for building Cosmos-compatible wasm smart contracts.
• CosmWasm Cosmos-SDK issues.
• Follow the CosmWasm discussion on Telegram.

Ethereum-Cosmos SDK Bridge Project: Bidirectional Ethereum-Cosmos bridge (codenamed “Peggy”) is the starting point for cross chain value transfers from the Ethereum blockchain to Cosmos-SDK based blockchains. For a simple overview of the project the blog post, “The Technicals of Interoperability: An Introduction to Ethereum Peg Zone”, is a great place to start.

Development is beginning on the project’s second milestone (four milestones in total). The main updates include:

• An single-validator automated testnet environment to support agile development and to allow curious Cosmos-SDK users to try it out.
• Enable sending Cosmos tokens (ATOM or IBC-standard tokens) to the Ethereum blockchain via CLI.

Thanks to the Cosmos community for all your support. Feel free to reach out to us (Adriana, Michelle or Peter) with feedback and ideas, we would love to hear them.

Looking for work?

We’re hiring! See our latest job openings here.

The views and details expressed in this blog post are those of All In Bits Inc (dba Tendermint Inc), and do not necessarily represent the opinions or actions of the Interchain Foundation.

October Hub & Spoke Newsletter was originally published in Cosmos Community Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Note: The Cosmos ecosystem is constantly growing and expanding. This article’s content is now outdated. For the latest content, see https://cosmos.network/.

Why is Cosmos Hub 2 being upgraded to Cosmos Hub 3?

The Cosmos community has voted to upgrade the Hub with the improvements and features that the SDK development team has been hard at work on. The version on the live network now, v0.34, represents a network in which both the Cosmos SDK, a framework for app developers to build blockchain-based applications, and Gaia, the codebase of the Cosmos Hub blockchain, are enmeshed in an intricate system of tightly-coupled dependencies in the same repository.

We’ve since split Gaia from Cosmos SDK, allowing us to make the Cosmos SDK into the developer-friendly and modular tool it was meant to become without encumbering Cosmos Hub’s public blockchain with frequent hard forks for every point release and minor improvement we make to the Cosmos SDK. You can expect more frequent releases on Cosmos SDK as it evolves into a full-fledged product while experiencing much less frequent upgrades to the Cosmos Hub.

For an in-depth look into the particulars of which changes were made since the Cosmos SDK v0.34 release line, refer to the July Development Update.

The governance proposal to initiate the Hub upgrade is published here: Gov 14.

As a wallet, block explorer, exchange, or other service provider, what do I need to do?

The transition from cosmoshub-2 to cosmoshub-3 contains API breaking changes. Here are the major changes you need to be aware of:

Tagging/Events

• TL;DR: Tags have been replaced by events
• See: Usage doc for event.go and the corresponding changes to the Cosmos SDK in Issue #4541

Height Query

• Queries to the application REST server are now wrapped with height fields. The resource is nested under “result”, e.g. `{ “height”: 10000, “result” {} }`.

NOTE: See detailed description of these changes in the Major Updates section of the gaia wiki.

As a wallet, exchange, or someone running signing infrastructure, what do I need to be aware of?

The type: field on StdTx will have changed from “type”:”auth/StdTx”,”value”:… to “type”:”cosmos-sdk/StdTx”,”value”:…

We highly recommend standing up a testnet with the gaia-2.0 release or joining the gaia-13006 testnet. More info for joining the testnet can be found in the testnets repo and associated documentation.

NOTE: We expect that developers with iOS or Android based apps may have to notify their users of downtime and ship an upgrade for cosmoshub-3 compatibility. Server-side applications should experience briefer service interruptions and be able to spin up new nodes and migrate to the new APIs.

As a validator, what do I need to do?

• Follow the Upgrade Procedure guidelines: github.com/cosmos/gaia/wiki/Cosmos-Hub-2-Upgrade#upgrade-procedure

As a validator, performing the upgrade procedure on your consensus nodes carries a heightened risk of double-signing and being slashed. The most important piece of this procedure is verifying your software version and genesis file hash before starting your validator and signing.

The riskiest thing a validator can do is discover that you made a mistake and repeat the upgrade procedure again during the network startup. If you discover a mistake in the process, the best thing to do is wait for the network to start before correcting it. If the network is halted and you have started with a different genesis file than the expected one, seek advice from a core developer from the Cosmos SDK developer Riot channel before resetting your validator.

Prior to exporting cosmoshub-2 state, validators are encouraged to take a full data snapshot at the export height before proceeding. Snapshotting depends heavily on infrastructure, but generally this can be done by backing up the .gaiacli and .gaiad directories.

In the event that the upgrade does not succeed, validators and operators must downgrade back to v0.34.6+ of the Cosmos SDK and restore to your latest snapshot before restarting your nodes.

To upgrade, please follow the Upgrade Procedure published in the gaia wiki.

As an ATOM holder, how does this upgrade affect me?

There likely will be minimal service interruptions to your favorite app. Your experience may vary depending on the app you’re using. As always, apply the proper operational security procedures when managing any cryptocurrency and be wary of phishing attempts and other general exploits. Your sources of truth are the 3 authoritative communications channels that the Tendermint team provides updates from, listed below.

Official Cosmos Communication Channels for Users

These are the official accounts that will communicate upgrade details:

• Cosmos Network Twitter (twitter.com/cosmos)
• Cosmos-Gaia GitHub repo (github.com/cosmos/gaia)
• Cosmos Blog (blog.cosmos.network)

Please be aware that the Cosmos forum, Riot chat groups, and Telegram group should not be treated as official news from Cosmos.

If you have doubt or confusion about what the next steps to take are and are unsure about trustworthy sources of information, do nothing for the initial period and wait for an update via the three communication channels listed above. Do not ever provide your 12 words to any admin, websites or unofficial software.

The views and details expressed in this blog post are those of All In Bits Inc (dba Tendermint Inc), and do not necessarily represent the opinions or actions of the Interchain Foundation.

Cosmos Hub 3 Upgrade Announcement was originally published in Cosmos Community Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Attn: Atom holders

Re: Atom Transfers Proposal: https://cosmos.bigdipper.live/proposals/2

Summary

AiB (All in Bits) will work with SimplyVC to propose a slightly modified proposal, with some needed changes, namely, with a new chainID, block size parameters, and a two-phase process for software upgrades. AiB recommends that those who have already voted YES to change their votes to NO for proposal-2.

This proposal isn’t intended to delay enabling transfers but to tweak some properties and to get 2/3rds votes on a specific code hash before an upgrade happens.

Justification

• The desired chain upgrade mechanism for enabling transfers will start the chain from height 0, so it is necessary to bump the chainID to prevent double signing by validators. This is why the chainID ends with a “-1” suffix. The upgrade must change the chainID to “cosmoshub-2”.
• The max block size and gas parameters shouldn’t change drastically from the current hub, especially before state syncing is fully implemented. Tendermint state syncing is on our immediate roadmap, once we have completed implementation and testnet testing, we can bump the block size up. AiB will recommend a 33% increase, for max_bytes to 200K, and max_gas to 2M.
• We strongly favor a two-phase software upgrade process — the first proposal to agree on the scope of changes and the proposed software provider, and a second proposal to agree on the exact software Git commit hash and block height for the export-import upgrade. The first proposal will state that the second proposal need not wait the full 2 week voting period, but instead will be considered to have passed once +⅔ of the bonded Atoms have voted in favor, and stayed in favor continuously for a period of 24 hours (while disregarding the quorum requirement of 40%, for safety and liveness reasons). For more information, please see https://forum.cosmos.network/t/post-launch-roadmap-proposal-atom-transfers/1298/2 , and further discussions at https://forum.cosmos.network/t/cosmos-hub-on-chain-governance-proposal-resolution-recommendation/1773

Actionables

For now, we recommend that those who voted YES change their votes to NO, and for those who haven’t voted yet to also vote NO. If you agree with this posting, please share it w/ other ATOM validators and delegators. UPDATE: It looks like the 40% quorum will be reached anyways, so our recommendation is to vote NO immediately.

We will provide more details around Thursday noon PDT, and in the meantime also update this posting w/ a link to a forum for further discussions. If you have any questions and concerns, please visit https://forum.cosmos.network/t/cosmos-hub-on-chain-governance-proposal-resolution-recommendation/1773 .

NOTE: In the future we should upgrade the governance mechanism to allow a further voting grace period once the quorum has been reached, so as to prevent a last-minute “attack” on governance where the quorum is reached to pass the vote. AIB will work with the community to draft that proposal some time after transfers have been enabled.

Cosmos Hub On-chain Governance Proposal Resolution Recommendation was originally published in Tendermint Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.